Can You Guess Which Kiryas Joel Developer Is Funding the Woodbury Democratic Committee?
A pattern of strange donations in 2023's race for Woodbury Village Trustee spell trouble for Woodbury residents and the future of ACE Farms in 2025.
Before we get too deep into today’s post, and in the name of bipartisanship, I want to direct your attention to something concerning the local Democrats in Woodbury.
I think it’s essential that, if I’m going to spend a few thousand words explaining why the local Democrats — with a few exceptions — would let the people in Woodbury and South Blooming Grove hang rather than do anything to help them — I should say something positive about one of those exceptions. Right?
Fair is fair.
There’s no political bias here. I hope at this point, if you’re reading this, that you’ve figured out I couldn’t care less what party someone belongs to.
I only care if that elected official, or municipal employee, is an asshole and in a position to hurt people.
If the answer is yes to both those questions: Are you an Asshole? Are you Hurting People?
Then my job as a journalist is to hold those influential people accountable and give voice to those who feel they have none. Or, to put it another way: My job is to stand up to the assholes.
That brings me back, briefly, to Mr. Tom Lapolla, who believes the 2020 Election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, and downplayed the events of January 6th in the following comment left in The Photo-News comments section:
For the record: Nothing said in the above statement by Mr. Lapolla is true. The protest at the Capitol that day was not “doing patriotic duty.'“ Don’t take my word for it. Watch the documentary:
Tom Lapolla Is A Far Right Christian Nationalist
Above: As you know, Dorey Houle knew about the hydrogen sulfide problem in the Village of Monroe and did nothing about it. Houle also knew about an oil spill impacting Lake Mombasha, and did nothing about it. Both issues fall squarely under her responsibilities as a Town Board member in Monroe and her duties as the Village of Monroe Liaison.
Mr. Lapolla, if elected, would represent most of Monroe, and Woodbury, in the 99th District. He has not appeared at a single Town or Village meeting, nor has he said a single word about Mr. Wayne Corts’s plan to turn the Falkirk Golf course into condominiums.
Nor has he said anything about the 2025 potential for annexing ACE Farms into the City of Kiryas Joel, which would see that land further developed during a time when we need to put protecting the climate above everything else.
I mean, unless you like the idea of New York getting hit with stronger hurricanes and other storms. Then, by all means, keep building like a bunch of idiots with these huge warehouse projects and condominiums.
It’s one thing to tell voters you’ll work to preserve the local environment; it’s another actually to make an effort to do so. Neither Houle nor Lapolla have made that effort.
Orange County residents residing in the 99th Assembly District (which includes Cornwall, Woodbury, most of Monroe, much of Palm Tree, and New Windsor) have a choice this Fall for their New York State Assembly seat.
That choice is between Chris Eachus, who is your current assemblyman and one of very few local Democrats worth a damn, and Tom Lapolla, the Republican. Mr. Lapolla represents a clear and present danger to the health and safety of all residents within the 99th District.
(Lapolla also wants to close America’s Southern Border, perhaps failing to realize that, here in New York, there’s actually a problem up on the Northern Border that requires our State’s attention. That’s something he, as Assemblyman, could work to fix, but he’s said nothing about the Northern Border here in our state, proving once again that the local Republicans blabbing on and on about the Southern Border are not actually serious about solving the issues surrounding immigration. If they did, they’d have nothing to run on.)
As dumb and incompetent as some of our local Republicans are (see: Houle, Dorey), Tom Lapolla’s brand of bullshit can also literally kill people.
So, if you have a brain and a heart, you are morally and ethically obligated to vote for Mr. Chris Eachus.
As Woodbury residents, and your local elected officials can attest, between Eachus and some of his Democratic contemporaries (see Skoufis, James G.), Eachus is the only one of your local Democrats who listens and is responsive on local matters.
For example, you’ll note that while Skoufis was trying to force a merger between the Village of Woodbury and Town of Woodbury — despite no resident asking for it — Eachus offered no support or endorsement of that Skoufis plan.
