On the first Tuesday of November, citizens from across Tenafly will vote for members of the Tenafly Council in a general election, and Julie O’Connor wants your vote.
Who is Julie O’Connor? She is a dedicated middle school teacher at Cliffside park and a mother of two twins, Johnny and Gwyneth O’Connor, who attend Tenafly High School. O’Connor’s commitment to her family and community is strong, and she has served on the Tenafly council since the pandemic, doing much work for the community.
Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Julie O’Connor about her motivations and aspirations for the Tenafly council, and most importantly, to get to know more about her.
Having lived in Tenafly for about 25 years, O’Connor has spent a large portion of time within this community. As a proud pedestrian, she enjoys walking around and connecting with her neighbors. She shared that for most of her life, she had run away from her responsibility to her community. Her realization that it was time for her to give back to help the friends and family that surrounded her inspired her to join the council and get involved.
O’Connor has numerous accomplishments on her record. Some of which she is most proud of are her environmental contributions such as the Tree Code. The tree code is a way for Tenafly to redistribute money gained from tree cutting via penalties. Whenever a profit is made from a tree being cut down, it is penalized and some money is put into a tree fund which is used to plant more trees. Since its implementation, over one hundred trees have been planted at the Tenafly Nature Center. O’Connor looks forward to continuing to strengthen this program in the coming year on the council.
Another environmental initiative that O’Connors is proud of is the composting program. Each week, dozens of families subscribe to the program, helping to divert food waste from landfills. Since its inception, 20,000 pounds of food waste have been transformed into compost with only 50 participating families. O’Connor hopes to grow and promote its audience in her coming term.
Lastly, another environmental impact she has addressed was the issue of pesticides. Over a year ago, she spoke with the director of the Tenafly Nature Center about the environmental hazards of SGAR pesticides. SGARs are poisons that target rodents by entering their bloodstream and killing them. However, this poison can quickly spread through the food chain, contaminating other animals that have eaten the affected rodents. To create a safer way of mitigating the population of rodents while minimizing environmental harm, O’Connor and the Nature Center director have worked to replace SGARs with contrapests, which specifically target fertility and prevent rats and mice from reproducing.
Beyond her environmental focuses, O’Connor dedicates a large amount of time to ensuring the comfort and safety of Tenafly’s community. Joining the committee during Covid, O’Connor felt the community’s yearning to grieve their losses. To residents during this difficult time, she organized an area for a Covid memorial in David Johnson Park for people to pay their respects to their loved ones they lost to the pandemic.
More recently, O’Connor organized a gathering to celebrate Tenafly’s new sister city, Seneca Falls, New York, in honor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the fight for women’s suffrage. On September 29th, Julie O’Connor and Kathy Jans-Duffy, the town judge of Tyre, hosted the celebration at Borough Hall, near Seneca Falls. They have ambitions of eventually getting Tenafly to become a part of the National Park for Women’s Rights.
In addition, she has helped plan a Juneteenth celebration and recognized an Indian holiday. O’Connor believes in the importance of cultural diversity, stating, “Diversity is our strength.”. It’s one of the big reasons why these social events are incredibly important to her: to highlight the vast diversity of Tenafly and its history.
For this upcoming term, Julie aims to expand her existing programs while addressing other points of concern. For one, she makes a point to acknowledge issues of taxes and flooding raised from her neighbors. Even the smaller requests, like, “We need garbage garbage pails in this part of town!” she added, were of concern. More specifically, O’Connor wants to improve the downtown area and increase pedestrian safety. “You’ll always see me walking around,” she said. “I live by Stillman School so I’m always walking to town and back.” Thus, it is of great interest that she ensures pedestrian safety. As a part of this initiative, a traffic light will be installed at the corner of Clinton Inn Hotel, along with a new traffic pattern, to improve safety. She hopes to implement even more safety measures in the future.
She also wants more opportunities for passive and active recreation in Tenafly. For example, a new skate park will be added soon in the old Swim Club. The plans include raised flower beds to accommodate those with mobility issues, as well as community gardening with interests of planting flowers that attract pollinators like monarch butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds, which are declining in population. Additionally, there are plans to expand the dog park.
To conclude, O’Connor emphasizes the importance of high school students engaging in local and political matters. “Democracy is not a spectator sport,” she commented, stressing how important it is for young people to protect their interests. Elder representatives and voters may not hold the same things valuable as younger people in terms of politics, so O’Connor believes it is so important that seniors in high school who are eligible to vote do so, and advocate for their interests for the community.
Overall, “[O’Connor is] looking for ways to assist and help our community in a healthy and productive way.” For people of all ages, genders, and even for animals, O’Connor always has everyone’s intentions at heart, and hopes to be able to represent Tenafly as a councilwoman and continue to defend its interests.
