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Do Back-to-Back Council Mtgs.

Signal New Legal Professionals?



PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

5/7/2023

Contents:


This Week in Teaneck


  • Do Back-to-Back Council Mtgs. Signal New Legal Professionals?
  • Our Municipal Open Space Expenses - Please Explain
  • More Mystery Planning Board Mtgs./Attorney


Thank You Youth Advisory Board for Your Wise Advocacy!


The Week that Was

  • DEVELOPMENT FORUM: Off to a Good Start (or pretty good, anyway)!
  • PPRAB Met to Hear Reports; No Organized Recommendations


Municipal Revaluation Information Meeting


Announcements:


  • Applying for the Site Plan Review Advisory Board?
  • Career Exploration Internships - 5/19
  • Teaneck's 5K Race - 5/21
  • Memorial Day - 5/29


Contacting Teaneck Voices

This Week n Teaneck

Do Back-to-Back Council Mtgs.

Signal New Legal Professionals?

Do Back-to-Back Council Mtgs. Signal New Legal Professionals?


A late-announced Special Council Meeting now scheduled for early (6 pm) on a Monday evening 5/8 begins with a Good & Welfare public input session but identifies only legal services interviews as the additional agenda.


·       Access to this Monday May 8 meeting is in the Council Chambers and on ZOOM Click Here with a passcode of 157711. The brief agenda is available at Click Here .


The entire purpose of this special meeting is to interview candidates for legal services for which a bid process was conducted and opened 4/14. As reported earlier by Teaneck Voices, (Click Here) the competitive bidding process for the Town’s legal services was divided into 7 different categories of legal work – and candidates could apply for any one, some or all of those options.

Subsequently Voices has sought access to the several legal services bids by the 16 applying firms. Late on Friday evening (5/5) we received an email from the Clerk’s office which offered access to those bids through a single Google Docs web address.,


The documents found at that web address do separate the applications for each type of legal service but (unfortunately) the individual documents listed under each of the 7 service types do not identify the specific firm. This makes resident review of the bids much more difficult. In addition, the individual software capability of the device you use to access the internet may or may not give you ready access to these bids.

Nevertheless, Voices is providing you with what the Clerk’s office provided us. Click Here. Good luck!



·       Access to the Tuesday May 9  regular Council meeting

There is an even earlier start (5 pm) for the Tuesday May 9 closed session which precedes the regular 8:00 pm start for the public session of that regularly scheduled Council meeting. This meeting is both in-person in Council chambers and by Zoom (Click Here and use passcode 205005. The agenda is Click Here


The major actions from this meeting may well be whatever Council has worked out in closed sessions about selecting its legal services professionals and perhaps the Town and Board of Adjustment engineers as well.


§ The adoption of the cap bank ordinance (Ord 24-2023) would be more important than in most years given the prospect of higher 2024 budgets to come.  


§ Resolution 125-2023 finally authorizes preparation of the very late Environmental Resources Inventory (and happily it would be done by the very capable NJ Land Conservatory).


§ The proposed introduction of Ord 26-2023 is perhaps the largest bond issuance ordinance ever proposed (almost $10M). It is the price you/we pay if you have for years shoved current expenses into emergency appropriations delays and have delayed other needed capital investments until interest rates have gone up sharply.


§ And then there is the additional Ord 127-2023 to purchase the absolutely essential ladder truck.

Again having played budget chicken for years is coming home to roost.

 

Municipal Open Space Expenses - Please Explain


·       When the Municipal Open Space Trust (MOST) committee belatedly meets by zoom (Click Here) on Wednesday evening 5/10, the agenda (Click Here) calls for the Manager to be present to explain for what the Town has used this voluntary tax.


Background: Since 2004 Teaneck voters have consistently (every 4 years) agreed that an additional 1% tax should VOLUNTARILY be collected to allow the Council to purchase 1) open space 2) additional recreational improvements and historical preservation work/exhibits. 


However, it has been almost impossible for the past decade to get accurate/understandable reports of what MOST projects and expenses the Council has approved. Teaneck Voices has worked hard to get that information in a comprehensible way. It has not yet succeeded.


But it has, via persistent Open Public Records Act (OPRA) requests now gotten lists of expense items the CFO tells us he has listed as MOST expenditures. Most of the items (which literally vary in size from $4 to $50,000) do not understandably tell us for what projects the expenditures have been made or when and whether Council had approved the projects for which the expenditures were made.  Why, for example, is the license site remediation professional's 2022 review of 3 town roads a MOST expense?.


Voices hopes that our readers will have been more successful than Voices reporters have been in deciphering the data. Nevertheless  we have been able to present on our website (Click Here) the OPRA list of MOST expenses from  2021, 2022 and Quarter 1 of 2023. We also again present there a relevant page from the Town's 2022 Annual Financial Statement (AFS) and the page on MOST in the still-to-be adopted 2023 municipal budget.


Perhaps at the MOST meeting on Wednesday 5/10 a group of residents can ask clear questions - and the Manager will provide concise answers\! 


