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Why Making Teaneck Governance Work Matters Now


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

4/22/2024

Contents:

  • Why Making Teaneck Governance Work Matters Now
  • Back to Teaneck Business
  • Waiting for the Budget
  • Teaneck Starts to Reclaim its Environmental Heritage
  • This Week in Teaneck
  • Announcements


This Week in Teaneck - 4/22 to 4/28

  • Hackensack River Greenway Advisory Board
  • Stigma Free Advisory Board


Contacting Teaneck Voices

  • Email: teaneckvoices@gmail.com
  • Phone: 201-214-4937
  • USPS Mail: Teaneck Voices, PO Box 873. at 1673 Palisade Ave. 07666

Why Making Teaneck Governance Work Matters Now

Successful and efficient municipal governments are the product of experienced and competent municipal administrators (in Teaneck’s case, the Town Manager and Deputy Manager) working effectively with legislative bodies (in Teaneck’s case, its Council) and statutory boards to define and implement a timely municipal policy that reflects the values of its residents while evolving to meet current and future challenges. 


If municipalities are fortunate their administrations have been able to plan so that when retirements and other factors require new appointments, the choices for key positions are somewhat predictable. And if towns are lucky, transitions to new leadership come at times of relative stability so new decisions are relatively uncomplicated.


The disconcerting news that Teaneck’s much-appreciated Manager Dean Kazinci will be leaving in two months and that his Deputy Tom Rowe also plans to depart, has been exacerbated by the family emergencies currently faced by both leaders. The Council has selected a search firm to help find a successor but there is no good news even rumored from that process. There is also the immediate loss due to the health of experienced Zoning Officer Dan Melfi and the loss of a relatively new Planning Board attorney to the state judiciary. The 2nd bidding process for that attorney appointment yielded only one applicant this week.


These key personnel changes are challenging enough. But even a cursory look at the immediate horizon reveals how many absolutely critical decisions await resolution in a town already facing sharp divisions among its diverse demographics. 


A new website is apparently being created by a contractor with no prior New Jersey experience. The current website remains complex and incomplete (For example, minutes missing for each of our land use boards are in the double digits).

 

A new Master Plan draft has been authored by a junior planner from the firm whose own personnel changes have been dramatic. Although we have been gathering information about resident views for a year, the Planning Board only finally has been handed the task of guiding it two weeks ago. The Board must now simultaneously select a new attorney to guide them legally as they assume their Master Plan responsibilities. 


Council and the departing Manager have been struggling to find a way to adequately and safely fund essential services without adopting a budget whose high property taxes cause an upheaval or exodus.


Two plus decades of serious disputes with the state’s Department of the Environment have just been mended – but the reconciliation involves bureaucratic minutia that could remain unresolved before personnel changes at both Teaneck and the State. 


Organized groups of residents actively oppose the use of Areas In Need of Redevelopment (blighted areas) as a way to specify development priorities. But the Town has made prior commitments on these very projects that are alienating neighborhood residents and their supporters. No easy solution is apparent!



The Township has finally accepted that it can’t find any place to move its River Road DPW/Recycle center out of town. But it has just started the process of sorting out how to address the huge costs and logistics of remediating this seriously contaminated public property that the Township has neglected for 60 years. 

As is indicated repeatedly in Teaneck Voices, the Council must somehow learn how to work together sufficiently to make governing Teaneck a real possibility.

Back to Teaneck Business


Waiting for the Budget

Summary: Teaneck’s budget adoption process is late. The pieces that must be summed up to define the tax rate for Teaneck property owners are still very much in flux and not well understood by many residents. Teaneck Voices here tries to explain where we are and are not in this process and how the recent revaluation will shape not only the new tax rate but more importantly how that rate will determine individual property taxpayer burdens.


  • If the agenda for the May 7 Council meeting includes the requisite elements needed for the Council to Introduce the Town’s 2024 municipal budget, the Town may be able to define its portion of the total 2024 tax rate to be borne by Township property owners by June. (The total tax covered by taxpayers includes 3 portions: municipal tax, public school tax, and County tax). 


  • The budget was rarely mentioned at the April 16 meeting, although this was the second successive Council meeting where the Town failed to meet the state requirement for budget Introduction. The explanation is that the Council majority is now working to find some way to significantly reduce Manager Kazinci’s proposed 6.99% budget increase before bringing it forward. 


No official information about what that Introduced budget will be has been released. The rumored Council goal is to propose a budget increase somewhere in the 4% range. That would require either major additional cuts or some one-time revenue-raising device, like the sale of the Town’s cell tower although its lease currently generates 100K annually).  Once a proposed budget is actually introduced by a Council vote, it is sent to the state and after a minimum of 20 days can be proposed for final adoption by a majority vote of Council. That will likely not happen now until the Council’s June 18 meeting. 


Most residents are aware, as we mentioned above,  that their actual annual property tax obligation awaits a combination of the final municipal budget, the final public schools budget, and the final Bergen County budget. The Teaneck Board of Education met last Wednesday (4/17) to adopt a preliminary budget (Click Here to review the School’s website’s depiction of that budget and the options the Board discussed and Click Here to review that budget discussion.) If the Board approves a budget that includes the maximum 2% increase, the property tax levy portion of that school's budget will be +/- $102M. The Board will meet again on May 1 and aims to have a final budget by May 13.


