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Thoughts Before Election Day


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

11/4/2024

Contents:

  • Thoughts Before Election Day
  • Last Chance Voting: Where and How
  • PB OK’s Holy Name General Development Plan
  • What’s What with the Planning Board?
  • What Does this Flyer Suggest?
  • This Week in Teaneck – November 4


Announcements

  • TDMC’s  2024 Endorsements  for Council & BOE
  • One Town One Vote Endorses Focus on Students Slate
  • One Town One Vote Endorses for the People Slate
  • 2024 Teaneck International Film Festival – 11/7 to 14
  • TIFF Schedule of Films & Locations
  • Haiti Packathon – 11/9



Contacting Teaneck Voices:

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

Thoughts Before Election Day

With Voting by Mail and a week-long Early Voting, Election Day 2024 is different than election days before the Covid pandemic. Election Day in Teaneck is now the last day for voting in the presidential, congressional, state, and municipal elections. It is also the day whose end will bring the answers about who our 3 elected councilmembers and 3 elected Board of Education trustees will be.


Because of Vote by Mail and Early Voting, Teaneck Voices has been publishing municipal candidate, policy, and issue information for several weeks. Today we briefly review key points, make a few final observations, and re-emphasize our endorsement.


Teaneck Voices endorses:  


For Council – For the People Slate of DUANE HARLEY, RESHMA KHAN, ARDIE WALSER 


For Board of Education – Focused on Students Slate of NADIA HOSEIN, JONATHAN RODRIGUEZ, SELEENE WONG


Critical Issues for Council


  • Redevelopment Do you want Teaneck turned into an urban community with tall apartment buildings, tall parking structures, increased traffic, and limited green and open space like Hackensack? Or do you want Teaneck to maintain its suburban vibe with single-family homes, 2-3 story low-rise, and garden apartments, some townhouses, street-level parking, and quality traffic studies to maintain reasonable automotive density, safety, and air quality?  Do you want developers to do deals with councilmembers and tell you what your town will look like? Or do you want to decide what your town will look like and then hire the appropriate developer to make it happen? Harley, Khan, and Walser are committed to maintaining the suburban vibe, safety, and a healthy environment.  The incumbent candidates Schwartz, Orgen, and Pagan want urban development. They have said they want Teaneck to look like Hackensack. Candidate Young has not staked out a position. Harley, Khan, and Walser want you, the residents, to decide what you want your town to look like. The incumbents Schwartz, Orgen, and Pagan want to continue handing our town over to their choice of developers. Candidate Young has not stated a position. Harley, Khan, and Walser will respect the integrity of New Jersey’s Redevelopment Laws and respect Teaneck’s Master Plan as a social contract between the town and its residents as investors in Teaneck. The incumbents Schwartz, Orgen, and Pagan have not used the Redevelopment Laws of New Jersey, and especially the AINR concept, in a responsible, transparent way. Again, Candidate Young has not stated a position.


  • Cannabis Facilities - In 2020, New Jersey voted to legalize recreational cannabis (marijuana). Each municipality in NJ was given the choice of opting-in or opting out of establishing cannabis businesses. Teaneck opted in, primarily for the anticipated revenues that cannabis businesses would bring to the town. For several reasons, including the locations of the businesses, no facilities have yet been established in Teaneck. At various Council and townwide meetings, many residents have spoken to oppose having cannabis anywhere in Teaneck. As several members of the Planning Board stated, “If nobody wants it near them, maybe we shouldn’t have it.” Where do the candidates stand on the Cannabis sites issue? Candidate Duane Harley, speaking for his slate-mates, Reshma Khan and Ardie Walser, is vehemently against cannabis businesses in Teaneck, especially the plan to “test” them on Alfred Ave., an acknowledged diverse family neighborhood. Incumbents Mark Schwartz and Michael Pagan are enthusiastically in support of establishing manufacturing and retail cannabis establishments in Teaneck for the revenues they will bring in. They are supporting siting facilities on Alfred Avenue (where the huge apartment building has been built across the street from Margaret Baker’s family and a similar-sized second building is promised) because, they say, “It’s a good place to test it. Nobody’s there to be bothered. (Except the 225 apartment dwellers, Mrs. Baker and her neighbors, the users of the Englewood park and playground, and the neighbors across the street. Incumbent Karen Orgen was on the original Cannabis Subcommittee that decided to opt-in in 2021. She now says she would like not to have cannabis in Teaneck, but if we are going ahead with it, it’s good that it will be on Alfred Ave. Challenger Chondra Young is working with a group against cannabis in Teaneck. At a Good & Welfare session at a Council meeting last May 16, she spoke in support of cannabis businesses in Teaneck. Both Incumbent Orgen and Candidate Young should explain their reasons for changing their minds on this controversial issue.  The issue of siting NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) projects (apartment buildings and cannabis facilities) in the Alfred Avenue area has raised questions of environmental and social injustice. Alfred Avenue and its adjacent streets, Decatur and Tietjen, are in the Northeast quadrant of Teaneck. Most of the 9 so-far-identified AINRs are in the Northeast quadrant of Teaneck. The Northeast quadrant is socio-economically the same as the 3 other quadrants of Teaneck. But there is one difference. The Northeast is recognized as a thriving African American neighborhood. Does its racial makeup have something to do with this siting of unwanted entities?


