As of October 2017, the State has not given approval for the Rte 4 Billboard.
It will likely not ever do so.
That is because of recent resident and State DEP findings
about deed restrictions on the billboard site – it is for “public park” purposes only –
+ the fact that the Billboard would be located on Township property within the
Route 4 Greenbelt, long since (1987) designated by Council as an historic district.
But wasn’t the lessee supposed to have gotten all its permits
by January 2016 else the lease agreement would be null and void?
As of 6/13/2017: Council for 4th time was being asked by the lessee
to extend the Billboard Lessee’s deadline to Acquire Needed
State Permits to 1/2018 – that makes 4 extensions spanning 2 full years!!!
Council did so. Click here & scroll to pg 73 of the 6/13 Council Agenda
Unfortunately you cannot simply go to the minutes of the 6/13 meeting because not even a draft of them has yet appeared on the Township website and been available for Council to make them official – a violation of the Township code which requires Council minutes to be sent to the Council within 10 days of every meeting – in this case by late June (Today is September 3!)
Reminder, for what did Teaneck offer a lease in 2015 & approve as a site plan in 4/2017?
A 672 sq. ft. 2-sided Teaneck Route 4 Billboard – 65 feet high, digital
multi-message and hanging out over the Highway (see pics below) Where?
Located in the long-protected, Greenbelt beginning at the Englewood border.
So Council Approved a Lease for the Billboard more than 2 years ago (7/15/15)
It gave the Lessee 6 months to get approvals – the lessee is today asking for more time
As stated, the State web has always shown static – not multi-message – Billboard approval
Note: Lessee in Nov 2016 told Teaneck it HAD all needed approvals – & accordingly
Teaneck’s Planning Board voted 6-2 to to approve the Site Plan (without checking?!)
Also the billboard must now be compatible w/relevant federal law because the State SHPO
in 9/2015 made the Greenbelt an “historic district” eligible for NJ & National Registries.
What do Teaneck’s residents say about the Billboard?
In various hearings, no resident “public input” has supported the billboard
Greenbelt preservation and safety are the public’s major concerns.-
Unanswered Questions about the traffic safety continue to be raised today
One concern now is whether the applicant misled the Planning Board in its application for site plan approval filed with the Township on November 14, 2016 when it wrote: “the applicant has complied with the Roadside Control and Outdoor Advertising Act as well as other applicable statutes, laws and regulations related to billboards as reflected by its receipt of an NJDOT permit.” Nope!
The permit to which All Vision referred on 11/14/2016 may be found at click here. And it has now become clear that this permit whose receipt All Vision said “reflected” the fact that it had “complied with the Roadside Control and Advertising Act” apparently did nothing of the sort. The permit apparently permitted a static not a digital “multi-message” billboard – and in the evolved Roadside Control and Outdoor Advertising Act, multi-message billboard permits are much more rigorously regulated than are static, single-message ones. (click here for the Act) Discussions with the NJ DOT Outdoor Advertising Office and with Township officials clarify that All Vision is still in the process of seeking approval for the multi-message billboard on Route 4. Those discussions are confirmed by the fact that last-minute, “walked in” Teaneck Council resolutions on both of 2/7/ and 6/13 2017 state that All Vision has for the 3rd and 4th time asked the Township for an extension to gain the needed approvals (click here for the February extension) [It is of note that Council by 5-2 granted this 2/7/2017 extension 8 days after the lease had become “null and void” on 1/31/2017).
Precisely what was the site plan proposed to the Planning Board? Quoted from ALL VISION site plan application: “Pursuant to a Lease with the Township of Teaneck, the Applicant, All Vision, LLC (hereinafter, “All Vision” or “Applicant”), seeks to erect a single-pole, double-faced, multimessage LED outdoor advertising sign (the “Proposed Billboard”) upon a portion of the property shown on the Township ‘s Tax Map as Block 6002, Lot 10 (the “Property”), within the L-I District of the Township of Teaneck, New Jersey. The Property currents consists vacant land located along the Route 4 west. The Proposed Billboard will consist of a single pole, multimessage LED back-to-back sign with dimensions of 14′ x 48’ (each face), and an overall height above grade of 43 feet.” (Note: It is unexplained why the height cited in the site plan is 43 feet, yet in the billboard hearing the sign is consistently described by the applicant spokespeople – and depicted – as being 65 fee.)
