If You Can't Do What You Were Elected To Do, Resign
Why won't Orange County tell us about the status of South Blooming Grove's water emergency, and how to stop the theocracy from taking over both Woodbury and SBG.
What happens when a federal Congressman (Pat Ryan), State Senator (James Skoufis), and local officials (Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus) abandon their responsibility to protect their constituents from greedy real estate developers?
You get this story from Woodbury and South Blooming Grove in upstate New York.
Above: Yet another unapproved building project, this one off Route 208 in South Blooming Grove, floods due to our increasing heavy rains from climate change. This is the future of our region if we don’t take massive collective action to stop it.
Let’s Start With The Local News Before Getting Into The National Consequences
I've spent the last few weeks focused on some information gathering in Woodbury. I have one last FOIL request — which I can't say what it is publicly in the event certain parties try to circumvent it — and I am waiting to hear from the Woodbury Village Attorney, Kelly Naughton, on something related to the IMA.
(IMA stands for Intermunicipal Agreement, and you can read the one currently in place between the Village and Town of Woodbury here. On Monday, August 12th, 2024, over at Woodbury Town Hall (lower level), 615 Rt 32 at 6pm, the Town Board and two City of Kiryas Joel Village of Woodbury Trustees, James Freiband and Matthew Fabbro will join the Town Board in discussing the IMA. Village Trustee Susan Fries-Ciriello will also be present to participate in this farce. But just to be clear, there’s only one Village representative there with a brain, and it’s not Trustees Fabbro and Freiband.)
Unfortunately for all of us, New York State's FOIL law has some glaring weaknesses, and there's one specific weakness that could be exploited here to stop this specific FOIL request.
It's my sincere hope that our three challengers for the New York State Senate seat propose a plan to strengthen the FOIL law and add consequences for public officials — State Senators and Governors included — who do not comply with requests from the public in a timely fashion.
If you were to highlight the lack of FOIL compliance by Palm Tree / Kiryas Joel, South Blooming Grove, and the Town of Monroe — and that’s just in Orange County, you don’t even want to know how things work in Rockland — you'd have a winning campaign position. One based on how you intend to stop these municipalities from circumventing that law.
Ditto with Governor Kathy Hochul, who, as of this writing, has not complied with a FOIL request of her own from The Monroe Gazette for over 137 days (and counting)
On the Woodbury Village Attorney front — the Woodbury Town Attorney has refused to respond to multiple requests for comment — I'm trying to determine whether or not the Town is CHOOSING to sue the Village, despite their fiduciary responsibility to all Town residents or if such a lawsuit is automatically triggered by the IMA expiring.
The purpose of such a lawsuit by the Town against the Village would be to keep possession of what's now a poorly run animal shelter and a police department with potential activity that could rise to the level of pension fraud.
So let's be clear about what's happening, because if this is not stopped, this is how Woodbury becomes the next South Blooming Grove:
This current Town Board drove the Animal Shelter into the ground.
The current Town Board has let Chief Watson's alleged private contracts dictate how he enforces the law.
Previous Town Boards have also allowed select members of the police force to participate in what very much looks like pension fraud. The current Town Board refuses to answer questions about whether or not this fraud is ongoing.
Those are all facts.
And if that doesn't sound like an argument for a Comptroller investigation, and maybe even intervention by the State Attorney General, I don't know what does. I mean, short of literally all the criminal activity being done by the Village of South Blooming Grove right now.
(Speaking of which, here’s a fun fact: State Senator Skoufis's office doesn't think South Blooming Grove’s de facto Mayors, Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein, are criminals. Do what you will with that information, but remember that Mr. Ekstein and Mr. Stern donated $25,000 to Mr. Skoufis in 2022.)
Shockingly, the Town of Woodbury is considering suing to keep both those departments running as they currently are, despite the clear detriment to all Woodbury taxpayers, not to mention the health and safety of our four-legged friends.
If there is no legal mechanism triggering a lawsuit between the Town and Village, any lawsuit brought by the Town against the Village would be a willful act by your elected representatives.
A willful act by Town Board members in clear violation of their fiduciary responsibility to you as taxpayers.
I don't exactly see people lining up at Town Board meetings demanding the Town sue the Village over keeping the Animal Shelter and Police.
Do you?
Yes. The Town Board wore stupid t-shirts two weeks in a row, but you'll notice no member of the public did the same. That alone speaks volumes about who the Town Board intends to represents: Themselves. Not the people.
The t-shirts also clearly demonstrated the core issue in Woodbury: That the Town Board feels empowered to do whatever it wants despite what the people who elected them want them to do.
If that sounds exactly like South Blooming Grove, that’s because it is indeed the exact same situation. There’s no difference between South Blooming Grove Mayor George Kalaj and Woodbury Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani. In the words of South Blooming Grove Mayor George Kalaj, when pressed by concerns raised by residents of the community, “it is what it is.”
