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PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES
Managing Editor, Bernard Rous
1425 Teaneck Road: Senior Affordable Housing Project
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1425 TEANECK ROAD
SENIOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROJECT
Last Monday evening, June 27th, a meeting facilitated by Cheryl Hall took place at the Rodda Center, to discuss the affordable senior housing project at 1425 Teaneck Road scheduled to break ground this fall with a target completion date of early 2024.

Over 30 concerned residents attended the meeting. A presentation was made by Elizabeth Davis of The Bright Side Family, a Teaneck-based non-profit provider of affordable housing and supportive services to older adults, and Age-Friendly Teaneck, which support this project.

The five-story building will have 36 one-bedroom units and 3 two-bedroom units available to low- and moderate-income adults 62 and up. 

The building will have a community center on the ground floor open to neighbors and Teaneck senior residents as well as the tenants. Age-Friendly Teaneck will develop programming for the center, based on input and guidance from the community. 

The roof will have a sitting area and garden. Parking will be at ground-level. Shops are within walking distance. And there is a public bus stop right in front of the building.

Rents are indeed affordable, lower by far than the average in Teaneck of $2,500/month for newly built one-bedrooms. The comparable monthly rate at 1425 Teaneck Road will range from $336 to $1197, depending on the tenant’s income. 

The Alpert Group, a for-profit developer based in Fort Lee with awards for its affordable housing projects, will co-develop this project with the non-profit The Bright Side Family in consultation with non-profit Monarch Housing Associates, with long experience working to develop affordable and mixed-income senior housing.

In response to concerns raised by residents, several points were clarified:

  • This is not an assisted-living building but rather affordable senior housing. It should not increase ambulance traffic in the area.
  • Teaneck Road will not be shut down during construction; entrance to the property will be from side streets. 
  • The planning for this project is not new but began as early as 2018. There have been public hearings on it at Council and Planning Board. 

Senior residents of Teaneck interested in learning more details or being placed on a notification list should email Age Friendly Teaneck at info@agefriendlyteaneck.org or call 201-530-6756. 
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There is an affordable housing crisis in this country due in no small measure to the large and ever-growing wealth disparity. Without government assistance of some kind, affordable housing projects may be a risky proposition since rental incomes are set below market-rate and remain relatively fixed; they are unlikely to cover maintenance costs over time.

In the case of 1425 Teaneck Road, The Bright Side Family reports that financing for the $14 million dollar project was secured largely through New Jersey State’s affordable housing program. This means that apartments cannot be reserved for Teaneck residents.

So, even though it is a goal of Age-Friendly Teaneck is to help Teaneck residents age in place, this project is open to all seniors in the region. As a result, very few Teaneck seniors are likely to secure an apartment.

To try to offset this drawback to the project, Age Friendly Teaneck will lead a campaign to provide information and assistance to eligible Teaneck residents seeking to apply for one of these new affordable senior apartments. But since the units are awarded ultimately by a blind lottery, it remains unclear whether the assistance will secure many more units to Teaneck seniors wishing to age in place.

Had our Council chosen to establish a Teaneck Housing Authority, perhaps a facility such as 1425 could be designated affordable senior housing for Teaneck Residents.

Nonetheless, this project is now a done deal. It does meet a pressing need for more senior affordable housing. Teaneck Voices will do what it can to help direct Teaneck seniors to the appropriate resources for preparing and filing their applications. 

Some Concerns and Questions

  • It was stated that the company that purchased the 1425 Teaneck Road property from the town is a non-profit organization owned by Elizabeth Davis. Yet the literature distributed by The Bright Side Family stated “This [deed] restriction prevents The Alpert Group from later selling the building to a buyer who would convert it into market-rate housing.” 

So who owns the property? Elizabeth Davis’ non-profit or the for-profit Alpert Group?

  • 100% of this building is affordable senior housing. There is no 15% set-aside of affordable units in an integrated mixed design. It is not entirely clear whether the Fair Share Housing settlement rules with Teaneck would therefore apply. Teaneck itself has invested $900,000 in the project. 

Do these facts provide any basis for units to be reserved for Teaneck residents?  

  • All the surrounding buildings are 1 or 2 storeys. Like any Teaneck resident, the immediate neighbors are naturally concerned to have this five-storey structure arise in their midst. And even though this project has been in the works for some time, some do not feel they have been informed about it until this very meeting. Furthermore, many residents are heated about yet another high-density, multi-family development in the Northeast, adding to already congested Teaneck Road traffic. 

Do we have a Council that does a fair assessment of potential properties throughout Teaneck? Or one that looks mostly in the Northeast?

  • Residents have been staring at the derelict DPW storage facility currently on 1425 Teaneck Road for some time. A new well-designed facility should certainly be an improvement. But it is this very Council that allowed 1425 Teaneck Road to decay and thus created actual "blight" on Teaneck Road.  