But now that the specific site the Township approved for the Billboard has been found to have been restricted to public park purposes only, it may be that the Township had promised something it never had a right to promise. Section 22 at page 8 of the lease signed by the Town on 7/15/2015 and by All Vision on 9’21/2015 includes the following statement: 
That assurance could well proved problematic for Teaneck Taxpayers!
But let’s go back to the start of this year and to the Planning Board meetings where the billboard site plan was approved. What Happened in January’s PB Site Plan hearing? Teaneck’s Planning Board held a 1/12/2017 hearing to review the site plan submitted by the selected billboard lease company, All Vision. The PB approved that site plan 5-2. Unannounced prior to the a PB 1/12/2017 session, All Vision brought a manager and two technical professionals to testify – but had not submitted their testimony or exhibits as required (see explanation in the discussion of additional procedural problems below).
HIGHWAY SAFETY The traffic safety expert relied almost entirely on a single study done by SAIC for the National Highway Safety Administration and concluded that digital billboards do not cause sufficient driver distraction to impair highway safety. He discusses a “cone of vision” through which he explains how he believes the eyes of those viewing the billboard will move narrowly from side-to-side – horizontally. Unaddressed – except for a parenthetical remark – in this discussion is what the impact of a 65 foot billboard towering above the side of the road will mean about the vertical distraction potential of the billboard and its possible consequences for traffic safety. Instead, the applicant’s witness focused almost his entire discussion on how long each time the average driver’s eye might view the board each time it went to the digital board’s changing messages.
However, TTT has subsequently reviewed both a powerful comprehensive peer-reviewed critique of this SAIC/NHSA study and its conclusions click here and several literature reviews of the billboard/traffic safety issue which find FHSA’s study to be an outlier click here. If one is looking for a simpler answer – perhaps too simple to address all of the technical complexities of safety assessment , a study done for Israel’s National Roads Authority should be reviewed. This well-designed study – presented at the Fifth International Conference on Traffic and Transportation Psychology (2012); and at Annual Meeting of Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (2013) – and whose abstract is now found at click here comes to a radically different conclusion than the one presented to the planning board. Here it is:
At control sites, crashes remained essentially the same throughout the 3-year study period; at the treatment sites, crashes declined dramatically after the billboards were covered. The results were the same for injury and fatal crashes. After adjusting for traffic volume, crashes were reduced at the treatment sites (where billboards were visible in the “before” period but covered during the “after” period) by the following percentages: all crashes by 60%; injury/fatal crashes by 39%; property damage crashes by 72%. To see a full Summary of this study click here – and go to p. 19.
BILLBOARD LOCATION: This billboard is Located in the Township’s Greenbelt – part of its Greenway
It has been Protected as Designated Open Space for @ 85 yrs. by local/state decisions & as an historic site
How, then, could it be compatible with the federal 1965 Highway Beautification Act
– especially given NJ’s Agreement with US DOT to follow the federal law?
