Teaneck residents long have urged the Manager and Council to create a new website. The Manager’s response to the many queries was “We’ll have a new township website by the end of 2022!” December 31, 2022 has come and gone, yet no new website.

While several issues raised concern about the appearance and readability of the contents of the present website, more criticisms addressed the lack of timeliness – or simple lack of – posts about key meetings, associated agendas and related materials. Often, announcements remain days or weeks beyond the event itself.

In other words, a key problem with our township website lies in the process of keeping it timely. It is not surprising that process is the heart of Teaneck’s website problems; the entire process, since its start around 2006, has been fraught with dysfunction. Teaneck Voices believes that it is valuable to review that process to learn from it, to wipe the website history slate clean, and to engage experienced and reliable professionals to bring us a refreshed and user-friendly Teaneck website managed by a professional Webmaster.

In other words, we must vanquish the Curse of the Teaneck Website!

Around 2006 municipalities across the country, some timidly, some boldly, were stepping into the website business. Teaneck’s administration set up a rudimentary website with an eye out to rebuilding it as the IT field grew. So what happened? Here’s the story.

·        Joseph Ferriero served as chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Organization (BCDO) from 1998 until he resigned in January 2009. As party chair, Ferriero wielded significant power in the process of nominating Democrats in local elections and in the process of choosing which issues and candidates the party supported. One aspect of party business was connecting and recommending vendors to Democrats elected or appointed to local office in Bergen County.

·        John Carrino was the owner of C3 Holdings LLC (C3), short for Citizens Communication Center, a New Jersey corporation that provided emergency-notification systems for local governments. He also owned Braveside Capital LLC, a NJ corporation which Carrino described as the “sales arm” of C3.

·        Carrino sought municipal contracts, and Ferriero was uniquely positioned to provide him the contacts.

·        A match made in heaven! The two struck an agreement. Ferriero would recommend C3 to local governments in exchange for a 25- to 33-percent commission on contracts for the towns that ultimately hired the company.

·       In August 2007, Ferriero introduced John Carrino to Teaneck councilman El-Natan Rudolph, whose name Ferriero had written next to Teaneck on the list of municipal sales targets. Rudolph put Carrino in touch with Teaneck’s town manager, Helene Fall, who that very day emailed Carrino about C3’s web services.

·     In December of that year, the Teaneck council unanimously voted for a resolution, introduced by Rudolph, authorizing the town to pay up to $24,000 to hire C3 for the year 2008. The contract was executed April 22, 2008.

·       Shortly after that, C. Elie Y. Katz persuaded the CEO of a major Teaneck institution to agree to cover 4 years of C3’s services (4 x $24,000 = $96,000).

·        To make a very long story shorter, questions raised by Cliffside Park’s mayor about Ferriero’s role in the C3 contracts kicked off an inquiry. Cliffside Park, along with Bergenfield and Dumont were the other 3 Bergen County municipalities that signed onto the Ferriero-Carrino pact.

·        Joseph Ferriero was paid thousands of dollars based on those four contracts in checks listing out which payments corresponded to which town. But none of the local Democratic officials to whom Ferriero recommended C3 were aware he stood to profit.

·        A federal grand jury returned a five-count Indictment that charged Ferriero with violations of RICO, the Travel Act, and federal mail and wire fraud statutes. United States v. Ferriero, 866 F.3d 107, 112 (3d Cir. 2017). The jury concluded Ferriero committed bribery by agreeing to recommend C3’s services in exchange for a share of any resulting contracts’ revenues. United States v. Ferriero, 866 F.3d 107, 113 (3d Cir. 2017).

·        Ferriero was sentenced to three concurrent 35-month prison terms and ordered to forfeit the money equivalent of the proceeds he derived from the racketeering and wire fraud. Ferriero appealed.    Ferriero lost the appeal and served his prison sentence.

·        Teaneck retained the C3 website while debating how to go forward.

·        John Carrino retained the names and contact information of all Teaneck residents who signed up for emergency-notification services, claiming they were encrypted and he didn’t know how to “un-encrypt” them.

By 2010, the town was still limping along with the remains of the C3 website. In early 2010, Helene Fall was replaced as Town Manager by William Broughton. Broughton and the Council majority decided that a new website would be sought that would allow all administrators and department heads to enter their own data. Many residents with IT knowledge and experience urged the town leaders to hire a Webmaster to manage a new website. The Council and Administration rejected that notion as “giving one person too much power.”

In late 2010, at the suggestion of a councilmember, the town hired, for $9,600, a website designer who had built the Montclair website. His mandate was to build a website and train the Manager and Municipal Clerk to manage it. A down payment of $3,000 was made.

The relationship between the council and the new web designer was like a bad marriage!! At no point were they on the same page. And when the council asked the web designer to train 54 employees of Teaneck so they could all enter their own data, he, rightly said his contract and fee did not cover that. So the Council terminated their relationship with him and refused to pay him the remaining $6,600 he was owed.

However, that website was used, and became the template on which enhancements have been made; the manager gave the department heads the assignment of coming up with the graphics for the head of the website; a webmaster was never hired; at present the Municipal Clerk has the task of posting information on the website.

So – that history is the “curse” of the website. It is time to start fresh, begin again. A municipality’s website should serve several critical purposes:

·        It keeps its residents informed of meeting schedules, agendas, documents, special events.

·        It provides a mechanism for residents to receive emergency notifications.

·        It allows the residents to request services and get timely response.

·        And it is the public face of the township, the first introduction any web searcher or wanderer has to the Township of Teaneck.

·        Our website should reflect our pride in Teaneck and make us proud to be residents of our township.

What should we do?

·        The Council should direct the Manager to develop a Request for Proposals (RFP),

·        The Manager should distribute the RFP to web designers in Bergen County/NJ with a firm due date.

·        The Manager should open and evaluate the proposals with IT professionals.

·        The Town should contract with a web designer with a firm program structure and timeline.

·        The Manager should hire a webmaster* – possibly a resident knowledgeable in web management – to work 15-20 hours a week.

·        The webmaster should train employees on the time frame and mechanisms for providing the webmaster with timely information.

*A webmaster is an individual who oversees the management of a website, including its content creation, registering its domain name, addressing errors and approving site design and functionality. A webmaster uses development and administrative skills, such as communication and adaptability, when interacting with clients to create an efficient working environment.