Critical issues for the Board of Education

Candidate Nadia Hosein, Incumbent Jonathan Rodriguez, Candidate Seelene Wong, the members of the Focused on Students slate, all have children in the Teaneck Public Schools and each is an active career educator

Candidate Hosein, Incumbent Rodriguez, and Candidate Wong are fully knowledgeable about and supportive of the new academic initiatives like AP classes for younger students and the Teaneck College High School program with Bergen Community College. 

Candidate Hosein, Incumbent Rodriguez, and Candidate Wong are knowledgeable and fully supportive of the socio-emotional well-being of all the students in the district and will work to fund the Forum to its previous levels.

The Board of Education Trustees and the Superintendent of Schools have been the targets of considerable unpleasantness by a few residents this past year, as have many Teaneck High School students. The intrusion of international affairs in the governance of the Township and, more problematically, in the Teaneck school system demands that those entrusted with overseeing the policies that shape the lives and education of our children have deep knowledge of Teaneck and its school system, extreme tolerance for and acceptance of different cultures, opinions, and, particularly, great compassion for young people facing challenges that their years and experiences have not prepared them for. HOSEIN, RODRIGUEZ, AND WONG HAVE THOSE CHARACTERISTICS.


  • The Elephants in the Room – Partisanship and Targeted Voting  Teaneck is a non-partisan town. Candidates for our municipal elections – Council and Board of Education – do not declare a party affiliation, do not align themselves with state or federal candidates of any party, and do not promote themselves by name, color, or insignia of any political party. Perhaps partisanship has always been at play behind the scenes, but it stayed there. Targeted Voting -- also known as bullet voting – is a strategy urged by candidates or their supporters who don’t much care who else gets elected as long as they do. It has been an approach used by minorities in the early days of their entering a political arena. Bullet voting means that the voter votes for a specific candidate (or candidates) regardless of how many seats are to be filled. The theory behind this choice is to enhance the numbers of the chosen candidate (s) and depress the numbers of the competing candidates, If a candidate or their supporters can get a bloc to bullet vote, they can often win with an impressive showing. The last week of political campaigns is the time when surprises happen. Two such surprises in the form of campaign flyers/mailers arrived at the home of the Teaneck Voices editors this week – one challenging the assumption of non-partisanship, and one urging specific targeted voting. Elsewhere in this issue, you can read an article about the partisanship flyer. Here, we address the mailer we received addressed to Dr. Barbara Toffler and headed “A Note from Yitz Stern.” Mr. Stern was urging the recipients to vote for “Mendy” Schwartz and Karen Orgen for Council and Jenni Levy and Kevin Gibbs for BOE. BUT most noteworthy was the instruction on the mailer. YOUR VOTE FOR ONLY THESE CANDIDATES IN THESE RACES WILL HAVE THE LARGEST IMPACT!!! I anticipate a close race and your vote could make all the difference. It is likely Mr. Stern believes that getting 2 of the 3 seats available on each body will assure him a majority on each he desires. Teaneck Voices believes that a large and enthusiastic turnout for Harley, Khan, and Walser for Council and Hosein, Rodriguez, and Wong for Board of Education can overcome the partisan and bullet voting October Surprises!

Last Chance Voting: Where and How

Yes, Mail-in Voting applications and Early voting have both been very heavy. Many of us have voted. But many of us have not.


Early voting has ended!


Reportedly nearly 2,000 Teaneck voters who told the County they wanted to vote by mail have not gotten their completed mail-in ballot packets back to the County. Unless they do so BY 8:00 PM on Tuesday – preferably by getting completed ballot envelopes to the special ballot box located at the entrance to the Municipal Building’s Council Chambers – their votes will not count


When you open this newsletter, there will be just 36 hours left for anyone to have their votes made or placed where they will count.