For access to the cited 1992 Master Plan (final) click Greenbelt in 1992 finalMasterPlanAmend and (draft) click Greenbelt in 1992 MasterPlanDraft
and the 2007 Open Space and Recreation Plan (final)click Greenbelt in 2007 final OpenSpace&RecPlan and (draft) click Greenbelt in 2-2007 draft OpenSpace&RecPlan
For alternative access to the documents from which these collages were taken, click here
additional procedural concerns
What procedures were used at the Planning Board Hearing on 1/12/2017/ The January PB hearing was not like other recent site approval hearings. In contrast to recent hearings, there were no explanation given by the attorney as to procedures that would be followed. And, in fact, there are quite specific state-mandated statutory procedures that were to have been followed subsequent to the applicant’s receipt of the permit. The required subsequent Township hearing was held – but not in accordance with the procedural requirements. (In fact, these procedures are actually referenced in the 4/2016 All- Vision billboard permit itself! [Remember, this permit was for a static billboard only)
To be sure, it now appears that until a resident actually OPRA’d this faulty State permit, no one in the Township’s officialdom had ever seen the permit! (TTT know that is the case because it was not even sought by the Township until TTT’s Treasurer, Chuck Powers, asked to see it.) So what did the permit say about the hearing? It said that “Any maps and documents for which approval is sought” had to have been available for public inspection 10 days before the hearing. In fact none were so available – and many key exhibits for which approval was sought were presented at the hearing for the first time – rendering preparedness of the Township, the Board or the public impossible! See complete rendering of the required hearing procedures at click here
Did the 1/12 Planning Board’s vote matter? About 3 hours into the Board hearing – and just prior to its voting 6-2 in favor of the All-Vision site plan – the PB attorney was asked to advise the Board for the first time as to nature of the site plan decision it was about to make. He did so only when the issue of the significance and procedures governing the vote was raised by a member of the public and pursued by a Board member. The attorney (new to the Board in December) said the Board vote to approve or disapprove the plan was required but that only a Board finding of “imminent danger to human health and safety” would constitute an acceptable basis for a Board member to reject the billboard plan since the site plan met other legal requirements. (See 6 minute in the video below.) The attorney did not cite anythin (regulation or statute) when rendering that opinion. Hence, many intense public arguments about the large billboard’s negative impact on the Greenbelt and were by clear implication declared factors that should not govern the Board members’ votes. And yet, the issues of compatibility of the billboard with the full slate of state approval criteria that were cited in the state permit continue unresolved.
Did the Applicant misrepresent (intentionally or inadvertently) the permitted status of the billboard? As noted above, the status of state approvals obtained and not yet obtained was apparently not made known to the Planning Board or its attorney: All Vision had indicated in its site plan documentation that it had the state permit. What it did not indicate was that the state permit for which it had applied – and which had been granted – was for a static, not a multi-message digital – billboard. The implications of this for whether a new hearing must be conducted if All Vision were to get relevant NJ DOT permit ,may well be mute because of factors cited earlier in this post. However, there are important lingering questions about whether Teaneck’s Planning Board is following required procedures when conducting site plan. Such required procedures may be found in the State Municipal Land Use Law (TITLE 40. MUNICIPALITIES AND COUNTIES, SUBTITLE 3. MUNICIPALITY PROVISIONS, CHAPTER 55 D. MUNICIPAL LAND USE LAW) the Township Code and the By-Laws approved at the PB re-organization on July 27, 2017. (on August 1, 2017 TTT requested those an OPRA for those by-laws but the Clerk’s office on 8/8 specified that it would impose a 30-day extension – to 9/20 – to respond with the requested public records. (Such OPRAs are legally required to be made available to the requester within 7 business days unless an extension citing legitimate reasons for the delay is requested.)
In contrast to other similar hearings, there were no Township subject-matter experts on issues such as traffic safety, the impact on surrounding properties, etc. who participated in the billboard hearing. Effectively, that made the expert testimony of the applicant the only source of expertise recognized by the planning board. When a member of the public tried to ask an All Vision expert whether in giving testimony in similar circumstances it was typical for him to have to interact with such “Township” experts, the PB Chair declared the question illegitimate and would not permit the All Vision expert to respond (see video below).
Approximately a dozen members of the public attended. Most spoke. No member of the public supported the billboard. The 30-minute video below provides this post’s viewers with the full set of remarls made by the pblic at the beginning and end of the meeting
During the meeting, the existence of a report – by Township Planner Richard Preiss – was discussed. It apparently makes recommendations for some changes in the billboard site plan. All Vision personnel accepted as a stipulation of PB Board approval that they agreed to those Preiss recommendations – but not a word as to what those recommendations were was uttered in the hearing. Indeed, this Preiss report was apparently received by the PB and sent to All Vision respondents on 1/10, but the report was not – either before or during the meeting – made available to members of the public. A response to a subsequent OPRA request for the Preiss document finally yielded the document.
