Click Here and after a slow rolling slide introduction, settle in – preferably in front of a larger than phone screen. However, if you want to see how the candidates handled just some of the questions, make sure that you roll the screen down to have access to the cursor Here are the questions and the location for the beginning of each question:

Opening Statements (all) – 1min 51sec 

Question: Paying for increased cost of litigation -13min43sec

Question (non-incumbents) agree with designating Areas in Need of Redevelopment? – 24min45sec

Question about AINRs (incumbents) – 33min38sec

Question about urbanization of Teaneck – 39min30sec

How to ensure adequate public safety & infrastructure resources as population grows – 47min55sec

Transparency – position on all minutes etc.& public advisory bds. – 57min55sec

View of Council’s BLM approval process (allowing no Pannell name) – 1h8min37sec

Term Limits, specifically of Town boards? – 1hr19 min52 sec

Should Advisory Boards be open to public? – hr25min25sec

How to bring the Town together – 1 hr33min

Workshop Meetings? – 1hr42min

Explain why Teaneck Streetscape failed to generate retail – ( incumbents) – 1hr50min

What Improvements at the Recyle Center – 1hr54min18sec

A New Chickens Ordinance? – 2hr1min30sec

Final statements – 2hr9min46sec

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Teaneck Voices has a few general comments to make about this illuminating Forum session. Since the participants have recently divided themselves into 2 slates it is noteworthy that the Rise for Teaneck slate (Belcher, Gee, Goldberg & Young) were able to answer almost every question with both basic policy agreement but without repeatedly saying the same thing as their slate mates. One had the definite sense that were Rise for Teaneck to succeed in getting all four members elected, that group of women, fully trained and educated in several relevant professions, would be ready to step into office with a common vision of what needs doing to improve Teaneck governance.

By contrast, the other four candidates (Kaplan, Katz, Garcia and Ramos-Reiner) clearly had diverse views about some of the major governance issues, most notably the question of whether to open advisory boards to the public, whether development should continue to rely on big multi-unit facilities, when to have Council workshops and related transparency-central issues. (These 4 candidates who had first called themselves Moving Forward Together have recently formed a financial slate Friends of the Teaneck Block Associations)

What Else We Learned from the Forum?

Board Term Limits: The NETBPA Moderator asked all candidates if they believed there should be Board term limits. Since the membership of most town Boards – both statutory and advisory – are largely selected by Council vote, the Moderator was clearly referring to term limits for those Boards rather than the fact that if elected in 2022, Deputy Mayor Katz will have been elected to a 6^th straight term. Incumbents Katz and Kaplan rejected any Council policy about term limits suggesting that the electorate would in every election best decide whether such limits should be reflected in for whom the Town votes. The Rise for Teaneck candidates answered the question actually asked by noting that many board members, and specifically the land use board chairs, have been reappointed for very many terms, depriving our development decision making of new ideas.

Accuracy about Recent Governance Issues: At min 23:50 of the NETBPA Forum Candidate Ramos-Reiner stated the Fair Share Housing Center’s original concern with the Holuba townhouse project was about the number of affordable units being provided by the project.
That is mistaken. The first and only Housing Center involvement & statement about Holuba was made at the 12/9/20 Planning Board meeting by Elorm Ocansey who began by identifying himself as a Housing Center employee. His statement’s first and only concern was specifically that KRE’s original design for the Holuba townhouse project failed, as was required by a March 2019 affordable housing ordinance, to integrate the affordable with the market-rate units (Click Here and go to minute 10:20 of the town’s video of the December 12, 2020 meeting.)
Following Mr. Ocansey’s statement to the Board Ms. Ramos- Reiner did, as did her PB colleagues, vote to memorialize the approval of the Holuba project with the affordable units in a separate facility from the market-rate ones.
That design, following litigation led by both Teaneck Residents and the Housing Center – as approved in 2021 under court order – fully integrates Holuba’s affordable with market-rate units. That design modification had been declared to be impossible by Councilman Kaplan (Click Here) –

Whether Designation of Blighted Areas Should Continue to be the Way Teaneck Governs Development. Candidate Latisha Garcia, in addressing the question whether she favored Areas in Need of Redevelopment focused on a single project – the replacement of the Verizon Building by the new multi-unit rental facility at 1500 Teaneck Road (go to 28min of the Forum). She cited the old, run down decrepit state of the Verizon building and lauds the fact that “the current Council” utilized the AINR development scheme to obtain the new facility.
Only one problem with that example: The process used by Council and the Planning Board to approve that project and see it implemented followed the traditional development process: following the Master Plan, seeking regular land use board approvals, etc. No, Teaneck did not need – and did not use – AINRs to achieve that development. If those traditional development mechanisms worked for 1500 Teaneck Road, why HAS Council now switched to the blight designations and AINR mechanisms which largely ignore the Master Plan? Ms. Garcia’s example of 1500 Teaneck Road inadvertently proved the opposite point.