For those voters who have chosen to vote the traditional way on election day, you must identify and locate in which of the Township 23 voting districts your registrations will be recognized.  Go to Vote/NJ.gov on your browser and click the box Polling Locations to find out precisely where your polling place is.



Again this week, Teaneck Voices has updated its Teaneck Voices website (Click Here) that explains in greater detail all of the remaining choices available for those still voting in this 36-hour period before 8:00 pm on Tuesday, November 5.  Also, we remind readers of our Voices’ website post where they can review candidate electoral forums and candidate statements made to the LWV (Click Here)


Good luck – and VOTE!

PB OK’s Holy Name General Development Plan

Despite its continuing problems with logistics, the current Planning Board proved this week that when it is given a complicated assignment and presented with both articulate applicants and a knowledgeable public, it can conduct a competent proceeding with both follow through, worthy dialogue and respect for all the involved players.


In this case, the Holy Name applicant presented the Board with a General Development Plan (GDP) to serve as what it informally described as a “mini-Master Plan” that it believes will guide the process by which, overtime, the hospital plans to submit site plan applications for the many redeveloped sub-divisions of the hospital zone which – via both an ordinance and subsequent litigation – it had obtained a settlement to guide the use of the zone for a projected 20-year period.  


For well over 2 and a half hours, the hospital witnesses described the plan and responded (respectfully) to concerns raised by the public. Those issues were as diverse as 1)when HNMC would have filed the agreed deed restrictions for all of the litigation-settled zone sub-sections to 2) where the 100 spaces of parking to be given to the Municipality were to be located.  


In the end, the Board voted unanimously to approve the plan with a long list of stipulations and conditions attached. Readers with an interest in this Plan should go to the Town video of the session (Click Here) and go to minute 35.

What’s What with the Planning Board?

Oddly, what the Planning Board does in the next 30 days may be more important than what the Township Council does.  Unfortunately here is what we know about what the Board plans. 

  • The Board is charged with producing a new Master Plan that does what none of the revisions it has produced thus far does: i.e. describes what the Town’s policies and values are that project acceptable development and criteria for the use of land use in ways that match what residents want their Town do in key decision-making.
  • The PB agrees it has failed with its Master Plan revisions to this point. Nothing about either a schedule or a set of new criteria has been released since the Board’s last failed effort on September 16, 2024. Everything the Board has said to date about Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINRs) has been soundly opposed by all residents who have come before it


  • The Board has been canceling meetings and continuing to notice site plan hearings that address whether or not the proposed 455 Alfred Avenue twin uses of Cannabis (cultivation & retailing) should be permitted.  As discussed below, the Board’s apparent plan to conduct this hearing on a non-traditional Wednesday and a non-traditional location (Ben Franklin Middle School) has not yet provided the public with the required information to conduct a legitimately transparent hearing. (See Teaneck Website at Click Here
  • The Board just (on 10/29) continued hearings on whether the AINR-protected developer of two large rental facilities on Alfred at Decatur should be allowed  - IN DISREGARD of the views of its already beleaguered neighbors concerning 1) non-compliant signs all over the partially-constructed facility and 2) giving the developer an extension on what it had agreed would be the start date for a second Alfred Avenue 250 unit facility at 359 Alfred.
  • A group of residents (mistakenly) took seriously the Board’s website agenda for those two hearings only to find out when the meeting was 20 minutes old that the developer, who had proposed the 10/29 date for the hearing, had just informed the Board that he was out of the county and wanted a continuance. The Board granted the continuance to a day and time (11/14) which currently does not even appear anywhere on the Township website as a date when the PB will meet!!! Nevertheless, the Board’s new attorney announced that the 11/14 hearing would be continued without further notice to the public. (Of Course!!- why should the public know anything?) See PB video of the 10/29 meeting at (Click Here &go to minutes 24 to 35)

Where does that leave us in terms of how the public can track what is going on with the PB? 

The current agenda/minutes section for the PB says the next meeting of the PB is November 21. However, the Town website calendar lists the November 21 meeting was canceled 

Neither the current agenda/minutes nor the calendar list any meeting whatsoever for the PB until November 21. But the public has been told by the P attorney that the meeting will occur at the same time and place on 11/14 – with no further notice to the public. Remember, the calendar says 11/21 is canceled (We kid you not!!)

The Township calendar describes a PB meeting to occur at 7:30 pm on November 6 (a Wednesday) at Ben Franklin (never before used as a PB location.) That calendar notice provides no agenda information but recommends that you look to the website for an agenda. However, the website agendas/minutes section lists nothing whatsoever for the PB on November 6!!!


Someone somewhere owes the public the respect of being told – consistently and transparently – what the…. is going on!