One question raised by a member of the public was why – when the Ordinance in support of this bill board (4-2025) was introduced – the PB did not, as it was legally required to do in the Spring of 2015 – hold a hearing on the ordinance and report its findings to the Council. The PB Vice-Chair later explained that at the 2015 Board meeting where consideration of that ordinance was on the agenda there were not enough PB members in attendance. (In fact, there was a quorum.) In later testimony, it emerged that the Planning Board had twice NOT considered the matter even though it was on the agenda and further that the Board had not acted in any of the 5 PB meetings after the ordinance had been introduced by Council and before Council approved the ordinance. (Council was advised that in the absence of the required PB action, it was allowed on 4/21 to proceed without the required PB advice – and it did so. That “clarification” of the history of the PB’s inaction was not rebutted.
One important consequence of the Planning Board’s failure to review this ordinance is that the views of two other Teaneck advisory boards – the Environmental Commission [a statutory board] and the Historical Preservation Commission – were not sought by the Planning Board as it is required to do when reviewing ordinances involving zoning changes and sites it has designated as historical.
A fifth and final video that depicts PB Board member comments leading up to their vote will later be added to this post.
How did the media cover this hearing event after and before it occurred?
1) Brief story on the PB’s 1/12 decision by Record reporter Megan Burrow did not appear in the print version but went “on- line” – 1/13. Youj can access it if you click here
2) A prior story about the impending PB meeting by Record Reporter Megan Burrow appeared on-line on 1/11/2-17. You can access it by clicking here However, the picture that accompanies this Record story suggests that the Route 4 Sunoco station is in Teaneck. It is not – it is in Englewood – as the map above clearly shows. (See Teaneck’s tax assessment map for confirmation).
2) A new 1/12/2017 letter including discussion of the PB from TTT Treasurer Chuck Powers waspublished in the Northern Valley Suburbanite – scroll to bottom of the page or click here.
3) A letter sharply critical of Township approval of the billboard by resident Jeff Ostroth appeared in the Northern Valley Suburbanite on 2/16 after having been placed on line by NorthJersey.com on 1/23/2016, nearly 4 weeks earlier (click here)
Where on the Township website CAN YOU FIND the actual information about the materials that were released for the January 12 billboard discussion?
If you click here you get all of the agenda material – However, to get to the billboard materials scroll down to page 37. The site plan proposal itself is tucked in among a lot of “official” back and forth. The pages with the photo and drawings are pages 52 and 53. Note reference on Agenda page to a cell tower attachment is in error — you must yourself scroll to the website’s billboard agenda materials. (after reviewing these materials, you will likely need to click a return arrow to return to this post).
What Teaneck decisions led to the its Planning Board’s placing on its 1/12/2017 agenda a site plan approval for a large 2 sided digital billboard at the eastern (Englewood) Route 4 entrance into Teaneck? Where can you find out about the data and materials that explain it? See below:
December 3, 2014: Discussion of the Billboard concept by the entire Council at its December 2014 retreat and leading to a request to its attorneys to develop an ordinance allowing such a billboard and a warning by the attorney and affirmed by Council it would need to resist the Township’s opponents (“tree-huggers”) in order to approve same. Discussion is at hour 2:02 to 2:11 of the retreat audio- click here and then move the time line at bottom forward. (After listening you will likely need to click a return arrow to return to this post). It is notable that the approved Retreat minutes make NO reference whatsoever to this Billboard discussion)
January 13, 2015 – Proposed ordinance introduced to allow billboards and allow this specific two sided digital billboard
January to April 2015 – intermittent Council discussion – and largely public input largely in opposition. Questions raised as to why if Attorney Turitz had told Council in December the billboard had to be “ancillary” to a much more extensive rezoning for a hotel, this proposed billboard only ordinance was appropriate (see Council videos and minutes for February through April, 2015)
April 21 2015 – Council – (by 5-2 vote) passes Ordinance 4-2015 permitting billboards click here: (after reading this ordinance, you likely need to click a return arrow to return to this post).