More Mystery: Planning Board Mtgs./ Attorney

·       Planning Board Meetings in May – the Calendar says there is one meeting on Thursday May 11. But according to Board Clerk McClean, at the end of its last Special Meeting on April 18, the Board agreed NOT to hold a meeting that day but to schedule 3 other “special meetings” (one on a Tuesday [5/16] and 2 on Wednesdays [5/24 and 31] to be reserved to continue the seemingly endless (since October 27, 2022) Holy Name day care site plan review.


One compelling reason NOT to meet for a “regular” PB meeting on 5/11 is that Conflict Attorney Kevin Kelly has a conflict for that night– and no one knows anyhow whether Kelly is eligible to attend in any other capacity than to stand when the agenda is HNMC since Brian Eyerman was “recused-from all-Holy-Name matters.


Eyerman who had been PNB attorney for years but had now officially (according to Court records)) become a judge on or before April 10. (State statute does not permit “the new judge” to do any other law work besides judge work.


Careful readers of Voices will remember that in our last edition (Click Here) the nearly farcical final 8 minutes of the April 18 PB meeting – including the video – where no one on the Board could reliably figure out what the process should be for replacing Eyerman when/if the PB ever returns to regular PB business. 


Maybe the answer would depend on whether when the PB was annually appointing Eyerman it was simultaneously appointing his firm (Dario et al) even if the firm had never been mentioned when the Board summarily reappointed Eyerman in their mid-summer PB reorganizations.


Alert Teaneck Voices readers decided to try to figure that out – and began what has proved to be a fruitless search for data. Open Pubic Records Act requests for copies of Eyerman's attorney contract have yielded no response, nor have OPRA’s seeking a letter of resignation from Eyerman.


But suddenly on Thursday evening there popped up this inexplicable item in the Town’s bill list for the 5/9 Council mtg.

OK – with no payments listed for Eyerman’s many years of work except for 5 months ( April 2022 to September 2022 ), what’s the deal?


But Wait.  At COB on Thursday afternoon came an OPRA response from the Clerk’s office to requests for years of invoices for Eyerman’s work. And, yes there are invoices for those 5 months in 2022 that explain the $1833.32 charge this way: 

Except there was no May 2022 PB meeting and in 3 of the other 4 months the Town’s bill list proposes to pay there were 2 meetings each month.



But even more mysteriously, there are no invoices (or bill list charges) for meetings in December 2022 and early 2023 that Eyerman did attend. Why were monthly invoices dated in 2022 not listed for payment until May 9, 2023?

The saga apprently will continue. There is no regular PB attorney and no clear path to appointing one. The Holy Name site plan review can continue under Conflict Attorney Kelly – unless of course rational processes should suddenly allow a mediation of the HNMC-Neighbors dispute.  No clarity exists about why a brand new partner at Eyerman’s old firm (Dario, Albert et. al) signed the S&S litigation dismissal letter apparently after Eyerman had left. 

Youth Advisory Board Advocacy

Got the AED Acquisition Done

“They lit a fire under me” Manager Dean Kazinci said in reporting on the Township’s purchase and distribution of 5 new Automated External Defibrillators (AED’s) at the April 18 Council meeting. The impetus to which Manager Kazinci referred was the articulate advocacy last December by the leadership of the Town’s Youth Advisory Board (YAB) pressing for the availability of more AED’s and trained personnel to administer them wherever the possibility of cardiac arrest is greatest. Sports fields of every sort are priority locations as was clearly demonstrated just 18 days later when Bengal Damar Hamlin’s life was saved by immediate AED availability and skilled response.



 As reported by Teaneck Voices in the lead article of its 12/20 edition (“A Special Moment in the Week that Was - Our Youth Advisory Board” – Click Here) the articulate leadership of the YAB made a sustained social justice case for Town acquisition of AED’s at the Council’s December 13 meeting. Several of the young residents who spoke then were in attendance at the April meeting (see the image below or go to minute 19 of the Council video Click Here) to be thanked by a united Town leadership for galvanizing their response.

The Week that Was

DEVELOPMENT FORUM: Off to a Good Start

(or pretty good, anyway)!

Off to a Good Start (or pretty good, anyway)!


Note: It is our practice at Teaneck Voices to back up factual statements with “evidence,” i.e. links to where a statement was made or to a meeting or event dealing with the cited fact.


           Unfortunately, as of today, May 7, it appears that there is no recording of the Development Town Hall and Forum held at the Rodda Center on May 2. Therefore, we are commenting on remembered impressions, statements, and questions.


           If you think we have misrepresented anything you said publicly, please contact us at teaneckvoices@gmail.com, and we will try to contact you and set the record straight in a subsequent issue.

 

A crowd of about 200 filled the gym at the Rodda Center at 7pm on May 2 – and were joined by an undisclosed number who participate by zoom. Almost everyone was eager to be heard or to have their questions answered – AND IT HAPPENED!


