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Midsummer Nights’ Revelations


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

8/26/2024

Contents:

  • Monday Night – Hearing on the Draft Master Plan
  • Draft Master Plan – Next Public Hearing Set for 9/16
  • Planning Board’s Public Input to Master Plan Draft
  • Public Input on Areas in Need of Redevelopment
  • Next Steps in Master Plan Draft Revision
  • Thursday Night – Council Meeting
  • Finally –Budget Passage – 2024’s Bad News; 2025 Looks Worse -- Sans the Required User-Friendly Budget
  • On What Parkland Diversion Application Are We Commenting?
  • Missing Zoning Subcommittee Minutes Found -- State Street Development Presentation/Presentation Slides Not available
  • Post-OPRA Publication of Zoning Subcommittee 8-9-24 Minutes
  • Attendees?
  • Still Another Vain Attempt to Avoid Repairing Unsafe DPW Site?
  • Why a Closed Session Planner’s MP Presentation to Zoning Subcommittee
  • New Website – Still an Enigma for Most
  • This Week in Teaneck - Not Much


Announcements

  • Library Closing for Renovation Schedule
  • Teaneck Day Weekend – 9/7&8
  • LWV Local Candidate Election Forums – Council and BOE


Contacting Teaneck Voices:

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

Monday Night – Hearing on the Draft Master Plan

A packed standing-room-only Teaneck Library Auditorium crowd greeted the Planning Board on the evening of August 19 for the first public hearing on the new draft Master Plan (MP) document. While there was some appreciation expressed for the current draft document and the effort to produce it, every one of the diverse 29 residents who spoke had concerns or issues that they asked the Planning Board to address in a revised document before the next hearing session. 


What the Public said about the MP draft:


AINRs A majority of the residents who spoke criticized the draft MP’s discussion of the Town’s current use of the state’s redevelopment law (N.J.S.A. 40A:12A-1 et seq.) that identifies and then plans redevelopment of either “blighted” Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINRs) or areas in need of Rehabilitation.

 

The comments included 1) Statements that because Teaneck is not a community with blighted areas, the MP should say so; 2) Statements that the draft MP failed to state that the Town’s use of the AINR process, for the most part, was failing because it is generally improperly identifying AINRs and/or embracing erroneous redevelopment solutions (as, for example, the AINR across the street from Margaret Baker’s home on Decatur Avenue); and 3) Statements that the current focus on one or two specific AINRs (for example, the American Legion Drive and Beverly Road AINR’s) were rewarding corrupt developer practices and proceeding both in violation of community opposition and without required analysis.  


Nearly all who spoke on AINRs directly or indirectly indicated that the current draft treats AINRs as just another development tool (and thus any future AINRs could be seen as being consistent with the Master Plan) and challenged the PB to revise the draft MP’s depiction of AINRs to reflect 1) the nearly universal resident negative critique of AINRs processes generally, 2) their misuse in Teaneck, and 3) the residents’ wish to revise the discussion of the status of the 9 AINRs already identified. In sum, among the 29 hearing speakers, none spoke a word in favor either of AINRs or of how the current draft treats them. 


Cannabis: In contrast to the above, only two residents spoke about the current draft’s discussion of cannabis. On p. 72, the current draft – with the heading statement “Allow cannabis uses to thrive in Teaneck” – clearly embraces the approval and careful expansion of cannabis facilities in the Township. (The term “thrive” is used only once in the draft MP when applied to a Town option). While one resident praised the MP draft’s statements, another called for the paragraph following this headline to be removed entirely from the next draft. One suspects that this debate will continue. 


Building Location and Size: Residents, citing recent resident surveys and town hall commentary, urged the PB to state more forcefully than the current draft MP the clear resident preference that the town maintains its commitment to moderate density, to the preservation and protection of single-family residential neighborhoods and to limitations on building height and size.


The next public hearing is Monday 9/16


The date when the PB will convene again to hear the next iteration of public commentary was established only in the final minute of last Monday’s the 3 hours & a quarter meeting when many had left the auditorium to watch the DNC.  It is set for Monday, September 16 at 7:30 pm in MP-1 in the Rodda Center. The change in location to the Rodda is required since the Library will be completely closed to begin its renovations on September 3rd. See the Renovation closing schedule in this edition’s Announcements.


