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3 of Teaneck's Faith Communities Celebrate Holidays


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

4/3/2023

Contents:


RETHINKING A LOCAL ETHICS BOARD AFTER PASSAGE OF NJ'S ELECTION TRANSPARENCY ACT



THE WEEK THAT WAS:


STATUS OF NEW ACTION ON 4 MUNICIPAL ISSUES


  •  Ending the Controversy about our Hospital’s Expansion with an HNMC-Neighbors Agreement?


  • Taking Immediate action to Protect against Flooding in the Belle Avenue Neighborhood?


  •  Beginning a New Open Process to Select our Legal and Engineering Service Professionals


  • Competitively Selecting a Consultant to Re-Design our Current, Impenetrable Municipal Web Site


TEANECK'S FIRST COMMUNITY RAMADAN IFTAR


THIS WEEK IN TEANECK in Teaneck - April 3 to 10, 2023




Announcements:


  • Applications for Site Plan Review Advisory Board
  • Community Meeting-Cedar Lane/Hackensack Bridge Plans - 4/17



Contacting Teaneck Voices

RETHINKING A LOCAL ETHICS BOARD

AFTER PASSAGE OF NJ'S ELECTION TRANSPARENCY ACT



Should NJ’s new Election Transparency Act – a true oxymoron - affect Teaneck’s local ethics board decision? Teaneck Voices believes Council needs to table its own new ordinance until it has seriously reviewed what are the actual implications for fair and prompt ethics compliance now that this this new state law was passed last Thursday. The Act is being savaged by virtually every open government advocate in the state. They accuse it of eviscerating the substance of the state’s own ethics rues and destroying the state’s own institutional compliance mechanisms.


Background:

Teaneck’s own debate about an ethics board prior to the new law is scheduled to come to a head tomorrow. An introduced ordinance (Ord 10-2023) that would abolish the Township’s ethics board is on the Tuesday April 4 agenda for both a public hearing and then a Council vote to either approve or reject the ordinance.


Abolish it; Send it to the State: Many of those who know the largely failed history of the ethics board which has been on the books in Teaneck for 35 years have recently embraced the view that the town’s conflicts of interest and financial disclosure issues might be better addressed by an entity located far outside the Town – hence, the state’s Local Finance Board in Trenton. After all, isn’t that what more than 95% of the municipalities in New Jersey have decided to do? And, some have pointed out the process of establishing and implementing an effective, equal justice local board mechanism could well prove to be quite expensive and itself take time even to assure it would have a current code adequate to the task.

No - The New Council Should Revive the Local Board: The opposite view is that Teaneck’s new Council could create a much more fair and knowledgeable ethics board here that would better understand the Town and its officials and more actively track and pursue current violations and address the local complaints which allege those violations. . A new Council must already know that some residents have stepped forward asking to be appointed. Indeed, the Trenton mechanism has itself been demonstrably failing to act promptly.

The current Council itself has apparently been split about how to move forward. Here is what happened when Council was trying to decide if the “abolish it” ordinance should be introduced on March 14 after having already once delayed its introduction. Click Here


In fact, the discussion to more fully explore which of the two options would have a better chance of delivering fair and effective compliance has not really happened. Even the public input in Council meetings has been quite limited.

 

ENTER THE NEW FACTOR: What is the Election Transparency Act of 2023?

 

Google it! What you find are tirades opposing it and charging the Governor and legislature with a massive act of bad faith. Listen, for example, to Public Policy Professor Carl Golden in today’s Insider NJ piece


  • “When Gov. Phil Murphy puts official pen to paper and affixes his signature to the grotesquely misnamed “Elections Transparency Act”, it’s certain he’ll do so in the privacy of his office…
  • Whatever concerns candidates or political organizations may have had concerning running afoul of ELEC regulations will disappear and copious amounts of cash will flow freely into a system already awash in it..
  • In the swipe of his pen, Murphy wiped out some 80 percent of the complaints pending before the Commission by imposing a two-year limitation on investigations and applying it retroactively….Contribution limits will increase, pay to play laws will be gutted, and a housekeeping fund will be created to accept contributions with no oversight.”


  • Click Here to read the rest of Golden’s piece. Or go to the calmer but equally critical piece in last Thursday’s  Globe Click Here. Teaneck Voices’ story in last week’s edition (Click Here) outlined many of the Act’s failures and predicted the 3/30 action by the Assembly would soon make the Act NJ law.


When essentially new information relevant to any policy decision suddenly emerges (i.e., this Election Transparency Act) , a competent legislative body (such as our new Council) will pause to make sure its meaning has been absorbed and integrated into its subsequent decisions. 


Council, please Table this introduced 10-2023 ordinance until the new landscape of NJ’s ethics laws and institutions has been fully understood.

