Teaneck Council 

Voices has learned that the Township Clerk has certified ALL 10 aspiring Council candidates who had submitted signed petitions to the Township Clerk’s office by 3 pm on September 6. This certification means that the Clerk found that each had submitted at least 308 valid Teaneck voter petition signatures and met the other candidate qualification factors.

In alphabetical order, the following 10 candidates for Council have been certified by the Township Clerk to be placed on the 2022 ballot: Denise Belcher, Anthony Bruno, Latisha Garcia, Danielle Gee, Hillary F. Goldberg, David Highet, Keith Kaplan, Elie Katz, Desiree Ramos Reiner and Chondra Young. Each has qualified to be placed on the ballot for one of the 4 four-year Council seats to be elected in 2022. For the first time these positions are being elected in November instead of May. The Council members who have continuing terms on Council through 2004 are Council members Orgen, Pagan and Schwartz.

Interestingly, only seven of the Town-certified candidates (Belcher, Garcia, Gee, Goldberg, Kaplan, Reiner and Young) have also filed initial campaign committee information with the NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission for the Council race. 

Of the ten certified Council candidates, two are incumbents (C. Katz and C. Kaplan). Five others are well-known for their civic engagement in municipal affairs, land use discussions or school leadership roles (Belcher, Gee, Goldberg, Reiner, and Young). The remaining three certified candidates (Bruno, Garcia and Highet) are not known by Teaneck Voices to have ever played any role in Township public discussions or decision-making. 

Now that these 10 are certified candidates, the next step is for the Clerk to conduct a drawing for ballot positions – something currently scheduled for 2:00 pm Friday September 16. Rumors and informal announcements notwithstanding, it is too early to tell whether any of the 10 candidates will slate with others, and/or will have chosen slogans to be placed beside their names on the ballot. Both of these issues will likely also be decided on the afternoon of the 16th.

Teaneck Board of Education 

Because two certified candidates have withdrawn, there are two fewer candidates (down from 14 to 12) now competing for the 5 open school board positions. Three positions are to be elected for 3-year terms and two positions are to be elected for the 1-year term left by the resignations of 2 board members in 2022. The 5 newly-elected BOE members will join current BOE members (Gee, Fisher, Klein and J. Rodriguez).on the 9-member Board.

Ballot positions for the 12 BOE candidates have changed as a result of the two fewer candidates and a diagram of these remaining candidates and their ballot positions are found below.