May 2015 – the RFP is issued for a competition for a Township lease to erect a billboard at the Route 4 entrance from Englewood border click here – click here (after reading click return arrow to return to this post)
June 16, 2015 – Bid Opening – 2 bids,only one deemed qualified
July 14, 2015 – All Vision’s bid selected by Council as it was deemed the only responsive bid – click here (after reading this resolution you likely need to click a return arrow to return to this post). Note: after All Vision was selected, it did not return the signed lease for more than 2 months.
September 21, 2015 – lease signed; All Vision charged in Council with getting permits/multiple contingencies – click here (after reading click return arrow to return to this post)
January 12, 2016 – By Council resolution, All Vision granted extension – to May – to meet get required permits/ permissions
see Township website: click here (after reading click return arrow to return to this post).
April 5, 2016 – By Council resolution, All Vision granted an additional extension – to January 31, 2017 – to obtain permits, etc. Resolution reports some progress in All Vision meeting lease defined contingencies – click here (after reading click return arrow to return to this post).
November 2016 – All Vision submits site plan to Township – no public notice of this submission (see above for site plan as it now appears on website)
December 6, 20126: Teaneck site plan review board apparently reviews All Vision’s plan and approves it but no public notice of its action reported
December 8, 2016: Planning Board agenda reports attorney for ALL VISION has requested delay of PB review of its site plan but that no additional notice be required. (See notice at top of this post)
December 7: Original PB agenda for 1/12 meeting correctly re-announces purpose of ALL VISION site plan.
December 8: Teaneck Website AGENDA apparently changed and makes a mistaken reference to a cell tower attachment – with the effect of obscuring the subject/purpose of the site plan review of the All Vision billboard site plan.
Again: Where on the Township website CAN YOU FIND the actual information about the materials for the January 12 billboard discussion? If you click here you get all of the agenda material – and when you get to the billboard materials, scroll down to page 37. The site plan proposal itself is tucked in among a lot of “official” back and forth. The pages with the photo and drawings are pages 52 and 53. Note click here to go to website agenda materials.
TTT appreciates the effort of PB member Keith Kaplan to assure that these materials were, at its request, added to the website on January 6.
If you need additional materials (like the RFP and the bid itself, contact Chuck Powers at 201-214-4937.)
Is it important that you come to the PB meeting on January 12 when the Billboard site approval will be discussed? Here is the letter to the editor that TTT Treasurer Chuck Powers published on p. 10 of the new North Valley Suburbanite on 1/12/2017:
To the Editor of the Northern Valley Suburbanite:
Happily, Teaneck residents may normally (although there are exceptions) view in real time the Township Council’s meetings – on cable or by direct streaming on the internet. And they are also available on the Township website or by OPRA.
But many of the most important decisions affecting our town’s lives are made in Thursday night meetings of our two land use boards, Planning Board and Board of Adjustment. These meetings are not videotaped. Until recently, the audio tapes from them were in inaccessible software (until a resident’s insistence changed that).
That effectively means that we need to know about – and attend – key meetings of those boards where, again after citizen insistence, public input in Good and Welfare, is now on the agendas of both.
Does it really matter? Well, what about the meeting of the Planning Board tonight (January 12) at 8:00 in Council chambers where the site plan for an enormous 2-sided digital Route 4 billboard is up for approval? When/if approved, this billboard will soon be the gateway to our township and its formerly well-protected tree-lined Route 4 Greenbelt from Englewood through the town. Information about billboard specifics has been very sparse! But citizen input can be made tonight.
How many times have I heard residents say in the past month “when did we OK that huge new high-rise” that is emerging between Palisades and Queen Anne just north of State Street. The answer, I think, is in two meetings of the Board of Adjustment in the Fall of 2013. Given their significance, these meetings were in my judgment under-noticed and under-reported. I like many residents had missed the key decision points.
What is the Teaneck you want and chose and choose? Come tell your land use boards and at least be aware of what they are deciding in your behalf.
Chuck Powers
Teaneck
[201-214-4937]
