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ARE THESE 4 MUNICIPAL NEEDS

FINALLY READY FOR DECISIVE ACTION?


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

3/27/2023

Contents:


ARE THESE 4 MUNI NEEDS FINALLY READY FOR DECISIVE ACTION?


  •  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


Status Report: Where Are We on

Community Energy Aggregation?


Why Does Trenton’s Election Transparency Act

Matter to Teaneck Now?


This Week in Teaneck - March 28 to April 2, 2023


Announcements:


  • The 2023 Community RAMADAN Iftar - 3/29
  • Applications for Site Plan Review Advisory Board



Contacting Teaneck Voices

ARE THESE 4 MUNI NEEDS FINALLY READY FOR DECISIVE ACTION?

Could we see decisive decision-making that leads to solutions to 4 major Teaneck municipal problems?


The prior Teaneck Council left the Town with a series of major problems that needed remedial correction. Voices has found that this week decisive steps on 4 of those major problem issues may well be on their way to the decisions and action that can actually solve them. They are:

 

·       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


In this Teaneck Voices edition we report on what appear to be important progress on each of these issues. Voices will be following each to see whether this progress leads to actual solutions.

  Ending the Controversy about our Hospital’s Expansion

with an HNMC-Neighbors Agreement?

Is the years-long struggle between Holy Name Medical Center and its residential neighbors about to end? Is a mediated settlement of the Neighbors-led litigation challenging the legality of the 2022 hospital zone expansion ordinance imminent?

 

The following very brief video from the start of the 3/23 PB meeting finds Planning Board Conflict Attorney Kevin Kelly alluding to discussions between the hospital and its neighbors as being related to an agenda request by HNMC that the Site HNMC Plan hearing scheduled for 3/23 not be heard that night and instead – without explanation - continued to the following week. The HNMC attorney then states that the hospital agrees with everything Attorney Kelly has just said.

Now there is a further piece of evidence that the current multi-hearing, multi-month rancorous Planning Board hearing struggle over HNMC’s child care facility site plan is itself being put on hold while issues are resolved in a different (a mediation?) venue.

 

As of mid-Tuesday afternoon (3/28) no agenda for the Wednesday evening (3/29) hearing has appeared on the Board’s agenda website and the Board Secretary had no meeting agenda information as of Tuesday morning.

 

If in fact this long, hugely expensive battle over the definition of the hospital’s future expansion is coming to an agreed conclusion, kudos to all those who finally helped it happen!

Taking Immediate action to Protect against

Flooding in the Belle Avenue Neighborhood?


After decades of neglect, Teaneck has finally taken initial steps to mitigate the flooding that occurs in the Belle Avenue neighborhood that lies immediately north of the town’s Beverly Road parking lot and just west of Sagamore Park


Step 1 was getting the mitigation tank placed under the Beverly Road parking lot. But to handle any major rainfall event, full protection is needed!

Step 2 – requires a similar mitigation measure placed under the western end of Sagamore Park.

 

During G&W on 3/23, Resident Phil Yucht (see Video below) pressed Council to commit to use the Sagamore project’s proposed capital item to immediately implement Step 2 by using Green Acres approval authority even though not all NJ’s bureaucratic steps will have been completed.

 

No Council vote yet confirms it, but it appears to Voices that Council is prepared – perhaps unanimously – to support rapid action on this long-neglected responsibility. 

Beginning a New Open Process to Select

our Legal and Engineering Service Professionals

Ever since its first post-reorganization meeting on January 10,2023, a majority of the newly-elected Council has been attempting to put in motion a process to more competitively select from whom and for how much the Town should be receiving both legal and engineering services. In the intervening 5 meetings, a variety of issues have been under sometimes tendentious Council discussion – apparently in both public sessions and elsewhere. What form should the issuance of the bidding take place, for how long should the bidders be given to respond, (10 days to 30 days? ). Should bidders offer to have an attorney work in-house for part or all the time? How should the various practice areas be identified? What group of Council members would be involved in the initial evaluation of the bids? With whom on staff would the Manager work to prepare BID DOCUMENTS. Why the legal services one will be an RFQ (not an RFP).



