Since the summer of 2010, Teaneck’s record on producing timely approved minutes of its Council meetings has been not just atrocious but in direct and substantial violation of both state law and the Teaneck code.  Further, at least since 2006, the production of timely and approved minutes by the Township’s statutory land use boards (the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Adjustment [BofA]) have been equally poor – and equally in violation of state law. (There is a glimmer of hope that the Planning Board may in the past 6 weeks finally be getting somewhat better; no such luck with the Council or BofA.) To add insult to injury, two of the Township’s top officials, its Manager and CFO, have lied to the State as to status of the Township’s website and therein have misrepresented to the State what is the Township’s performance on minutes production.

The result is – yes – that the Township’s residents are deprived of their opportunity and right to track what their local government is doing- in policy development, with their taxes and about how the town’s land may be used.  What is worse, the officials who serve on the governing board and the statutory boards themselves have no way actually to track what they have decided so that their subsequent decisions can complete initiatives for which they have voted some initial step. Routinely, those initiatives simply disappear and are like lost track on a railway spur to nowhere.  If you watch Council or attend statutory board meetings you will see this often mindless display of officials stumbling through their meetings virtually in the dark or being misled by one or other member or attorney in substantial misrepresentation of the actual state of play or prior majority decision. (Teaneck’s Council has not once actually followed its own new [3/24/2015] ordinance on meeting procedure since it was passed!)

The primary purpose of this new post on Teaneck Transparency is to allow those residents who want to follow the completed “minutes” performance record of the Township’s major institutions can do so simply and by easy reference.  We will also be making an effort to secure minutes of other official advisory committees and boards of the Township and to publish them.