Carol Silverman-Kurtz Wants Tenafly to Listen and Plan Deliberately

Carol Silverman-Kurtz walked past the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House nearly every school day growing up, a block from her own front door, on her way first to Maugham School and later to Tenafly Middle School and Tenafly High School. She didn't think much of it at the time. Now she talks about that walk as the kind of everyday inheritance she wants Tenafly to hold onto, and it's a piece of why she's seeking one of two open seats on the borough council this cycle. Her campaign is built less around a single signature issue than around a governing style: slower, more transparent, and rooted in a lifetime spent in town.

A Childhood Built Around the Schools

Kurtz has lived in Tenafly since early childhood, after her parents left the Upper West Side looking for a strong school system, open green space, and a suburban life still close to Manhattan. She went through Maugham School, then Tenafly Middle School, then graduated from Tenafly High School a decade after she started at Maugham. She describes herself as a direct beneficiary of that education, and says the town has given her so much over the course of her life, a debt she frames her campaign as an attempt to repay.

Her path into this specific race came through her existing civic network. She was encouraged to run by a friend who had in turn been recruited by another friend, someone who recognized her years of civic engagement in town and beyond. It is a low-key origin story for a campaign, less a sudden decision than an extension of work she says she was already doing.

Character, Green Space, and Tenafly's Own History

Asked what preserving Tenafly's character actually means in practice, Kurtz didn't reach for an abstract answer. She pointed to specific places: the monument at Roosevelt Commons, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton railroad station. The Stanton house carries a personal weight for her. She grew up a block above it and walked past it daily on her way to all three of her schools. Stanton lived in Tenafly from 1868 to 1887, and during those years she, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage collaborated on the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, published between 1881 and 1885.

Kurtz paired that historical framing with an ecological one. She named the Tenafly Nature Center and Davis Johnson Park and Gardens as the borough's most visible green spaces, and argued that Tenafly's location along the Palisades makes it a genuine ecological sanctuary, not just a scenic amenity, given the flora and fauna the area supports.

The Issue That Never Goes Away

With decades of perspective on the town, Kurtz didn't single out one problem when asked what Tenafly residents face most. She named four, in the same breath: property taxes that keep climbing, the tension between new development and neighborhood character, protecting school quality without losing sight of taxpayer cost, and making sure every resident, across a diverse and vibrant community, actually feels seen in town decisions. She treats these less as separate issues than as four faces of the same underlying question about how Tenafly grows and who it grows for.

On development specifically, Kurtz said balancing growth with neighborhood character is a top priority for her campaign. Her concern is pace. Tenafly has been actively revising its redevelopment plans in recent years, largely to meet New Jersey's affordable housing obligations, and the borough has adopted or considered several related ordinances and resolutions. Proposed development touching downtown parking areas has drawn public opposition. Kurtz's read is that decisions are moving at lightning speed without enough pause to weigh the consequences, a complaint common to Bergen County towns navigating the state's housing mandates, but one she ties specifically to Tenafly's own ordinance calendar rather than treating as a generic anti-growth talking point.

On taxes, her position is that Tenafly doesn't need new levies so much as a wider tax base and tighter spending. She wants strict municipal budget discipline, development that protects neighborhood character while still generating new revenue, and full enrollment of every eligible senior in the state's property tax freeze programs. She frames these as compatible goals rather than trade-offs, arguing the town can stay premier, safe, and truly affordable if it pursues all three at once rather than picking one.

What a Swim Club Says About a Town

Asked about community spaces, Kurtz didn't talk policy first. She talked about the Tenakill and Tenafly Swim Clubs, both mainstays in town for more than sixty years before they closed. She described them as places where generations of residents cooled off in summer, learned to swim, competed in meets, and got to know neighbors and classmates. For Kurtz, that history illustrates what she thinks community infrastructure is actually for, not just recreation, but the ordinary contact between neighbors that a town needs to hold together. It is a theme she treats as inseparable from her broader argument about preserving green space and historic sites. All three, in her framing, are forms of the same civic inheritance she is running to protect.

A Transparency Platform With Specifics

If elected, Kurtz said her first-year priority would be making sure residents know what's happening in local decision-making while it's still happening, not after ordinances are already adopted. Her stated goal is for residents to feel their input genuinely matters rather than watching decisions arrive pre-decided behind closed doors. Her proposed fix is structural: standing advisory groups covering a youth council, a senior advisory group, and rotating citizen committees built to hear from renters as well as homeowners, and from long-time residents as well as newer arrivals.

Her broader transparency answer got even more specific. She wants council meeting videos timestamped to individual agenda items and ordinances, so residents don't have to sit through hours of footage to find the ten minutes that affect them. She called the borough's municipal website static and said it needs to be reorganized so public documents are easier to find. She also pointed to Facebook and Instagram as underused tools for short, real-time updates that could reach residents a monthly newsletter never will.

Governing Record and the Ten-Year Picture

Asked what the borough does well versus what it should improve, Kurtz credited the current council with open space preservation, low crime, and general stewardship. She was more pointed about what needs work: downtown revitalization, oversight of major projects and budgets, and modernizing town infrastructure and facilities. Her ten-year vision for Tenafly follows directly from that list. She described a revitalized, walkable downtown, wider sidewalks, dedicated bike lanes, strict environmental protections for the town's trees and parkland, and governance that stays transparent by default rather than by request.

Closing Argument

Asked what she most wants voters to know about her candidacy, Kurtz was direct about her motive. She said she isn't running for status or a resume line, but because she believes in the values behind the campaign as lived commitments rather than slogans: strong public schools, inclusion and respect for every resident, environmental stewardship, fiscal responsibility paired with compassion, and governance that is transparent and ethical by habit, not by exception.

That combination, a long personal history in town paired with specific, checkable proposals like timestamped council videos and standing advisory committees, is the case Kurtz is making for why Tenafly should send her to the council.