Toward the end of the scheduled Budget meeting on Thursday March 23, the 5 members of Council still in attendance (Pagan, Gee, Belcher, Goldberg and Schwartz discussed and then moved forward to answer most of those questions, to give more specific direction to the Manager and to secure his commitment for publication of the bid documents by “early this week” (the week of March 27-31. As is heard in this brief video of the final minutes of this Council discussion, bidders will be given 15 days to respond. Later in this week, residents should expect to be able to review the RFQ’s themselves at https://www.teanecknj.gov/bids on the Town website 

Competitively Selecting a Consultant to Re-Design

our Current, Impenetrable Municipal Web Site

Teaneck Voices has long-since joined the chorus of critics of the Township’s website as being nearly impenetrable for any resident who has not yet devoted hours trying to sort out where on the site to seek specific kinds of information. 


Most believe the primary problem is with the site’s design although others believe the problem is made worse by the inattention given to the site’s accuracy and timeliness by those assigned to manage its content. More recently, criticism has focused on whether the problem is further exacerbated by the delays in the release of public information by those who from the self-serving legal team who monitor (at great expense) what the Clerk is allowed to provide in response to the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) requests.


But there may well be light at the end of the tunnel if re-design of the website would make a major difference. Although the administration had promised such a redesign by the end of 2022, it now emerges that not until mid-February 2023 did the Town go out for bids from consultants expert in public sector website redesign. Those bids – 5 of them in fact – were received/opened by the Town on March 7. (It is noteworthy that Voices has found no indication that residents were ever told that this redesign bidding process was under way!)


Voices is now told that information about those bidders’ bids is currently confidential. An internal Teaneck employee team is evaluating the bids and will then make a recommendation to Council as to how the evaluators rank the bids and mke their recommendation ofr bid approval.


Voices applauds this long-delayed step to improve public communications. When Council receives the bid results, we encourage it VERY carefully to review the process and to make sure that the redesign will be augmented by improved website management and by assuring that the Town’s legal OPRA censors (who have allegedly retracted or denied access to legitimate public documents are, in future, themselves either screened for being free of conflicts of interest and/or are as committed to public transparency as is the new Council majority itself.

In sum, redesign of an archaic and formidably opaque website can help. Website design is, however, only one part of the problem.

Status Report: Where Are We

on Community Energy Aggregation?

The Township recently published an update on where the Town is in its attempt to implement its voter-supported Community Energy Aggregation program as a fiscally-effective program using renewable energy sources for the generation of electricity. After checking with those who have been this program's advocates for the past 3 years Voices recommends this Town report as a good summary of the current situation. We copy below the initial paragraphs and if you want to read the whole report you should control/click here


Township of Teaneck New Jersey - Teaneck Community Energy Aggregation Update (teanecknj.gov)

The Teaneck Community Energy Aggregation (TCEA) was launched in 2022, with the goal of using bulk purchasing power to procure electric power supply on behalf of residents at a potentially lower price, and with a higher renewable content, than power supply provided by PSE&G. The TCEA launched its first-round program in 2022, but unfortunately, due to skyrocketing energy market prices, we were unable to obtain favorable pricing to procure a supply contract. The TCEA and its energy agent, Gabel Associates, Inc., have been closely monitoring the energy market for savings opportunities since last summer. The TCEA will go back out to market as soon conditions warrant and will notify residents if and when a contract is signed, and the program is active. Please monitor the Township’s website (www.teanecknj.gov ) for any updates. 

 

As you are most likely well aware, there have been significant increases in energy market prices since 2020. Energy price increases have made it considerably more difficult to obtain favorable bid pricing for a potential first round contract for the TCEA. The TCEA has committed to resoliciting bids at a later date when market conditions improve. 

 

The TCEA has been monitoring market conditions in consultation with its energy consultant, Gabel Associates, Inc. Energy market prices continued to escalate through much of 2022, before a rather mild start to the winter has more recently resulted in some improvement in energy market conditions (although prices remain significantly higher than a couple of years ago). PSE&G recently announced results of its annual wholesale power auction earlier in February and on the energy consultant’s recommendation, the TCEA is now awaiting the announcement in Spring 2023 of the utility’s (PSE&G) resultant retail tariff prices for the coming year (utility tariff prices run on an annual cycle from June 1st through May 31st and will incorporate the recent auction results). Once the new tariff prices are announced, the TCEA will be better able to assess whether there is a renewed opportunity for this program. 