In the meantime, Bergen County’s Commissioners are now meeting to review the County Executive’s proposed $712M budget, a 2.7% increase over last year’s county budget. The Commissioners have typically sliced just a tiny piece from the Executive’s proposal. 


Each of these final 3 budgets includes projections about how much state aid the state will contribute to each entity – and obviously, those state aid dollars can be subtracted from what the 3 budgets need in property tax revenue.  The state budget gets set on June 30. Word in Trenton is that budget pressures are strong in anticipation of reduced state tax revenue

Both Teaneck residents and businesses were told in mid-February to March how the assessed value of their property had changed – and on average the increase was about 40%.  So the town’s ratables (the value of its taxable properties) are far larger. So if the three taxing entities (township/schools/county) did not increase their budgets, the tax rate on a property’s newly assessed value would drop – dramatically. Unfortunately, it is clear that the budgets of all of the 3 taxing entities will see increases. So even with all the town’s properties worth more than they were, the budget increases will result in taxpayers’ rates being higher.


Is there good news in any of this? Just one piece: 


  • Please recall that Teaneck divides its annual tax calendar into quarters beginning August 1, November 1, February 1, and May 1 of each year.


  • The calculations needed to clarify precisely what the new tax rate will be for any individual property will stay in flux until mid-summer,


  • So, the new rates will not go into effect until the quarter beginning August 1, 2024. 


  • Your quarterly tax bill that comes due in just one week, on May 1, remains the same as the three prior quarters.

Finally, Teaneck Starts to Reclaim Its Environmental Legacy

Teaneck last updated its Environmental Resources Inventory (ERI) in 2013.  In New Jersey, an Environmental Resource Inventory acts as a baseline documentation for measuring and evaluating resource protection issues and serves as a tool for decision-making by the municipality including its Environmental Commission and its Planning Board. The draft of the 2024 Updated ERI, prepared for the Township by the NJ Land Conservancy has this month successfully emerged from the Environmental Commission and it is now properly noticed and on the May 9 Planning Board agenda for final approval on May 9.


Teaneck has literally been at war with the staff of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) since 2009 about reconciling its Recreation & Open Space Inventory (ROSI) with the Teaneck recreation and open space properties identified by the State DEP as being protected. Basically, Teaneck’s list of recreation and open spaces DID NOT match the inventory for Teaneck identified by the DEP. Consequently, Teaneck could not apply for the generous funding provided by NJ Green Acres for the last 15 years!


If the Town and DEP at long last agree in May – and it appears that they will -- the Town will finally again become eligible for the massive Green Acres funding it has foregone (except for one time) since 1990, – and can proceed with the needed park improvements in Herrick and Sagamore Parks for a start.

Once the Teaneck ROSI agreement with the State is finalized, its results will certainly be incorporated in the long-overdue Open Space and Recreation Plan (OSRP) that will also be brought for approval to the Planning Board. The already-late 2019 draft of the Teaneck OSRP was finally approved by the PB in June 2023, but was deemed out of date and a revised version will soon be brought before the Planning Board. Once approved, the OSRP   likely will be incorporated as part of the Town’s new 2024 Master Plan.


The implications of the completion and approval of these environmental documents are huge:


  • Teaneck and the State are within a hairs breath of resolving all of the myriad factors that will allow the park mitigation needed to end the decades-long flooding along Belle Avenue. 


  • The Town has already approved and implemented a new policy concerning the use of pesticides in its parks, and plans are underway to hold public meetings to discuss the implications of this policy for how residents too should manage pesticide use. 


  • Twice in 3 months, Teaneck residents have fought through weather delays to begin a series of Community-wide Cleanup days. April 14 was the most recent one. Participants report finding evidence of just how serious that cleanup is needed – and residents report their actual cleanup experience to be exhilarating – something that devotees of the Teaneck Creek Conservancy have known all along!


  • The threats to safety on our roads have generated not simply sharply focused attention to what a robust streets policy would include but the resident-generated initiative of a “Complete Streets” policy focused not simply in Teaneck but also on a corresponding effort with the County. 


  • Clearly, the preparation, public input, and approval processes for the new Teaneck Master Plan that is currently in the hands of the Planning Board (PB) will affect how these recent steps toward a recovery of Teaneck’s long-established environmental legacy will either be consolidated or diminished by this all-important new Master Plan document. A draft document is currently under “deliberative” review by the Board which is required to release its recommended draft to the public well before the PB considers its adoption. Council has promised no significant steps on redevelopment until the passage of this new Master Plan.

This Week in Teaneck - April 22-28, 2024

Hackensack River Greenway Advisory Board- Monday, April 22, 2-24 at 8:00 pm by Zoom. No other Information Available 



Stigma Free Advisory Board – Tuesday, April 23 at 7:00 pm by Zoom – No other information available

Announcements

Contacting Teaneck Voices


Co-Editors: Dr. Barbara Ley Toffler and Dr. Chuck Powers

IT Editor: Sarah Fisher

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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