What follows is primarily a copy of a Teaneck Voices article which appeared in its 10/31 edition which can be found at Click Here. Any changes in that original story are indicated by their being in red.

Planning Board

If the 10/25 Council meeting ended in cacophony, it was matched in terms of chaos by the Planning Board meeting which occurred two days later (Thursday 10/27). Ironically, that meeting had been called to address two Holy Name proposed site plans – and had been scheduled as the first meeting governed by Open Public Meeting Act regulations to take place since the pandemic with no zoom access or input opportunity – and no video. It had been scheduled to be placed in Gym #2 of the Rodda Center with only Town audio equipment.. Gym #2 is notorious for it echoes and fully lived up to its notoriety. (Click Here to hear the Town audio and see if you can figure out what is being said.  Only 2 hours of the 4-hour meeting are found on the Town website due to an equipment failure [personal communication from the Manager to Voices].

The meeting began with the withdrawal – apparently by Holy Name – of one of its two proposed site plans. Attorney Berger, for HNMC, began by asserting that the site plan still on the agenda (a new employee day care center to be placed at the western end of the hospital zone) was fully consistent with the provisions of Ordinance 20-2022, the hospital expansion ordinance which is now in litigation. That claim was soon disproven as many plan specifics were identified as deviating variances to the Ordinance.

The subsequent hours of PB site plan review – lasting until after midnight – can only be described as farcical. Attorney Berger introduced her first witness (who proved to be the only HN witness), an engineer who spoke in a near whisper with the microphone perpetually away from his face. He was repeatedly requested to speak so he could be heard. After his presentation of the day care facility site plan, he was questioned for hours about issues including material from his original testimony, but which the witness and HNMC’s attorney consistently claimed that the witnesses’ ignorance of the answers to most of the questions he was asked would be better addressed by the next applicant witnesses – presumably the hospital’s traffic expert and architect. Along the way it was agreed that the PB will next meet on these two site plan matters on November 21 and 28 (conveniently after the election).

Readers anxious to review the content of this meeting can try listening to the inaudible audio. Teaneck Voices did video record the meeting and is in the process of determining whether its video’s audio would make publication of the video worthwhile. (Voices has not decided whether to publish its video in major part because it is unclear what the absence of the audio and the fact that the person who was to have done the transcript was ill and unable to attend will mean for what will officially be done with the entire four-hour 10/27 meeting)