 

If energy market conditions look to have improved at that time, steps will be taken to begin a new competitive bid process. If a future bid results in competitive pricing and the TCEA awards a contract, the contract would most likely start in mid-to-late 2023. In such event, eligible Township residents (all residents except those that have their own solar generating system or their own third party supply contract, or those residents who have requested to be placed on the program’s ‘Do Not Disturb’ list), will be sent a mailing informing them of the details of the new contract, after which residents would have the choice of opting-out of the new program if they do not wish to participate. Again, no further action will be necessary for residents who want to participate in the GEA program

 

Why Does Trenton’s Election Transparency Act

Matter to Teaneck Now?

Much of what the State legislates affects Teaneck residents. But Teaneck Voices usually keeps its focus on what our own municipal governing and school boards do.


But last week, the State Senate passed a bill and is sending it to the state Assembly that directly intersects with priority issues that are being decided here by our Council. It is entitled the Election Transparency Act although its use of the word “transparency” could be considered an oxymoron.


Teaneck is in the process of deciding whether to try to resurrect its own local ethics board or to follow the majority of NJ municipalities in having the state ethics board enforce the ethics obligations of its various public officials. In addition to tracking complaints related to official conflicts of interest, there are two other sets of public official disclosures that are paramount in good ethics enforcement. First, all public officials are required to make annual financial disclosure declarations so that we know where their income comes from. Second, when running for elective office, all candidates are required to stay within limits and report sources and expenditures of their election campaigns. Most of the specifics of what is to be disclosed and how sources and expenses should be limited are state rules, irrespective of where enforcement takes place. Hence, Teaneck Voices believes that its residents deserve to know what ethics-related statutes the legislature is currently considering. The following summary is drawn in content primarily from the a 3/27/2023 NorthJersey.com story with information every Teaneck resident should have.


(Voices readers desiring to see the entire NorthJersey.com story itself should click here


NJ Senate passes money-in-politics overhaul that would give Phil Murphy sway over election watchdog

Ashley Balcerzak

NorthJersey.com


Three weeks after having withdrawn a huge money-in-politics overhaul bill, the New Jersey state Senate on Monday March 2 suddenly popped up and approved a slightly altered version of that same bill that critics say continues to gut pay-to-play laws, weakens the Election Law Enforcement Commission (the watchdog agency overseeing all elections in the state and contains a another way to give Governor Murphy the sole unchecked power to choose who leads the ELEC agency.


The 68-page Elections Transparency Act (A4372), which passed 24 to 12, is packed with substantial changes to how money flows in NJ elections, including increasing the amounts that contributors (individual and corporations) can donate to politicians and political parties; requiring some different information about certain “dark money” donors; and cutting down the time within which regulators can investigate violations. 


We must have reform based on the foundation of public transparency, reform that secures our elections from improper influence and expands access. This legislation, however, does not provide that,” said Sen. Nia Gill, the sole Democrat who voted against the bill. “This legislation, in fact, provides the opposite”


The legislation would now require a full Assembly vote which could come as early as Thursday 3/30 when the Assembly next meets and then, of course, would need Governor Murphy’s signature before becoming law.


The new bill with many late amendments had originally been fast-tracked through committees late last month until running into sharp criticism from open government advocates and others. In response, legislative leaders had pulled back from originally-scheduled votes in both houses. Their claims to take another look, however, have now resulted in bill very little changed in its effects even as it changed certain elements related, for example, whether covered officials could omit disclosure of home addresses as part of a claimed effort to protect the safety of public officials.  


Again, Voices readers desiring to see the entire NorthJersey.com story should click here

THIS WEEK IN TEANECK - March 28 to April 2, 2023


Youth Advisory Board – Wednesday March 29, 2023 at 7:00 pm at the Rodda Center


Planning Board – Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 7:00 pm at MP-1 in Rodda Center – in-person only. If this meeting actually occurs the Agenda will be a continuation of HNMC's Site Plan Hearings. However, there is in all likelihood no meeting - See discussion of HNMC and its Neighbors as the initial story in this Voices edition.


Council Budget Meeting – Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 7:00 pm is hybrid at Council Chambers and by zoom (Click here and type in passcode 961536). The agenda will address all budget accounts not discussed in the prior two budget meetings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

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

2023 Teaneck International Film Festival Documentary Series Tickets | Eventbrite

Webinar Registration - Zoom

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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