Cattagio and Panella Out At Village of Woodbury Shakeup, Is Freiband Next?

Highlights from the May 23rd, 2024 Woodbury Village Board Meeting including two controversial figures resigning from their roles with the Village.

If you watched the May 23rd, 2024, Woodbury Village Board meeting, you may have missed a pretty major announcement. I did the first time I saw it, with all the back and forth involving Trustee James Freiband. So I went back to watch the meeting a second time and, yes, we can now confirm:

Building Inspector Michael Panella and Village Planning Board member, Richard Cataggio, have resigned from their respective positions in the Village.

During the meeting, Mr. Cattagio was replaced on the Planning Board by former Woodbury Village Trustee, Christopher Graziano.

I can’t say for certain how much The Monroe Gazette’s reporting had on these resignations, but I can say that The Photo-News didn’t mention these changes at all.

Something to keep in mind when it comes to choosing where you get your local news from.

Another thing to keep in mind: I won’t run advertising on The Gazette because of potential violations of the Society of Professional Journalist guidelines, guidelines The Photo-News recently ran afoul of. I’m a member of the SPJ and follow their code of ethics.

Now, originally, I was going to do this whole feature-length piece about Cattagio. Specifically about how he was allegedly using his position on the Village Planning Board, to pressure and otherwise persuade Mr. Panella, from looking into matters involving Highland Lakes Estate.

Now that both men are gone, completing that investigation seems pointless.

The goal was to expose their alleged wrong doings, and hopefully, that would be enough to get them out of office.

That’s happened.

But Mr. Richard Cattagio still sits on the Board of Highland Lake Estates, and he is still the subject of a New York State Department of Human Rights Violation.

One that was filed against him, Shulem Perl, Joel Tirnouer, and Lazar Friedman. The latter three being fellow Board Members of Highland Lake Estates with Mr. Cattagio.

So today, we’re going to take a look at what went down during this May 23rd, 2024 Woodbury Village Board meeting, the announcement of the change involving Panella and Cattagio, and Mr. Freiband’s reaction to it.

Mr. Freiband’s reaction is worth discussing because Mr. Freiband, along with syrup proprietor Tyler Etzel Jr., and Republican turned Democrat, John Kelemen, are looking to take over the Woodbury Village Board and turn the Village (and Town) into the next South Blooming Grove.

Part of that plan is alleged to have involved appointing Mr. Richard Cattagio as Chair of the Woodbury Village Planning Board.

What do I mean by “The Next South Blooming Grove?”

There, you have two people (Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein) making decisions at the direction of hanhallah, and those decisions do not at all reflect the wishes of the haredi and non-haredi members of the larger community.

In fact, with the news concerning the illegal paving of Route 208, and the Department of Transportation undoing that paving, you can see a great example of this.

Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein are not providing any information to the English speaking members of the community about the situation, while simultaneously lying to the Yiddish speaking members of the community about what’s going on with the road.

The following is from the latest issue of The Blooming Grove Report, an official publication of The Village of South Blooming Grove.

In this issue, the Department of Transportation is depicted erroneously as the culprit for all the chaos going on with Route 208.

This is typical of communications from Mr. Joel Stern, where he tends to badmouth everyone and anyone to get what he wants. To this day, representatives of The Village of South Blooming Grove refuse to acknowledge or speak about the existence of The Blooming Grove Report or provide any information about the author of its contents.

That means I can’t say for certain (yet) that Mr. Joel Stern is the author, but I can say the style and writing matches his typical methods of communication: Blame others. Talk about how great you’re doing. Hope that nobody notices.

So, when I say, Mr. Freidband, Mr. Keleman, and Mr. Etzel Jr. — along with their accomplice, Orange County Democratic Committee Chair Zak Constantine — want to turn Woodbury into South Blooming Grove, that’s what I mean.

This is bad for all members of the community, regardless of what language we speak and how we would like to practice our respective faith or lack thereof.

For one thing, think about all the taxpayer money that was wasted, both on behalf of residents of South Blooming Grove, but also New York State residents, to pave and then undo that paving of Route 208.

The high taxes are often cited by New York State Democrats, like James Skoufis, as the reason to not support needed legislation such as the land preservation fee.

But our taxes wouldn’t be so high if we had competent elected officials looking out for the best interests of all residents, instead of playing them against each other. (In Monroe, we have a Town Supervisor who is very good at wasting those tax dollars.)

For another reason, village residents of all backgrounds and faiths are being lied to about it through a village funded publication.

So, today, we’re going to revisit the May 23rd Woodbury Village meeting, and then this week, I’m going to share with you everything I was able to put together on Mr. Cattagio concerning the Human Rights Violation specifically.

My hope is that this coverage will be enough information for Woodbury residents to request Mr. Cattagio step down from his role on the Highland Lake Estates Board.

And yes, we will be talking about the issues with Route 208 in detail later this week. Because there’s much more going on there than the Village of South Blooming Grove trying to add a turn lane.

Unfortunately, covering news in Southern Orange County is a bit like putting a fire house right in front of my face. It can be difficult to keep up with everything. But I’ll do my best. Even if it takes me a little while to get to everything.

Now let’s discuss …

This meeting’s video was broken up into two parts. Much of the first part deals with the planned Senior Housing complex that’s been under discussion since at least 2021.

