STATEMENT BY COUNCILMAN ADAM GUSSEN:

Having listened carefully tonight I am deeply saddened for Teaneck by the disingenuous comments, statements, and misinformation by the leadership of Teaneck United.  These attempts to obfuscate the real political issues which voters must decide with manufactured issues of race and gender are despicable.

The most crucial responsibility for any council member is to decide on budget and taxation issues protecting residents' dollars.  How I or any councilmember votes on these issues is not only fair game in an election, it is an essential element voters must weigh.  To voice outrage against being held accountable for one's voting record is the epitome of hubris.

For a key leader of this group to harass and intimidate Teaneck residents and merchants by threatening bodily harm and economic boycotts for voicing their support of other candidates while espousing the ideals of transparency and unity is unfathomable.  What tonight's meeting shows is that this group and their candidates care less about Teaneck and more about their own grasping for power. 

From watching this campaign unfold it is clear that Teaneck United will not allow fact or evidence to get in the way of their divisive rhetoric.

Last night at a community meeting held by Teaneck United, Councilwoman Honis said that sending her back to council in July without her running mates is like sending her to the gas chamber. This comment coming just days after the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day.  The level of cultural insensitivity of Teaneck United culminated in Honis' unabashed, insensitive, cruel and unacceptable words comparing this body (the Council) to the gas chambers. 

I now feel obligated to demand Councilwoman Honis' resignation and a public apology for the insult and injury her senseless words last night have caused.  I also call on her running mate the ethicist Dr. Toffler to stand up and denounce these hurtful words of her running mate.

Teaneck cannot sit quietly by and allow these tragically mean-spirited words to go unaddressed.