  • This property is one of many the Council removed from useful purpose - formerly it was a recreation center for young people primarily from the NorthEast quadrant of town. The Council took the property for storage for the DPW and failed to maintain it, allowing it to become “a long-vacant and outmoded public works building.”

Failing to maintain property, inducing decay, then declaring blight and doing spot developments all over town, and disproportionately in the Northeast, without benefit of a guiding Master Plan – Does this demonstrate a lack of vision and true town-wide planning? Or does it speak of a desire to urbanize Teaneck and change its essential character without anyone’s consent? 

  • Teaneck is an expensive town. It is always politically popular, but especially so in an expensive town like Teaneck, to have 0% increase in property taxes. 

But people need to assess what that 0% costs them: Will developments like 1425 Teaneck Road that support a greater density of population without any increase in services provided (for safety, sewage, transportation, waste) lead to deterioration and congestion?
THE WEEK THAT WAS
The Township Council meeting held on Tuesday, June 28th focused on the adoption of Ordinance 22-2022, which repealed and re-enacted the portions of the zoning ordinance expanding the Holy Name Medical Center hospital zone.

One of the largest audiences was present since the resumption of hybrid in-person sessions. The boisterous crowd featured many in favor of the two ordinances, many of them hospital employees wearing pre-printed t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Vote Yes”, while the next largest segment was made up of those residents supporting the Good Neighbors of Teaneck.

Ordinance 22-2022 was largely designed to allow Deputy Mayor Schwartz to recuse himself in the face of conflict-of-interest issues that had been raised by the Good Neighbors of Teaneck in the complaint they had filed in Superior Court. Councilwoman Orgen previously recused herself, leaving only five members eligible to vote.

The Township Attorney and Clerk indicated that a protest filed by neighbors of the hospital had been reviewed and accepted. Therefore, in this matter the law required that all five members still eligible to vote would have to vote Yes for this ordinance to pass.

For nearly 90 minutes, speakers in person and on Zoom spoke to the Ordinance 22-2022. Those in favor focused on the need to allow the hospital to expand and serve the community, while most of those opposed indicated that they fully supported the hospital’s expansion plans but emphasized that the promised long-term deed restrictions that would protect the nearby homes from being impacted by future hospital plans had never been implemented.

The mayor opened the meeting up to comments from councilmembers. Councilmember Kaplan spoke first and stated that "there's no question that the hospital needs to be expanded" and that as a result of negotiations both sides would end up at "the same amount of miserable".

Councilmember Romney Rice emphasized that the two sides had been close to a mutually agreeable deal and that she was going to abstain so that the negotiations could continue until an agreement was reached.

Councilmember Pagan said he would support the ordinance.

Deputy Mayor Katz opined that the neighbors were working against the hospital and that he would vote in favor of the ordinance as it would be good for all of Teaneck, after which he walked over to talk with Councilmember Romney Rice.

Mayor Dunleavy felt that a decision had to be made after two years of negotiations. He noted that Bergen County had the greatest excess of hospital beds of any county in the state and that only the biggest hospitals would survive the upcoming wave of consolidation and be able to deal successfully with health insurers, so he would vote yes.

With four members planning to vote yes and one to abstain, it appeared that Ordinance 22-2022 would fail. The mayor made a motion to pass the ordinances, at which point Deputy Mayor Katz leaned over and asked the mayor to call for a five-minute recess.

Four members of council – Dunleavy, Katz, Pagan and Romney Rice – left the dais and began discussions in the backrooms adjoining the council chambers. Individuals in attendance at the meeting described how Township Attorney John Shahdanian rushed through the lobby to start a conversation with Deputy Mayor Schwartz in the finance office, while a web of conversations took place in the entranceway to the building’s back door between members of the council and the attorney and senior staff representing Holy Name.

After nearly 15 minutes of discussions behind the scenes, the meeting was reconvened. Mayor Dunleavy began immediately by stating that, before voting started, he was going to ask the two sides to make a strong commitment that they would work together to address some of the outstanding issues.

Wendy Berger, the attorney representing the hospital who had been deeply involved in the discussions during the recess, said that she would make a commitment to continue discussions. Rob Simon, the attorney representing the Good Neighbors of Teaneck who had not been involved in any of the sidebar negotiations, asked what would happen with the vote. After being told by the mayor that no answer would be given about the status of the ordinance, he said that he would give his 110% commitment to continue negotiations.

Noting that there was a commitment from both the hospital and the neighbors to continue discussions, the vote was called and all five members voted yes. Ordinance 22-2022 was passed.