A panel of 7 was seated at the front of the space, with 6 members listed in the program as presenting on different topics. (The 7th was Manager Dean Kazinci who was empaneled to answer questions) There likely was a collective silent groan when residents saw the listed speakers, with most thinking there would be little time for Q&A by the time that every panelist spoke.


BUT – HAPPY SURPRISE: After a brief welcome by Councilwoman Denise Belcher who organized the session, the Township’s newest planner, Keenan Hughes, from our long-term planning firm Phillips, Preiss led off with a presentation on Municipal Planning and Development. He spoke most specifically about a town-wide development of a new Master Plan.


Note: Mr. Hughes presentation was chock full of important information – both general about municipal planning and specific about how our planner sees both process and some content of a new Master Plan. If no recording of the session is found, there is small consolation in this very incomplete Power Point placed on the website this week-end. Click Here  


As soon as Mr. Hughes finished, residents’ hands shot up all over the room! And the Happy Surprise? Mayor Michael Pagan, our Master of Ceremonies, decided to forego the other presentations and facilitate an untimed Q&A for the remainder of the 2-hour Town Hall.


And what a treat it was!

Each resident who raised their hand was passed a microphone and allowed to speak, untimed, so that each speaker could provide a context to their question, and then a member of the panel could respond intelligently to the question, understanding “where it was coming from.”


As is too often the case at Teaneck meetings, a lot of heads in the room were gray! These residents who spoke frequently mentioned the number of years they had lived in Teaneck (20-50+), and talked about the suburban beauty, peace, fresh air, single family home environment they moved to Teaneck for and wish to see preserved. They were collectively upset at the use of Areas In Need of Redevelopment (AINRs) which not only 1) by-pass the designsted area's neighbors’ input; 2) circumvent the present Master Plan that residents see as their current social contract with the town, and which 3) declare more & more areas of our town to be “blighted.”


BUT IN AN UNUSUAL TURN OF EVENTS, TWO YOUNG MEN SPOKE! Each young man represented one of the most populous communities in Teaneck – a young Black man and a young Modern Orthodox Jewish man. Both spoke about the future of a Teaneck in which both hope to live and raise families.


 Do their visions differ from their elders? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Do the ways to achieve what they envision differ from their elders, in some ways yes, in some ways no.

What was clear at the Development Town Hall and must be recognized going forward:


·       The 55 and older folks want the town they moved to and see changing in unfamiliar and unfriendly ways. They are told that Teaneck is an Age-Friendly Town striving to make Aging in Place a reality. They must be included in development decisions.


·       The 20 to 55 folks (many of whom have grown up in their parents’ and grandparents’ vision of Teaneck) want a town that meets their needs as they build families – many in different forms than their parents and grandparents – and build a post-pandemic world. They must be included in development decisions.


·       The Council, with their hired consultant, the planner, is the body that all of us, of every age, entrust with our money, our investment in our hometown. Their decisions must be shaped by the residents of this town. And our hired planner’s job is to show us all how to get what we want!

 

PPRAB Met to Hear Reports;

No Organized Recommendations


The Parks, Playgrounds & Recreation Advisory Board (PPRAB) met on Wednesday May 3 at 7:30 by zoom. It waited to attract a quorum but eventually most of its membership joined.


Strangely, this meeting was either not recorded or its video has not been placed on the Town website. That is unfortunate because the meeting did serve as an occasion where information about diverse parks and recreation activities and decisions already taken were reported – and are available in no other form or forum.


§ Stated in passing and not pursued was the statement that not only does the Town expect to open the Votee Park pool on time in 2023 but in fact now believes that it can be rehabilitated to serve for another 10 years, not the 1-2 year originally expected.


§ The very sad state of most of the Town’s baseball fields due to widespread ponds throughout got significant attention.


§ Incremental progress is reported on getting adequate toilets to Votee North and other parks.


§ The rehab of senior park pathways was welcomed,


§ Concern about clearing of waste from park receptacles, particularly after week-ends was raised. 


§ Concern that the Planning Board’s failure to approve either the Open Space and Recreation Plan (OSRP) or the Recreation & Open Space Inventory (ROSI) will keep Teaneck from getting the actual funding for which it has applied for Herrick Park from Green Acres got attention at the meeting’s end.


The meeting was quite short. No organized effort to engage the Board in developing recommendations to Council occurred. 

Municipal Revaluation Information Meeting

Teaneck Property Revaluation / Revaluación de la Propiedad

As directed by the Bergen County Board of Taxation and the New Jersey Division of Taxation, the Township of Teaneck is revaluing all taxable real estate for the 2024 tax year to ensure uniform and equitable assessments. The Township has entered into a contract with Appraisal Systems, Inc. to conduct the revaluation program. 

There will be one more public meetings held regarding the revaluation at the Richard Rodda Community Center on May 25th, 2023 from 7pm-9pm. 

For more information on the revaluation program, visit the Appraisal Systems website here. or Revaluation Brochure-Spanish.pdf 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

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

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at Click Here. More information & the application are here: Click Here

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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