Given the horrendous events in Buffalo and Uvalde, concern about public safety rippled through the entire Council meeting on May 31, 2022. What is the Town doing to enhance protection and to assure adequate distribution of public safety announcements?   Every official and resident who spoke agreed safety is the first priority.
Mayor Dunleavy reported that he had emailed the mayors of Uvalde and Buffalo on behalf of Teaneck to express our sadness at the loss of life and desire to give any type of support that we could.   But there was an important twist to the issue when Councilwoman Rice asked why new information from the county prosecutor’s office regarding house-of-worship safety had first been distributed by some council members only to their own email recipients.  
Councilwoman Rice appealed to Council several times for a single, trusted official Town source, for the dissemination of vital information about safety, and for that source to communicate it first. She emphasized that every Council member had freedom of speech and the right to replicate and duplicate that information to their individual, unofficial, personal lists “once it becomes public.”   She pointed out that individual Council members mix important information about town affairs with their own political opinions when they communicate via their personal email lists or web pages. She noted that “People get conflicting information. They get information that they feel is politically motivated.” So, even if they are on a particular list, they might not read it, and “miss very important safety communications.”   This makes the vehicles of individual Council members very bad options for official public information.  

Among houses of worship in the United States, Black churches are the most frequent targets of these shootings. So it was particularly disturbing that Councilwoman reported that leaders of many of the churches she contacted had not received the County Prosecutor’s urgent alert about safety precautions. She noted that new churches frequently spring up and there is therefore a need to regularly update official lists.  
Mayor Dunleavy’s initial response was to reassure everyone that the information the public gets about public safety is very robust “whether it be through the Manager, whether it be through the Chief of Police or through any other sources.”   He referred to a list of some 20,000 residents who signed up for email alerts from the town.   Councilman Kaplan said that he took a lot of those alerts himself and put them up himself on his own pages and asked with seeming innocence if that was OK?   The Mayor assured him it was once the message was out there and as long as it was consistent. “Anyone can take what we put out as a township and give to whoever they feel is appropriate to have it. They may be getting it for the third or fourth time, but nonetheless that’s appropriate.”   Council woman Rice insisted “I am not referring to the fact that once the Township sends out information, we all can reiterate it.” She had to repeat once again that there was important safety information from the County Prosecutor for houses of worship that was not sent out by the Town Manager and not sent out through the town alerts.   “It was sent by our Deputy Mayor and it was sent to a select few…it should be coming from the Township Manager or the Police Department. And that was not the case.”   Councilman Kaplan suggested a solution to the problem: simply give the full list of all houses of worship to each Councilman so they can make sure everyone is included in their own communications! Deputy Mayor Katz gave him a thumbs up.   Councilwoman Rice responded to Kaplan “That totally obliterates my point. The point is that it should go from the Town Manager. It shouldn’t be contingent on my list, or Elie’s list, or yours. It should be information from a trusted source. People should not have to rely on me for life and death information. They should not have to rely on any of us as Council members. We should be able to make sure it comes from the Police Department directly or from the Township Manager directly.”   Councilman Pagan offered to help by getting updated lists of houses of worship to local news outlets.   Councilman Kaplan attempted to reframe the issue Councilwoman Rice raised: “I don’t like the idea of suppressing information…I think more is better.”   Deputy Mayor Katz rehearsed a list of all the shootings that had occurred in mosques, synagogues, churches, public and private schools and all the safety information he had sent in each and every case. “And I’m going to continue to send out messages as I get ’em. And I’m sorry Councilmember Rice, if you feel you need to politicize the safety of our residents. You’re sitting here saying who got and who didn’t get.”   He urged her to pass along the information so he could add to his Tidbits list to make sure everyone got the information. “I think that’s the responsibility of all of us. I have a newsletter and other council members have a newsletter and that is what we’re supposed to be doing…So I am willing to take any more names that you want to send me…and we will never have this situation again where a resident calls you and says ‘I didn’t get the information.'”   Councilwoman Rice retorted to this by urging Elie to give his list to the Town Manager so that all residents hear from a single official trusted source, rather than garner kudos from his constituents for being the first to scoop civic news.   At this point, Mayor Dunleavy ended the latest skirmish and concluded the discussion by saying, “The issue here becomes who’s got what list and who’s on it. OK?” He stated that the Township has a list of all Houses of Worship and promised to make sure that the list is updated and copies are sent to the County Prosecutor’s office “to make sure those things don’t fall through the cracks.”   Readers wishing to witness first-hand this heated discussion, should Click the video Here (upper left corner) and move the cursor forward to approximately minute 46:30 of the Town Council video.   Note: The quotes in the article above are from a transcription made by Teaneck Voices in lieu of an official transcript by the Town.