What Does this Flyer Suggest?

Early this week, Teaneck Voices’ editors received at their residence an odd-looking flyer addressed to them as “Our Democratic Neighbor (or Current Resident)”. Just one of so many election flyers?  But this one was puzzling!



See the front side of that flyer in the image below

Why, we – and apparently many of our readers also – asked was Congressman John Gottheimer standing there as though in endorsement mode with Teaneck Council incumbents Schwartz and Orgen.  Orgen, we remembered, was a lifelong Republican from a Republican family; Schwartz was for many years an avid supporter through 2016 of conservative Republican Scott Garrett until finally replaced by that same Josh Gottheimer.


Gottheimer, we all know, is a lifelong Democrat now in the 5th District representing all of Teaneck.  The Teaneck Democratic Municipal Committee had supported the full Democratic list found in column 2 on our Teaneck ballots.  But for the 3 Council seats the local Democrats had endorsed the For the People slate of Harley, Kahn, and Walser in this non-partisan election.  


Had Gottheimer somehow belatedly endorsed Schwartz and Orgen? That clearly seemed to be the flyer’s implication. And did the flyer’s recommendation that voters stick with Column 2 somehow indicate that Column 2 in the local Council election was a/the Democratic column? Really?


Time to dig a bit further. But our call to Gottheimer’s Fair Lawn office encountered the expected heavy call volume and no clarification. There surely were other Teaneck residents who had sought an explanation.  Finally, we reached someone who had gotten straight through to the Congressman himself. It was an impeccable source. 


No, Gottheimer, as had been expected, said he had made no Teaneck local election endorsements and surely had not approved the flyer.


Were Schwartz and Orgen similarly uninvolved in the flyer’s production and distribution? The flyer had been paid for by Advance Together of Bayonne. It was easy to tell it was a PAC that had presumably registered with the Election Law Enforcement Commission. ELEC’s website posts the reports of this state-wide PAC with some significant expenditures in local campaigns – and the one significant Teaneck contributor to the PAC whose contribution had been received by the PAC on October 30, 2024. For readers who track long-time politically active Teaneck residents, no surprises. A $1,000 contribution to the Advance Together PAC from David Lerer of Maitland Avenue. 



For those Voices readers who asked the questions there may now be some greater clarity. No Gottheimer endorsement whatever the intention.

This Week in Teaneck – November 4 to 10

If additional information about access and agendas for this week’s public meetings becomes available, we will update our Teaneck Voices website at this post (Click Here) in RED font. 


2024 Municipal Budget Departmental Public Meetings – Tuesday to Thursday, November 4 to 6 in the Manager’s 2nd Floor Conference Room, see complete departmental schedule in the image below.  Note: The town website calendar currently fails to include the budget hearings for recreation, purchasing, and human resources that will occur on November 6.

Election Day – November 5, 2024, from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm at 23 separate voting districts. Location is dependent on registered voters’ registration addresses (see at your browser enter: vote/nj.gov and click the Polling Location box to locate the district where you may vote. This applies only to registered voters who did not vote by mail or vote early at the Rodda Center. 

  • For more specific information on voting options still available to registered voters who have not voted see Voices’ website at Click Here. For voters seeking more information about candidates see non-partisan candidate forums and candidate answers to LWV questions at Click Here

Planning Board Special Meeting – Wednesday, November 6, 2024, at 7:30 pm at Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium, 1315 Taft Rdpresumably both the hearing and possibly final approval of site plan applications for the use of 455 Alfred Avenue for cultivation and retail Cannabis Functions

  • Note the unusual day of the week and unusual location for this poorly noticed hearing.  
  • Twice before the dates when these site plan applications could be heard have been canceled – and presumably without further notice to the public
  • As of noon on November 3, 2024, the only place known to Teaneck Voices where the site plan applications and their denial is available anywhere on the internet is in a post on Teaneck Voices’ website at Click Here or go to https://teaneckvoices.com/what-have-developers-proposed-for-alfred-ave/.
  • If new information about this meeting becomes available Voices will inform our readers at Click Here


Parks, Playgrounds, and Recreation Advisory Board – Wednesday, November 6, 2024, at 7:30 in person only at MP-3 at the Rodda Center. Only information available


Board of Education Regular Meeting – Wednesday, November 6, 2024, at 8:00 pm both in person at the Student Center, Teaneck High School, and by Zoom (Click Here). The agenda will be available 24 hours prior to the meeting on the Board website at www.teaneckschools.org



Board of Adjustment – Thursday, November 7, 2024, at 7:00 pm. Council Chambers. Only 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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