STATUS OF NEW ACTION ON 4 MUNICIPAL ISSUES

The prior Teaneck Council left the Town with a series of major problems that needed remedial correction. Last week, Teaneck Voices highlighted promising movement by local officials to address four of those longstanding municipal issues. Voices promised to follow-up developments which occur as the Spring moves forward. Readers can review what we reported last week at Click Here. In the brief paragraphs below we report discernible progress on 3 of those 4 issues and optimism that progress on the 4th may soon follow suit.

 

·       Negotiations to end the Controversy about our Hospital’s Expansion with an HNMC-Neighbors Agreement?


It took the 5 planning board members in attendance (a quorum) only 10 minutes on 3/30 to meet & agree NOT to continue that night the Holy Name Medical Center-requested site plan hearings UNTIL April 25 and if needed April 26. Chair Bodner cited this hearing continuance as a request by the applicant HNMC. He further explained the delay as one that would best enable litigation settlement discussions to continue and suggested that these late April meetings would in any event be needed to link PB hearing factors to settlement agreement provisions. The PB in attendance quickly agreed and after a brief G&W adjourned.


Whether this optimism about the pending end of the controversy is justified remains uncertain as Voices goes to press knowing that actual mediation is in progress as we do so.


·       Taking Immediate action to Protect against Flooding in the Belle Avenue Neighborhood?


No NEW Council vote yet confirms it, but it continues to appear to Voices that Council is prepared to support very rapid action to approve implementation of the additional mitigation of this long-neglected Town responsibility. 


·       Beginning a New Open Process to Select our Legal and Engineering Service Professionals


Near the end of the March 23 Budget meeting, Council directed the Manager to complete and publish the new bid documents for both several types of professional legal services and for 2 general engineering services. The documents for both were released and placed on the Town website on 3/30. Residents may review the bid documents themselves on the Town website at https://www.teanecknj.gov/bids. Bids for both sets of services will be opened at 1:00 pm on Friday, April 14 in Council Cambers, a process that is as always open to the public.


·       Competitively Selecting a Consultant to Re-Design our Current, Impenetrable Municipal Web Site


As indicated, the Town has solicited and received bids from 5 firms proposing to re-design the Township's website. An internal administrative firm is reviewing those bids before it brings a recommendation to Council. At the 3/30 Council Budget meeting the Manager told Council that this process is moving forward smoothly.


TEANECK'S FIRST COMMUNITY RAMADAN IFTAR

Who knew that when Teaneck residents walked into Gym 1 in the Rodda Center about 6:30 on Wednesday March 29, they would suddenly find themselves in a huge facility overflowing with people of all ages, races, political persuasions and, yes, overflowing with people from the full diversity of communities of faith which so distinguish the Township of Teaneck. From the back of the gym, somewhere far in the distance, under a Ramadan Kareem banner, they would witness a parade of speakers leading to a keynoter who repeatedly cited the Quran and at the same time proclaimed the Muslim religion as one committed to the inclusiveness that was so concretely exhibited by the massive (500? 600?) persons who were gathered there.


Teaneck's Council and Manager had officially made it a Township event - but the sheer size and variety of human beings who gathered there were what sealed the deal. Teaneck's first Community Ramadan Iftar was, well, an event all who were there will remember as lifting them up together - a welcome respite from so much else and everywhere - even at times here - that is dividing us & tearing us apart.

THIS WEEK IN TEANECK - April 3 TO 10, 2023

Teaneck Council - Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 8:00 pm hybrid both in-person at Council Chambers and by zoom - for access Click Here and type passcode 325772. For agenda, Click Here.


The public hearing and then vote on whether to abolish the moribund local ethics board (Introduced ordinance 10-2023) will occur early in the meeting. Discussion of this issue is the first article in this Voices edition. The ordinances hearing will also be open for discussion of other introduced ordinances. In preparation for Good & Welfare, Readers may want to 1)check out whether there are resolutions of concern to them (See pp. 6-7 of the agenda) and 2)review new ordinances scheduled for introduction which include the Backyard Chickens revised ordinance (Ord 20-2023, agenda pp. 257ff) and an ordinance regulating vaping and cannabis sale and smoking (Ord 23-2023 - agenda pp. 269ff .)


Youth Advisory Board – Wednesday April 5. 2023 at 7:00 pm at the Rodda Center. No other information currently available.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Township of Teaneck New Jersey - Advisory Board and Statutory Board Application (teanecknj.gov)

Contacting Teaneck Voices


By Email: teaneckvoices@gmail.com

By Phone: 201-214-4937

By USPS Mail: Teaneck Voices, PO Box 873. at 1673 Palisade Ave. 07666

Teaneck Voices' Website is www.teaneckvoices.com


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