Eachus pays attention to what’s happening locally. Lapolla is out in space.
Lapolla is too busy complaining about the government telling men how to mow their lawns while simultaneously pushing for that same government to regulate what women can and can’t do with their bodies, which is part of his Christian Nationalist agenda for New York State. (Seriously. He’s got time to speak up at Monroe Village Board meetings to complain about rules governing your lawn, but no time to appear at any other meeting to speak up on literally any other issue facing local voters.)
No one in our region can seriously complain about the rampant violations of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, and New York State’s Constitutional Establishment Clause, by our Haredi friends and neighbors while simultaneously voting for Lapolla and other Christian Nationalists like JD Vance.
If you vote for Lapolla and Vance, and you complain about the Haredi, your hypocrisy is showing.
If I was on the Eachus campaign team, the lawn sign I would put next to all of Tom Lapolla’s signs would say “Fuck that guy” with an arrow pointing to Lapolla’s lawn litter.
You do what you gotta do, but if you’re going to vote for Tom Lapolla, I encourage you to get off this train now because you won’t like the direction The Monroe Gazette is heading in if Lapolla becomes an Assemblyman.
Around these parts, we take the separation of Church and State seriously, and I’m not going to allow any asshole to continue to erode it. Especially one that’s probably killed people thanks to his brand of vaccine misinformation.
“I Wanted To Do What’s Best for Woodbury”
Now, let’s get back to how terrible most of the local Democrats are … (I told you we were going to be fair.)
If you fast forward to 1:09:04 you’ll hear Trustee Matthew Fabbro give his comments at the close of the Woodbury Village Board meeting.
Before he wraps up, Trustee Fabbro says the following, “To Jimmy’s comments earlier, I’d like to reassure you, I ran for this board because I wanted to do what’s best for Woodbury, end of story. Nothing else. And I hope my voting record has maybe kind of given you some confidence towards that … direction.” He rambled on a bit further from there.
Now, here at The Monroe Gazette, we deal only in facts.
And the facts are that Fabbro and Freiband were voted into office entirely off the backs of votes from Highland Lake Estates and Woodbury Junction, which are predominantly Haredi neighborhoods. So much so that Grand Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum declared those neighborhoods to not be part of Woodbury anymore, but part of the City of Kiryas Joel.
That’s a fact.
Anyone can see that by looking up the voting results in Woodbury by District in the Fall 2023 election. Pay Attention to Districts 3 and 5, which are Woodbury Junction and Highland Lake Estates.
We also know that Fabbro has repeatedly lied about his communications with Senator Skoufis’s office about the unwanted and unpopular merger. This was only revealed after direct intervention, from the New York State Committee on Open Government, to get Fabbro to comply properly with a FOIL request concerning text messages he sent and received from Senator Skoufis. Fabbro repeatedly lied to The Monroe Gazette when questioned about his discussions with the Senators office about Skoufis’s proposed merger, and this was something witnessed by the other Village Board members copied on that email exchange.
That’s also a fact.
We also saw that Fabbro again repeatedly tried to derail the creation of the Woodbury Village Board Ethics Committee by claiming he didn’t want it to turn into a “political” tool. (In reality, Fabbro was well aware that the committee was going to investigate Trustee James Freiband, for a litanty of impeachable offenses, including violating the federal Establishment Clause.)
That’s a fact as well.
And just for fun, and because I was subject to this one myself, Trustee Fabbro brings his mother, Rhonda Fabbro to Village Board meetings, wherein she can be seen making faces, talking over people, and otherwise shit talking Woodbury residents any time one of them reaches the podium.
Mrs. Rhonda Fabbro has also donated $1,500 in September of 2024 to Tyler Etzel Jr.’s campaign for Village Woodbury Trustee. This contribution came under the name of the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats — Whom we’ll discuss in a moment — but the address listed for this contribution is the home address to Mr. and Mrs. Fabbro.
That’s a fact as well.