 It remains unclear precisely by whom and how changes to the draft used in this August 19th hearing will be made before the 9/16 hearing. Whether a new draft will be provided – with the required 10-day lead time -- was not decided. The Board appears to be well aware that the Council is anxious for the new MP to be finalized. But the comments made by the Board members seemed to support some significant revisions – and the Board universally committed to more listening.  As to news of how these logistical issues are being handled, Voices will try to make sure its readers are apprised of what we know of them.

 

How residents can prepare for the next hearing:


The only draft of the MP document currently available is the one that was available in the week before the first hearing. The search bar on the home page of the new Town website finally takes you to a Master Plans list and the document at the top of the list is the right one. (or Click Here) There are a series of earlier resident surveys and town hall opinions as well. 


For our Readers who missed the 8/19 hearing or want to be reminded of what happened there, Voices recommends you spend time with the video of that hearing. It is most readily found on the new Town website in the PB’s agenda/minutes section or you can Click Here. Below are some clues about where to move the cursor once you locate the video.

 

  • For the first 5 minutes, PB Chair Howard Thompson opens the meeting and explains that this meeting would consist of public input - that no vote for adoption would be taken
  • For the next 25 minutes, Planner Spach Trahan presents an overview of the draft Master Plan via key slides of the current draft. For readers familiar with the draft it is not a needed review
  • For the next 2 hours (from 17min of the video) those 29 residents – in no discernible order – commented on the portions of the draft that concerned them including describing their inability to access the document or some portions of it. 
  • At 2 hours and 49 minutes of the video and for the next 25 minutes, the 10 members of the PB in attendance give their reactions to the public comments and some make suggestions as to how the current draft should be revised in response
  • In the final several minutes of the video, Board Attorney Nabbie announces the follow-up special meeting of the Board for the September 16 special MP meeting but suggests that the meeting might not need to be re-noticed. If, in fact, the draft MP being discussed that night is a revised one, it legally must be noticed. 


Will the public views expressed at the 8/19 meeting actually be converted into the evolving draft of the new MP? Or will the same views emerge among the residents who return from the summer to focus on municipal governance again? We genuinely believe that the Planning Board listened to the residents and heard what they said. If we are right, this next meeting will shape the Town where you live for at least a decade to come.

Thursday Night – Council Meeting

On August 22, before the Council turned to the hearing and vote on the 2024 municipal budget adoption, the Council heard from CM Schwartz the very bad news from its budget subcommittee (Schwartz, Gee, Goldberg) that at its recent (8/7) meeting, the subcommittee found that the initial budget projections for the 2025 budget call for a preliminary 15% budget increase. Since the only place the minutes for that subcommittee meeting appeared on the new Township website is embedded in the 8/22 agenda, Teaneck Voices has created an image of those minutes.

In the public hearing preceding the vote to adopt the 2024 Introduced budget with its 4.99% increase over last year’s, attention was drawn to the difficulty for residents of accessing the 2024 Introduced budget (see story on the enigma of the new Township website in this edition) and the non-existence of the state-required “2024 User-Friendly Budget”.  This companion budget is designed so that lay residents can see a simplified version of their new budget including how it relates to the prior budget.  



CFO Abbasi followed up the budget hearing by acknowledging that the state does now require the User-Friendly budget to be available before budget adoption but stated that the budget was, in fact, now available in hard copy (he did not specify where). For Abbasi’s statement Click Here and move the cursor to 1hr&53min.  Voices followed up by OPRA the next day and the User Friendly budget was then, in fact, added to the Town website on August 23. It is now directly available if you Click Here

On What Parkland Diversion Application Are We Commenting

For several weeks Teaneck Voices has been trying to sort out the processes in the current effort to define a way for the Township to provide compensatory parkland to replace the parkland that will be required to implement the NJDOT’s planned Rte. 4 bridge replacement and limited road widening. A compilation of what we have learned is on a post on our website (Click Here). 


To sum up: On July 30, the public was invited to comment on the diversion application to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). At that time the public was given until August 15 to comment in writing to DEP. However, because of procedures not fully in accordance with the DEP’s regulations (NJAC 7:36:26) the deadline for written comments has been extended until this coming Thursday, August 29. (That application is one of the items found on our website’s post on this diversion process– see above.) 