And “what it is” is a problem on every level of government
Why?
Because when you're elected to public office, your job is to represent all the people, not just those who elected you.
A lesson that was highlighted by former Senator John McCain when he conceded the presidential race to President Barack Obama back in 2008:
In the case of the Town Board in Woodbury (and Village Trustees Fabbro and Freiband), receiving the majority of your votes from Rebbe Teitelbaum's neighborhoods does not give you a free pass to ignore the rest of your constituents.
That's not how the government works.
If you cannot follow this simple rule — to represent all the people, and not just the people who elected you — then you should not be allowed to continue to govern.
Once those two things I'm waiting on have happened — I hear back from the Village Attorney and the last FOIL is completed, I will be heads down on Woodbury for a bit and will share with you a feature-length article.
(It's going to be long. People who don't enjoy the super long articles should brace themselves in advance.)
Next week, we'll be turning our attention back to South Blooming Grove.
There's a lot happening there, and unfortunately, very little information coming out of Orange County concerning the water and sewage situation.
When pressed for comment—with a few exceptions—Orange County officials repeatedly redirect me to the County Executive's press office, and then the County Executive does not respond.
For example: Is South Blooming Grove currently in compliance with the multiple violations issued to them by the Orange County Department of Health concerning their water emergency?
I don't know.
Why Don't I Know?
The Orange County Department of Health won't answer that question when asked directly by The Monroe Gazette.
Instead, they'll send me to the County Executive spokesperson, who will, in turn, not respond to questions like that one.
So, either they don't know themselves, or they're being incredibly disingenuous and don't want to comment on a situation that they know is bad, and only going to get worse.
I hope people in Cornwall, Woodbury, and Monroe are paying attention to Orange County’s response, or lack thereof.
What I can tell you is that South Blooming Grove has actively informed its Yiddish-speaking residents that everything is fine on the water front and that they have found new wells — while simultaneously saying nothing to English-speaking residents and their own consultants saying to the Village that they simply don't have enough water.
So, no. They do not have new wells to tap into.
They *might* have one well operational in 2027, but only if the testing of those potential test wells finds that one of them is adequate to supply the kind of water the village needs. And that's only if Orange and Rockland give them access to the one possible well, which, based on documents I was able to FOIL from the county O&R does not have much interest in doing that.
(Worth noting here as well: The County took forever to issue FOILs related to South Blooming Grove’s water and sewer emergency, as well as FOILs relating to the situation at Orange County Sewer District 1, which is over capacity.)
I don't know about you, but I know we have a climate emergency, right now, in 2024 to deal with.
Given what SBG looks like in 2024, I don't think the Village's water and sewage infrastructure will make it to 2027.
I don’t even want to think about how much worse the flooding — among other climate issues — are going to get between now and then, to say nothing of these impacts on the Village’s neighbors. But just from looking at the picture above?
The answer is: Bad. Really bad.
As previously noted, if it's true Zalman Teitelbaum is driving the bus regarding what's going on in South Blooming Grove, there's little chance that his brother, Aaron, approves access to the KJ Catskill Aqueduct Water Pipeline to alleviate South Blooming Grove's water issues.
(Presently, only Kiryas Joel and New York City can approve access to the pipeline. The two brothers are rivals for leadership of the Satmar religious movement, and Zalman’s plan in South Blooming Grove is alleged to be an attempt at limiting Aaron’s power and influence by surrounding Palm Tree with the bigger municipality of Blooming Grove.)
Much like with Woodbury Village Trustee James Freiband — who continues to prattle on about 30-year-old test wells that Wayne Courts told him could provide plenty of water for Court’s planned Falkirk condo project — the Village Board in South Blooming Grove has opted to deceive their own residents. All as part of an effort to continue building out a city that the local environment simply cannot sustain.
That, my friends, is not only a constitutional violation of the Establishment Clause but also how you create an environmental disaster.
But hold on. We're getting ahead of ourselves. That's a conversation for next week.
Before we move on from Woodbury for a bit, I'd like to direct your attention to something very specific going on there and how you can help stop it.
How many of you want to resolve what's going on in Woodbury as quickly as possible?
You can't see it, but I have my hand raised too.
There is no "infighting" or "feuding" between the Town and Village.
Throughout the village's history, most of the trouble has flowed one way: from the Town to the Village.
It is more accurate to report that the Town continues to pick fights with the Village, at the expense of all Woodbury tax payers, because small minded local politicians need to justify their existence. The Village, not the Town, is the main hub of operations for the entire municipality. Once they get into office and realize what the Town does is actually a part-time job, Town Board members look to justify their full time salaries.
That was the case when the Village was first formed. That was the case when Supervisor Palermo decided to sue the Village. That is currently the case with Supervisor Luciani.
