Teaneck Voices has been raising concern about this non-democratic approach to land use decision-making for the last two years. Why have the Master Plan and its values suddenly becoming irrelevant? Why is it that a municipal governing board of elected officials suddenly started denigrating many neighborhoods of the Town that elects it?

It was not easy to find the answers. Former Mayor Hameeduddin claimed at a meeting in 2018 that he had begun exploring “redevelopment” in 2014. But the first time the full Council heard a presentation about the several ways in which “redevelopment” could be managed was at a December 2016 Council “retreat” held in the large conference room at Holy Name. The Town website provides an audio (but no video – Click Here ) of that meeting and relatively complete minutes of the redevelopment presentation given by William Rupp (Click Here). Yet nothing came of that 2016 redevelopment discussion.

The next time Council as a whole explored the redevelopment concept was again at a Council retreat that occurred in September 2018 – but this time the retreat was held in a tiny conference room at Holy Name. Only seven non-official residents were in attendance. If there was an official audio or video of that meeting, neither ever made it to the Town website.

Then Town planner, Richard Preiss made a presentation listing the various ways in which the redevelopment process could be prioritized in Teaneck, with or without naming a new Redevelopment Agency. The minutes of that meeting (Click Here) demonstrate how committed Mayor Hameeduddin was to a specific answer – having Council declare itself to be the Teaneck Redevelopment Agency. The following two sentences from those 9/6/2018 minutes make the point:

“Mayor Hameeduddin noted that a redevelopment agency would allow the Council to hold control over redevelopment decision making and suggested creating a subcommittee to discuss redevelopment while also having Council serve as a redevelopment agency… Mayor Hameeduddin made a motion for the Zoning Subcommittee to discuss the creation of the Redevelopment Agency and report back to the Council in October.”

Member Schwartz seconded the motion and it was adopted unanimously – along with instructions to Attorney Shahdanian to begin to create an ordinance naming the Council as the new Agency. (A Teaneck resident in attendance did make a video that night of Planner Preiss’ redevelopment presentation and the subsequent Council redevelopment discussion which followed it. That video is available on YouTube –Click Here and press skip ad.)

At the very next meeting of Council in October of 2018, a draft Ordinance #25-2018 was proposed that would allow the Council itself to “act as” the Redevelopment Agency. At that night’s G&W, every resident who spoke about redevelopment sharply criticized the concentration of power inherent in that draft ordinance (Click Here for a 6-minute video of those comments) which then led to perhaps the most spirited 20 minutes of Council debate in years.

Council members Rice and Pruitt articulately questioned the indefinite scope of what power such an Agency would have within its purview and demanded more information about how the new agency’s processes would work (Click Here for a video of that entire Council debate).

Led by the Mayor, the Council pressed ahead to Introduce Ordinance #25-2018. But sensing the emerging need for a new consensus, the Mayor proposed a 6-week hiatus before a final vote was taken. In actual fact, neither that Ordinance (nor anything like it) never appeared on the Council agenda again.

Nevertheless, the Council majority, most likely led by the Zoning subcommittee, had not given up on using redevelopment concepts to take control of Township land use decision-making. In fact, at the same meeting originally scheduled for a next hearing on the redevelopment agency ordinance, Councilmen Katz, Schwartz and Kaplan together suggested adding a Resolution (222-2018) that became part of the unanimously adopted consent agenda wherein Council affirmed its request that the Planning Board determine whether two municipally owned DPW properties met the criteria for being Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINR).

And with that strange and largely incoherent process (Click Here for the 11/19/2018 minutes, pp. 11-12 and 14) Teaneck’s two derelict town-owned DPW properties had become the first instances of Teaneck’s new commitment to Council control (through use of the state’s redevelopment statutes) of the Township’s land use actions.

Hence, without ever formally adopting – or even explaining – its new way of defining land use, the Teaneck Council just keeps naming new AINR areas and almost randomly citing procedures from the state statutes as justifications for what it is doing.