The proposed replacement for the diverted Route 4 parkland is a parcel of land at the east end of Shepard Avenue known locally as Shepard Woods. Shepard Woods would become a piece of Teaneck parkland subject to all the regulations and protections of all parks in the Township. Part of what is at issue is how the Shepard Avenue parcel was selected as the replacement. We have included in our website post the following video discussion between CM Belcher and Manager Hashmat at the August 22 Council meeting.  Due to a technical glitch, the video accurately provides the audio of the Belcher and Hashmat conversation but is frozen to a point just before this audio begins. So you will HEAR, but not see the full discussion.

Missing Zoning Subcommittee Minutes Found - State Street Development Presentation/Presentation Slides Not available

An agenda item billed in the Council’s 8/22 agenda simply asState Street Redevelopment Preliminary Presentation – created the day before Council meeting was the meeting’s first order of business. It inexplicably appeared in the agenda category of Old Business.  This turned out to be two separate presentations made by a developer’s attorney (J. Tuvel) about 2 projects sought by unnamed developers who Mr. Tuvel represents. The presentations and its subsequent Q&A consumed 39 minutes of the meeting and, it emerged, were seeking to amend or propose new redevelopment plans for 140 and 100 State Street, two parcels currently found in the State Street AINR. 


  • We sought copies of these 2 large and complex small-print presentations from the Clerk. In response, we were directed to the Council meeting. video – with the explanation that the Town had not figured out where they might put these presentations on the website (really!).  We will follow up on that inadequate OPRA response!


Where had these presentations come from – who had had them placed on the agenda? Attorney Tuvel made vague reference to the fact that on these two matters Council would later address in the consent agenda (It turned out that both were wrapped together to authorize the Town planners to proceed with redevelopment. See Resolution 247. In essence, someone (see below) had proposed moving to approve a clear additional step in the AINR process that Council, led by its mayor, had promised would not occur until after the adoption of a new Master Plan. (See discussion of that separate process in the Master Plan article in this Voices edition)


A bit more light on this strange sequence of Council events  Light was shed when the discussion of Committee Reports turned out to be a discussion by CM and Zoning Subcommittee chair/secretary Schwartz of a previously unpublicized 8/9 meeting of the Zoning Subcommittee. Schwartz quickly reviewed happenings from that meeting, but not until after he had explained why it was that the minutes from that meeting had not found their way to the Subcommittee’s spot on the website’s minutes/agenda slot.

Those minutes remained unavailable on the Town website until a resident submitted an OPTRA late on Friday afternoon the 23rd, the next day. And yes, they are where they should be in the agendas and minutes section under the zoning subcommittee (or Click Here). We are providing below a snip of these minutes in order better to illustrate some concerns.

  • Who attended this 8/9 meeting – other than J. Tuvel – no one listed
  • Where does the S&S matter stand? The CSZ says it is finished, but – although it was said that no one had the authority to develop the redevelopment plan, it would appear that that is what will presented at the special Council meeting (which, incidentally has now been scheduled to be limited to an hour before the regular 11/12 Council meeting!)
  • Apparently it was the CSZ that authorized the listing of Resolutions 246 and 247 – both additional AINR authorizations. It is noteworthy that the rationale for NOT voting on the ordinance to approve Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADUs) on 8/22 was that the MP was not finished. But despite a resident’s suggestion, that inconsistency did not stop Council from proceeding with these additional development steps.
  • Buried in these CSZ minutes was the repudiation of the former Manager Kazinci’s proud announcement that finally Council was acknowledging reality by proceeding with the studies that it agreed would guide the cleanup of the unsafe DPW mess at 1600 River Road by 2026.
  • But instead Council – like its predecessors for 50 years – is now chasing another “someone else will let us send our stuff to them” dream by trying to get the County to help authorize shipment of the non-park stuff to parcels in Leonia that are purportedly parkland. Leonia had said NO!!!
  • As a non-agenda item, the Town planner gave this CSZ closed session an “update” on the Master Plan. The only Township entity now authorized to hold private sessions on the draft MP is the PB.  


Is it any wonder that this minutes document did not see the light of day until AFTER the Council meeting? 

But wait – one glimmer of hope.