The Town of Woodbury itself provides vital services, but none of it raises to the level of full-time work despite the current Supervisor being the highest paid Supervisor in the near 200 year history of the Town.
If you want this bullying to stop, then the first step is to acknowledge this fact and to stop referring to what’s going on as “infighting between the municipalities. It’s not infighting. It’s the Town bullying the Village.
With me so far?
Great. Now, you can do three specific things to help resolve this situation in Woodbury.
The first is to go to the Woodbury Town Board meetings and simply make the following request.
(This request, by the way, can also be used at Village meetings where Trustee Fabbro and Freiband are concerned since the vast majority of the votes they received came from two areas now deemed to be part of the City of Kiryas Joel, according to Rebbe Teitelbaum.)
Above: Vote totals from the most recent Woodbury Village Elections which shows the majority of votes for Freiband and Fabbro coming from District 3- Woodbury Junction, and District 5- Highland Lake Estates. Both neighborhoods have been claimed by Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum as being under his jurisdiction within the City of Kiryas Joel.
"You were elected to represent everyone within the borders of Woodbury in your capacity as a Town Board member.
Not just the districts of Woodbury unofficially annexed by Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum in August of 2023.
Since the Rebbe has publicly stated that Highland Lake Estates and Woodbury Junction are part of the City of Kiryas Joel, that would mean those areas are no longer part of Woodbury, and those areas should not dictate the policy of this Town.
If we agree those sections are no longer part of Woodbury, then it doesn't matter what that group of voters want, given that the Rebbe has said they are under his jurisdiction, not yours.
Therefore, you have a legal, ethical, moral, and fiduciary responsibility to the residents of Woodbury who want to live here and do live here within its borders.
And those residents do not want you to sue the Village and waste the money of this town's residents.
You take the Village to court only to the benefit of Rebbe Teitelbaum.
It is only to the benefit of Rebbe Teitelbaum that you approve a resolution in favor of State Senator Skoufis's soft merger between the Town and Village.
If you don't agree and won't commit to representing the needs of all Woodbury residents within its borders, you should resign from your position immediately.
This is not yet the City of Kiryas Joel. This is the Town of Woodbury, and you were elected to represent Woodbury residents, not Kiryas Joel residents."
Yes. I know. That’s very dramatic sounding, but as I said, the Town is the aggressor here, not the Village. And the reason for the aggression is part of a larger campaign by Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum and the rest of Hanhallah (the leadership caste of Kiryas Joel) to bully and dictate the form and functions of their neighboring municipality.
It’s time we acknowledge and address the root cause of this problem directly. This narrative that the Town and village are always fighting is inaccurate. They’re fighting for a reason, which is all about power and getting favorable agreements for things like the upcoming annexation request involving Ace Farms. This is something so large that the Rebbe has no power to declare it to be his, so he needs the Town and Village to do what he can’t legally.
The Second Thing Is …
The second thing you can do, assuming you already plan to vote and have been attending these meetings, is request that no new IMA be completed between the Town and Village without the Town having a fully operational Ethics Board.
Since the Town has actively antagonized the Village over the last 20 years, it’s the Town that must commit to adhering to the highest ethical standards in any agreement between the two municipalities.
If you want the "fighting" to stop, the next IMA can do exactly that.
This new Ethics Board, for example, could allow people from outside our area, who do not come into the process looking to score political points of their own, from weighing in and determine what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
(An argument against packing an Ethics Board entirely with residents from within the municipality can be found in neighboring Monroe, where the Ethics Board consists of a majority of members who actively worked to get the current Supervisor elected through the United Monroe citizens group. The Village of Woodbury recently formed its own Ethics Board without this component, which I think is a missed opportunity, but … The new Village of Woodbury Ethics Board is packed with former NYPD officers. So, if given a choice in terms of what group of people to trust, I’d trust the Woodbury Village Ethics Board over the Town of Monroe Ethics Board.)
If the Woodbury Town Board had an operational Ethics Committee, you would not have much of the situation that you currently do. I'd go so far as to say that if the Town had a fully independent and operational Ethics Board, we would not be having this discussion about the IMA at all. Why? because an operational and independent Ethics Board would have reviewed the state of the Animal Shelter and Police and decided the Town is seemingly incapable of managing them both. They might even call for the resignation of Chief Watson over the alleged contracts he has with vendors in Kiryas Joel, and Supervisor Luciani for hiring her son despite the ethics code specifically prohibiting her from doing so.
This Ethics reform in the new IMA should specifically include the Town voluntarily submitting to a Comptroller investigation of the Woodbury Police Department. The Comptroller should also investigate the use of Town funds in hiring family members of Supervisor Luciani — prior to any alteration of the Ethics Code and with the supervisor’s full knowledge of the Ethics Code’s existence — and other board members. And of course, the raise Supervisor Luciani gave to herself at the start of this year.