Perhaps not as damning as Trustees Fabbro and Freiband having to be dragged kicking and screaming to support the Building Moratorium in Woodbury, since the municipality doesn’t have a lot of water, but no less embarrassing and questionable.
(There are at least two wells coming on line in Woodbury; however, that does not at all address the larger issue of Orange County Sewer District 1 being overcapacity, to say nothing about its currently failing infrastructure. So, Woodbury residents are going to have to wait and see if Fabbro and Freiband vote in favor of the sewage moratorium.)
But if you think that’s the bottom of the list of reasons Woodbury residents have not to trust Trustee Matthew Fabbro, Trustee Freiband, and their running mates from the Woodbury Democratic Committee, Tyler Etzel Jr. and John U. Keleman, think again.
Meet Mayer Hirsch
Let’s wind the clock back to January 27th, 2004 and the first story to appear in the Times-Herald Record about the sale of ACE Farms, at the time, alleged to have been sold from Tyler Etzel Sr. to Ralph Petruzzo. As part of the transaction, Mr. Etzel Sr. and Tyler Etzel Jr. — now a candidate for Woodbury Village Trustee — also sold their respective homes to Petruzzo for $500,000 each. (That means, on top of the larger ACE Farms transaction, Mr. Etzel received additional money from Mr. Hirsch. But hold on. We’re getting ahead of ourselves …)
When asked why they decided to sell ACE Farms that year, Tyler Etzel Jr. told the Times Herald Record:
"It's getting worse and worse every year," he said. "You never know when a group of citizens is going to take over the board and make changes that are going to affect your plans."
Etzel Jr. said this, citing as the Record reported, a “fear that rising opposition to housing growth would some day result in more restrictive zoning rules that would lower the value of the land.” Huh. That’s interesting, don’t you think?
A couple of weeks later, the story surrounding the sale of ACE Farms grew.
Pinkus Jakobowitz, representing the dissident Kiryas Joel Alliance — where some members would later go on to form Keen Equities and be behind the Clovewood development in South Blooming Grove — wanted to purchase ACE Farms. Knowing that Tyler Etzel Sr. wouldn’t sell to the Haredi, he hired Wayne Corts, and Mr. Corts hired Mr. Ralph Petruzzo to be the middleman for the transaction. That’s according to the Times-Herald Record.
But Corts decided to screw over Mr. Jakobowitz. (Whether or not Mr. Jakobowitz is related to Bernard Jakobowitz, who sued the Village of South Blooming Grove and is currently behind the Capital Hill project de facto South Blooming Grove Mayor, Mr. Joel Stern, is pushing is unknown.)
Instead, Corts and Petruzzo sold the land to Mayer Hirsch. Hirsch previously served as the head of both the Zoning Board and Planning Board in Kiryas Joel. As the Times-Heralrd Record (THR) said about Mayer Hirsch, “He is described as a major property owner and powerful force in Kiryas Joel, operating behind the scenes.” So, we can factually say he’s part of Hanhallah.
Corts lied and claimed he had nothing to do with the transaction, which is something he only in recent years came around to admitting. Jakobowitz wanted to build 1,200 condos on ACE Farms. If that sounds familiar, it should, because that’s the exact number of units the Clovewood property in South Blooming Grove would feature if it’s constructed.
Now let’s fast forward to 2015, and Mayer Hirsch’s $250,000 campaign contributions to Governor Andrew Cuomo. During that time, Hirsch had purchased a large truck garage just off Route 17 through his company, 17-105 Holdings LLC. This is that big garage you see across from Larkin Drive, and it’s the location of any future expansion of Larkin Drive.
Something that today, in 2024, is desperately needed given the poor planning and proposed projects like Monroe Commons, which Monroe Town Supervisor Tony Cardone seems intent on ramming through despite the traffic implications for the high school, middle school, and elementary school nearby on Ninninger Road.
In its coverage of the transaction, the Times-Herald Record noted that Hirsch was the sole owner of this company and his home was listed as the same address as the LLC. Remember that LLC name, we’re going to come back to it in a minute.