It’s impossible to know what was said that changed the one vote that mattered. Two critical questions need to be answered:

  1. What happened during that 15-minute recess?
  2. Was that 15-minute recess even legal?

Once the meeting reconvened there was no discussion among members as to what should be done. Instead, the mayor immediately announced to both sides the terms of a deal that appeared to have been reached behind closed doors. A deal in which Holy Name and its representatives had taken part, but from which the Good Neighbors of Teaneck were excluded and thus unaware of the discussions that had taken place.

The backroom discussions and the deal that appears to have been reached, seem to violate the very essence of the legislative findings and declaration of the Open Public Meetings Act (NJSA 10:4-7), which states that:

"The Legislature finds and declares that the right of the public to be present at all meetings of public bodies, and to witness in full detail all phases of the deliberation, policy formulation, and decision making of public bodies, is vital to the enhancement and proper functioning of the democratic process; that secrecy in public affairs undermines the faith of the public in government and the public’s effectiveness in fulfilling its role in a democratic society…"

Even under the best possible light, the passage of this ordinance does not fix all of the issues that are needed for the hospital to expand. The complaint from the Good Neighbors of Teaneck documents further conflicts of interest, especially by Deputy Mayor Katz. Furthermore, the recusal of Deputy Mayor Schwartz from the vote on the ordinances on June 28th does not address his involvement in the negotiations with Holy Name and his active participation in the Planning Board discussions of a Master Plan amendment that set the stage for the passage of the zoning ordinance.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the Class II member of the Planning Board, serving currently an an officer in the Teaneck Police Department who also works as a real estate agent, was given the opportunity to place a bid on a property on behalf of the hospital at 115 Chadwick Road and then subsequently voted on behalf of the Master plan amendment.

The apparent violations of the Open Public Meetings Act only make matters worse.

The case is likely to drag on in Superior Court, either because the complaint will be amended to add the violations that took place on Tuesday night or because the neighbors could file a complaint under the Open Public Meetings Act, under which the approval of Ordinance 22-2022 would be nullified, if the case were successful.

The oral promise by the hospital to continue negotiations appears not to be worth much, especially given that the hospital has pretty much been given everything it ever hoped for.

The deal that Councilmember Romney Rice said seemed right at hand between the hospital and the neighbors could still be reached, but it appears that the two sides will only negotiate in good faith once a court decides that they need to go back to square one and a new negotiator take over to see that both sides act in the best interests of all involved.
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UPCOMING MUNICIPAL EVENTS
Parks, Playgrounds, & Recreation Advisory Board Meeting
Wednesday July 06, 2022 at 7:30pm
Public access and opportunity for input limited by the  Advisory Board ordinance (*see ordinance below)

Board of Adjustment Meeting
Thursday July 7, 2022 at 9:00pm
No further information available at this time.
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*Quote from Ordinance 15-2020 on Advisory Boards adopted by Council on August 11, 2020: 

“Council’s advisory Board meetings are closed to the public. The public can submit items for discussion to the Council’s advisory board chair and council liaison for review and potential for inclusion on their meeting agenda. If the item is placed on the agenda, the chair, with approval of their Council’s advisory board, may invite the member of the public to come and speak to them about the specific issue they want to have discussed”.
This Week's Events at the Library click here
ONE TOWN ONE VOTE RESIDENT SURVEY
One Town One Vote (OTOV) is a grassroots, nonpartisan volunteer organization that worked with other community groups to make it easier and more convenient for Teaneck residents to vote for their local leadership by unifying Teaneck’s stand-alone town council elections, previously held in May, to take place on the same day as the General Elections in November. Tuesday, November 8, 2022 will be the first time Teaneck residents will have the opportunity to vote for town council members at the same time as we vote for other local, state, and national officials.

In anticipation of this historic event, OTOV is conducting a town-wide survey on resident issues and concerns. We need your input! Your responses will help us achieve our ongoing goal of helping to listen, educate, organize, and empower residents on local issues so your voice matters and your vote counts in the November elections. Your information will not be shared with any other organization.

Please click here to take the One Town One Vote resident survey! Your voices will be heard, your voices will count!"
COVID UPDATES
Rapid COVID-19 Test Kits Available for Free from USPS

Free at-home COVID-19 tests ordered on www.covidtests.gov and delivered by USPS. Limit of 2 orders per household. Each order contains 4 individual tests
RODDA CENTER
In an effort to keep the senior center staff and participants safe, mask wearing
and social distancing are required.
Masks are now optional inside the library. Those attending programs held in limited areas, such as the Auditorium, are still required to wear masks. 
Contactless doorside pickup is still available.
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MASTHEAD
Editorial Board
Natalee Addison
Laraine Chaberski
Toniette H. Duncan
LaVerne Lightburn
Charles W. Powers
Bernard Rous
Micki Shilan
Barbara Ley Toffler

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Margot Embree Fisher
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Henry Pruitt
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Theodora Smiley Lacey
Loretta Weinberg