CM Belcher suggested that an independent member of the Town Administration be given authorship of CSZ minutes. And by an informal vote, 4 members of Council agreed. 

New Website – Still an Enigma for Most

A redesigned Town website – a resident priority whose remedy had been promised several years ago – has now been installed at the traditional website address (www.teanecknj.gov)


Yet if the commentary that Voices is receiving reflects general resident sentiment, the redesign remedy is still either an unfinished project or we were better off with what we had. 


Seven minutes were carved out of the Thursday 8/22 Council meeting for a slide presentation clearly intended to help us navigate the new site. Unfortunately, the Town’s perpetually compromised visual & sound system failed the presenter. Virtually no sentence the IT presenter uttered could be fully heard, let alone deciphered – and at its conclusion, the presenter explained that he could not do a Q&A because he could not hear whatever questions the public might ask. The audio on the video of that presentation found on the website is no better. (Click Here and move the cursor to 1hr&04min)


At least two elements of the new site must be addressed. 


  • Despite prominently showing a large Search bar near the top of the homepage, we at Voices, like many others who have tried, found that when we entered a relevant word or phrase, like “2024 Budget,” we were taken to unrelated links. For example, when we entered the 2024 Budget we were told that there were 247 results in .23 seconds.  We don’t need 247 results – we need ONE accurate result.  The first 4 results give you 1) the original March 21, 2024 budget, not the present August budget, 2) An announcement of the Budget introduction on August 22, 2024 (but not the budget), 3) A one-page summary of the revenues and appropriations of the 2024 budget, 4) A July 24, 2024 version of the Budget. Following that is a result titled “Untitled,” and then on to the 2023 budget and earlier.


Actually, on Thursday night, the Introduced budget could only be found – if you knew to go to “Minutes and Agendas” then head to the left column, scroll down to Council meeting, and then head back right on the page to find the meeting on August 22 and scroll through the agenda packet to find the relevant budget.


But wait. A Post-Council Fix? When Teaneck Voices editors OPRA’d some required budget documents (see related story in this Voices edition) they were directed to the new way to get there. The original budgets database is now found if you are smart enough to go to Our Government in the home page upper right-hand corner and click Budget Reports and then from there scroll down to Budget and then scroll down 19 years of budgets and click 2024 – and voila – revelation - there you will find the four current 2024 budget documents including - finally - the standalone 2024 Introduced Budget. The Clerk acknowledges it literally was not there until Friday the 23rd after Council had adopted the budget the previous evening. 


NOT GOOD!


  • There are huge and important databases on which many of us rely that have simply disappeared. A primary example is the absence of any way to look for past Council resolutions and ordinances by title or date. Previously, one could readily search for resolutions and ordinances that Council had passed between 2013 and 2024. Hopefully, that same database can simply added to the new website to be retrieved simply by entering the title “ordinances/resolutions” in the search box – which was all one had to do to find them previously. 


There are 2 additional NECESSITIES for the website to be a productive resource for the residents, employees, and staff of Teaneck:


  • A User-Friendly Guide to the website or an efficient and effective search capability. Users must be able to find what they need in no more than 2 or 3 logical clicks, and
  • A WEBMASTER. Many towns with the most accessible and up-to-date websites employ a full-time or, at least, part-time webmaster whose sole job is to maintain the website, make entries, delete old listings, and be the sole responsible point person to ensure the website information is timely and all users can use it with ease.


There was no recognition at last week’s Council meeting that the redesign and user process were significantly troubled. That must be acknowledged and the public told how and when the site is slated to become fully usable again.

This Week in Teaneck - August 26 to August 31

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. 


Hackensack River Greenway Advisory Board – Monday, August 26 at 8:00 pm by Zoom only. To access Click Here and add passcode 580029. The agenda includes a review of the current draft Master Plan (See references to Greenway at pp. 5, 54-55, 59 ) and the Open Space & Recreation Plan (See references to the Greenway at pp. 8, 9, 14, 17, 20, 25, 28, 31-39, 53-54, 60) both of which documents can be located on the new Township website.



Parks Playgrounds and Recreation Advisory Board – The Township website calendar which calls for this meeting to occur on Wednesday, August 28 is in error. This meeting will occur – as scheduled – on Wednesday, September 4, 2024.

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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