During the same time as this transaction in Monroe, the THR reported that multiple other LLCs linked to Hirsch and his son had made a $250,000 contribution to Governor Cuomo on July 13th and 14th of 2015, less than a week after Cuomo had vetoed two bills that Hanhallah (Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum, Gedayle Segedin, Hirsch, and others in the leadership of Kiryas Joel) was loudly asking him to.
At the tail end of that article, the Record had directly linked Mayer Hirsch to Hanhallah by revealing his connection to Vaad Hakiryah, the land owning arm of Grand Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum’s congregation. It was Hirsch, with Vaad Hakiryah, that purchased ACE Farms, via Wayne Corts and Petruzzo for $12.7M.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but today in 2024, you have the annexation of ACE Farms on the horizon. And wouldn’t you know it, here is Mr Tyler Etzel Jr. running for Village Trustee. If either he or his runningmate, John U. Keleman, are successful, they would have a majority on the Woodbury Village Board. This would allow them to replace Chris Gerver, the current planning board chair, with disgraced planning Board member, Richard Cattagio.
That would mean, that Mr. Etzel, who directly benefitted financially from the sale of ACE Farm would then be able to gift his Dad’s farm to the City of Kiryas Joel for further development with the help of Trustee Fabbro — Who’s mom just gave Etzel a $1,500 campaign contribution via the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats— and Trustee Freiband.
Got all that?
The Woodbury Democrats Don’t Care About Climate Change
Imagine supporting any more building when we know preserving land is the best way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions at the local level.
Mayer Hirsch didn’t just magically vanish into the ether. Today, in 2024, he is the largest single contributor to the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats that: 1) Was not a candidate himself for office and 2) Is the only LLC to make a contribution of over $1,000. (In fact, the contribution was $1,200 and came via 17-105 HOLDINGS LLC on October 23rd, 2023. Just days prior to election day for Trustee Fabbro and Trustee Freiband.)
$1,200 may not sound like a lot, but on the local level involving candidates for Town Boards and Village Trustees, it’s a huge amount of money. It’s rare that you see anything over $1,000 in local campaigns like that.
And the other odd thing is that, on that very same day, Wayne Corts — whom we know factually has a business connection with Mr. Hirsch — donated $500 to the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats. This was, and at least until the Campaign Disclosures are released for October, remains the only time Mr. Hirsch and Mr. Corts gave to this committee, which itself is incredibly odd.
You know who else kicked in a lot of money to that same committee in 2023 while not on the ballot himself? Tyler Etzel Jr.
In July of 2023, Tyler Etzel Jr. donated $1,500 to the committee, the only other donation he made to this committee was back in 2019.
So here, in 2023, you have Etzel donating $1,500, Corts donating $500, and Hirsch donating $1,200.
And in 2024, you have the Committee donating that same amount of $1,500 to Tyler Etzel Jr. using the home address of Trustee Fabbro’s mother and father.
Again. Are those big numbers for New York State politics? Nope.
But are they big numbers for a Village Board election? You bet your ass they are.
And here’s another odd thing: The largest single donation to the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats EVER was $2,000, provided on October 8th 2015 by … James Freiband.
So, one has to wonder why, ten years later, right in time for discussions involving the annexation of ACE Farm into the City of Kiryas Joel, we saw the following large donations over the course of a single year:
-Etzel’s $1,500 contribution
-Corts’s $500 contribution
-Hirsch’s $1,200 contribution
-Fabbro’s $1,500 contribution
When you work as a journalist, it’s important to share that once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern, and three times is a crime and/or a conspiracy.
So, one thing is clear from all this: The local Democrats in Woodbury — with the sole exception of Chris Eachus — are not on the side of most of the Town and Village of Woodbury residents.
Most of you have expressed your desire to preserve land and use that method to help fight Climate Change. Clearly, the local Democrats disagree.
Given the devastation we just saw from Hurricane Helene, it’s hard to imagine a group of Democrats ignoring all that harm and working on behalf of wealthy real estate developers like Mr. Corts and Mr. Hirsch, but here we are.