Highland Mills Center Group LLC (Moses Braver) owns land in Highland Mills. He is looking to build senior housing, known as Woodbury Pointe at Highland Mills, on the land at 590 Route 32.

Mr. Braver is the CEO of Brave Strategies LLC, and is currently being sued for allegedly misleading Ester and Ben Aronson concerning the risks involved with purchasing life insurance.

This property is next door to the Lakeside Villages trailer park. It’s a five minute walk to Jay’s Deli. The problem is, Route 32 has heavy truck traffic and a problem with people speeding on it.

There is a near zero possibility of most seniors making it safely across Route 32 to get to the deli or other locations without some kind of traffic mishap.

The primary issues discussed at this meeting concerned the proposed development’s impact on flooding and traffic. Both are issues that have grown much worse since the Senior Housing project was first proposed for Woodbury.

The flooding, in particular, is a major challenge every Hudson Valley community now faces due to Climate Change.

Confusingly, Woodbury and South Blooming Grove, both operating on water restrictions, are also more prone to drought conditions as well. That’s because the Summers are going to be longer, hotter, and drier, while the Fall and Spring storms — as well as Hurricanes — are now far more powerful than they once were.

At the moment, there does not seem to be an adequate rain water capture and recycling project that would solve both the drought and water restriction problems in Southern Orange County.

Here’s what I want to share about these issues: Nobody is coming to help us solve these problems.

The federal government is the only entity with the power to take on Climate Change and, thus far, their response has been mostly half-assed.

The State talks out of both sides of its mouth, telling people that it has climate targets it wants to hit, but then actively fights legislation that would help the State meet those targets.

So, if you live in Southern Orange County and all points beyond, you have to speak up. You have to go to these meetings. You have to get involved. You have to run for office. Because nobody is coming to help solve these challenges for us.

Speaking of, Chris Maderia will be running for Village Trustee over in South Blooming Grove in the Spring of 2025. I hope many more Monroe Gazette readers will follow his example in their local municipalities.

Part 2 of the meeting begins with Trustee Freiband complaining about the Five Minute Rule. During the last Village Board meeting, Freiband got up and left the room while Jimmy Ng was speaking.

According to the New York State Coalition for Open Government, 83% of local municipalities in New York do NOT have any sort of time limit for how long members of the public can speak.

Only 17% of Towns and Villages (including Woodbury, Monroe, and South Blooming Grove) have such a time limit.

Residents of Southern Orange County should ask their local municipalities why we’re out of step with the rest of New York State in allowing our residents to speak up at public meetings.

Mr. Freiband is not only out of step with the rest of the Woodbury Village Board of Trustees, he is also out of step with 83% of municipalities in New York State in demanding that this rule be enforced.

At 4:43 of Part 2, we get the announcement concerning the departure of Mr. Cattagio from the Woodbury Village Planning Board.

He is not mentioned by name. Instead, the mayor states that there’s a vacancy on the Village Planning Board, and he’s nominating former Trustee Graziano to fill that role.

This term for Graziano would start June 1st and end May 31st, 2029. Trustee Freiband and Trustee Fabbro voted against this appointment.

Mr. Fabbro didn’t elaborate on why he opposed this appointment. Mr. Freiband didn’t either, but given that he planned to appoint Mr. Cattagio to Village Planning Board Chair upon winning two seats on the Board of Trustees, this wasn’t a surprise.

No other mention was made at the meeting concerning Mr. Cattagio’s resignation, beyond a quick thanks from the Mayor at the end of the meeting for his years of service on the Planning Board. This is the only time Mr. Cattagio’s name was mentioned in the entire meeting.

At 5:49 of Part 2, we get the announcement from the Mayor that Building Inspector, Mike Panella, has also submitted his resignation, effective June 6th (this Thursday.) Trustee Freiband asked if there was a statement given concerning Panella’s resignation, but none was given by Panella in his letter.

Little mention was made at the meeting concerning Mr. Panella’s resignation, but residents did ask about what the ramifications were of his departure. For example, Mr. Steven Gargano asked about what happens with all the information he submitted concerning the flooding he’s experiencing on Oakland Avenue. He was told the respective departments still have all the information he submitted.

Almost every speaker during Public Comment made sure to take Trustee Freiband to task for his behavior at the last meeting. When given an opportunity to speak during Board Comments, Mr. Freiband did not apologize to Mr. Ng, despite numerous requests to do so during this meeting.

Trustee Susan Fries-Ciriello called out Freiband over his lack of consistency with the five minute rule, stating that Gargano spoke for 25 minutes while Mr. Ng spoke only for seven minutes. Freiband only got up and left while Mr. Ng was speaking.

She also pointed out that Mr. Freiband’s behavior of getting up and leaving, during Mr. Ng’s comments, to have a private conversation with Mr. Gargano during a public meeting, potentially opens the village up for lawsuits. I reached out to the Village Attorney to clarify what potential lawsuits the village could face through Mr. Freiband’s actions, but she did not reply at the time of this writing.

I have a project coming up where I’m going to go back and watch every Village Board meeting since Freiband joined and share with you the numerous (and continuing) violations of the Village of Woodbury’s Ethics Code. I think there’s more than enough at this point for the Village to investigate and remove him.

More on the Cattagio story soon.

P.S. Who Poisoned The Bear?

I don’t know. The mayor’s mention at the tail end of the meeting was the first I heard about this. So I’ve asked for further information about this incident.