It’s Climate Change, Stupid
Pikuach nefesh means “saving a soul” in Hebrew. It is the chief rule that every Jew — myself included — must comply with above all other rules, including the Torah itself.
Because Climate Change is a clear and present danger to all life on Earth, including right here in Southern Orange County, it is not antisemitic to put the climate first in all discussions concerning the future of this region.
If anything, it’s the single most Jewish thing you can do.
We must work together to help save people from the worst effects of climate change. If the Rebbe disagrees, you can and should loudly and often remind him and Hanhallah’s elected representatives (Senator James Skoufis, Woodbury Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani, Woodbury Village Trustee Fabbro, Woodbury Village Trustee Freidband, etc.) of this fact.
It’s not fear-mongering to raise climate concerns in our region. It’s the moral and ethical responsibility to do so. Any politician dismissing these concerns is no better than the worst climate denier.
Everyone has to be on the same page in terms of what's going on here. Because what we really have going on here is a neighboring theocracy — The City of Kiryas Joel — that does not acknowledge that climate change exists, continuing to develop land for the specific benefit of a small group of people within the larger Satmar community.
What you have is a neighboring theocracy exerting control on its neighbor in order to further aid its expansion. This is a fact, whether or not our State Senator wants to admit it publicly or not. (He continues to refer to any environmental concerns raised about the theocracy as "fear-mongering.")
If we're not able to discuss this issue in a polite and respectful manner, then there is ultimately no resolution to the "fighting" between Town and Village in Woodbury.
You have to address the root cause, and the root cause is the influence of the theocracy on destabilizing its closest neighbor, and the environmental consequences that follow this destabilization.
Now, I know, this is an old issue. It's been going on since the 1970s in Southern Orange County.
So, why is this time different?
SImply put, we have a very narrow and limited window to prevent the worst effects of Climate Change. Climate Change is a clear and present danger to all of us, both Haredi and non-Haredi alike. The President of the United States said it himself. Is he fear-mongering too?
So, not to put too fine a point on this: This is it. This is your one last chance to stop the weather from getting out of control and finding all sorts of fun and interesting ways to kill us.
The simplest, but not the easiest, way to stop the planet from warming any further is by having your local municipality buy up as much land as possible and leaving it undisturbed.
Not, in the case of the Woodbury Town Board, annex huge chunks of land at the first opportunity into the City of Kiryas Joel because the Rebbe’s chosen neighborhoods got you elected into office. There is no doubt that the kind of rampant, unchecked development, done with no concern for the environment — Both Satmar Rebbes and their followers often lie on New York State Environmental Assement Forms that are submitted to municipal boards for approval — will occur on the ACE Farms property the second it legally belongs to Rebbe Teitelbaum.
The undisturbed land acts as a carbon sink. It keeps temperatures down. It helps manage flooding from stormwater. There's a litany of reasons for wanting to preserve as much land as possible. Chief among them, Pikuach nefesh.
People will die if we do nothing.
I can’t put it any plainer than that. If it’s not the extreme heat, it’s the flooding, and if it’s not the flooding, it’s the increasing number of baby tornados (microbursts), and if it’s not the microburst, it’s the Hurricanes, and if’s not the hurricanes, it’s the drought, on and on and on …
The unsustainable building — which, I'll remind you, required a $100M pipeline to be built in the City of Kiryas Joel and paid mostly out of federal money — cannot continue.
There should be a region-wide task force to find the least objectionable spot possible (no spot is going to be perfect; all spots will have their detractors), and that's where we should build affordable, environmentally friendly high-density housing that does not obstruct the scenic beauty of the area. This housing, unlike the developments currently being built by Zalman Teitelbaum and his followers in South Blooming Grove, would also be made available to all people of all kinds regardless of faith.
We cannot say that this is the case in any region claimed by the Rebbe within Monroe and Woodbury, and we definitely cannot say that this is the case in South Blooming Grove. Housing discrimination is, and has been for decades now, the name of the game when it comes to both Teitelbaums.
What we have now does not work, will not work, and will only contribute to getting us all killed as the century rolls on.
If you have kids, you should be worried about what the world is going to look like in the near future.
If you have grandkids, you should absolutely be worried because they’re going to see the worst of it.
You've all seen what doing nothing produces.
Just watch last night’s Woodbury Village Board meeting (below) where Fabbro and Freiband again attempted to derail what should be very basic, simple things like having an Ethics Board. The corrupt dolts are seated on the far right of the table, which is funny because they’re Democrats acting like a bunch of MAGA trolls. So the seating is appropriate.
Part 1:
Part 2:
You can do nothing, or you can fight back.
I think it’s time we all got together and fought back.