Forum airs views of eight hopefuls

By Jack O'Shea for The Suburbanite

The Teaneck Suburbanite, April 12, 2000, p.9

The eight candidates for three open seats on the Teaneck Township Council promoted their personal qualifications for the jobs, outlined their visions of what Teaneck must become in the time ahead, analyzed its current problems and offered solutions at a Candidates Forum last Wednesday evening, Apr. 5 at the Rodda Center.

The Candidates for the May 9 election in the order in which they spoke at the forum were Michael Roth, Seymour Rappoport, Marie Warnke, Michael Pagan, David Bacall, Jacqueline Kates, David Herenstein and Debra Veach.

Dr. Henry Pruitt, retired Englewood school system principal and a Teaneck resident, moderated the three-hour discussion attended by an audience of more than 100 residents.

The issues discussed by the candidates included ways to seek tax revenue-producing commercial and residential development projects that do not impact negatively on neighborhood or township quality-of-life; how to reduce municipal operating costs, 90 percent of which are financed by residential taxes because Teaneck has a small industrial tax base; how to improve municipal services described by some candidates as unsatisfactory; and ways and means of revitalizing the Cedar Lane shopping district. Most favored all these initiatives.

The format permitted each candidate to answer questions from the audience and, while Pruitt moderated effectively and even-handedly, the format permitted verbose and loquacious showcasing of candidates' hopes and aspirations rather than sharply pointed intentions.

In summary, the candidates and the central points they made included these:

Roth, a financial analyst and 30-year Teaneck resident, said municipal services are inferior, especially children's recreational services and programs. He favors finding tax-producing ratables compatible with Teaneck's image and quality-of-life. He is president of his Orthodox synagogue.

Rappoport, a 24-year resident, community activist and licensed engineer with his own company, advocated a sharpened new Master Plan to establish priorities for the local government, reduce expenses and taxes and improve services. He would sell unused township-owned property to private developers.

One such is the area under the Windsor Road bridge. He favors tax relief for seniors and opposes construction of a 47-unit apartment complex across from the Post Office.

Warnke, a veteran Board of Education member and a teacher in Franklin Lakes, urged changes in the state's Blue Laws to permit Orthodox Jewish storekeepers on Cedar Lane who must closed on the Sabbath, to stay open on Sundays to recover their losses. She is running to seek wider opportunities for public service and would work to cut taxes and make the Township Council more responsive to residents' problems.

Pegan, a youthful newspaperman and Democratic Party State Assembly press officer, said he's found the council unresponsive to residents' problems, rebuffing and holding critics at arms length.

He would work to change that attitude and also to upgrade now-inferior municipal services.

Bacall, a Ramapo College student who has worked to improve racial understanding in the township, is soliciting the views of residents and storekeepers to identify chronic and change-resistant problems which he would address if elected.

Kates, who is deputy mayor, cited her 27 years of community and government service, including election to the school board and the Township Council and her energetic work in human relations advisory groups helping to interlink Teaneck's 43 different ethnic groups. She favors affordable housing, stabilizing taxes, revitalizing the retail shopping district on Cedar Lane and improving municipal services.

Herenstein, an attorney and financial analyst, stressed the necessity of cutting taxes, working for compatible new development, questioned the wisdom of recent council capital expenditures as on the new Department of Public Works building and said he felt it a mistake to even contemplate erecting a new Municipal Building. Tax-saving renovations of the existing building are preferable.

Veach is a former assistant district attorney in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, a Teanecck Parent Teachers Organization and League of Women Voters activist who had a leadership role in mandating seat belts on school buses and started the Teaneck Farmers' Market. She would work to revitalize Teaneck's 23 parks, work for more suitable development ratables, work jointly with the school board to cut taxes via joint purchasing plans, revitalize the town's Master Plan, create more parking space in all business districts in town and seek to create a public relations office in local government.

In response to a newsman's question as to how candidates would keep aggressive, skilled police, fire and Teanecks' union bargainers from negotiating contracts with the township that escalate taxes annually without necessarily raising production, most dodged the question and showered praises on the competence of the three agencies in obvious pursuit of their support.

Warnke even declared that productivity was not declining until reminded that raising productivity, not decline, was the question.

Only Pagan, Herenstein and Rappoport seemed to have a practical understanding of the magnitude of the problem with Pagan again urging as he had ealier that Teaneck make use of the state Budget Review System that has shown other towns how to meet these and other problems and cut municipal costs.

At the conlcusion of the forum the reaction of the audience imparted to Pruitt was generally favorable.

Sponsors of the forum were block associations including the Voorhees Avenue Association, the Bogert Street Association, the Friends of Tryon Park and the Renssalaer Road-Irene Court Association.

Other such forums are scheduled Apr. 24 by the AARP at the Rodda Center and May 3 by the League of Women Voters at the Library.

The three council seats are open because Kates' term is up and she is seeking re-election and veteral Council Members Eleanor Kieliszek and Mel Henderson are retiring.