Odds & Ends For The Week of May 27th

News from the Town of Chester, Village of Monroe, Village of Washingtonville, and Springfield. Yes. That one. Because today, Homer Simpson is going to teach everyone the concept of "induced demand."

Howdy,

I’m currently working on a number of stories.

So today, I want to share with you some odds and ends that don’t (yet) rise to the level of an individual story, but are still something you should pay attention to.

I am very much behind on emails and other leads that have been submitted. Rest assured, between now and August 1st I will get to them all.

May 29th, Town of Chester Board Meeting

This was a fairly quiet meeting. I’m not 100% of what’s going on with the Executive Session that started things off. I’ll do some asking around.

The big thing was the Orange County Community Development Program Grant, CDBG, that the Town is looking to get. There was no one from the public to share ideas on how the grant should be used. The Board discussed applying and using it for the “Carpenter” Community Park at 19 Vadala Rd Chester, NY, 10918.

Specifically, the Board is looking to pave an ADA (The Americans with Disabilities Act) accessible pathway and add ADA compliant playground equipment and a swing set. The slide at the park was shut down earlier in the year due to some issues with it.

In order to apply and be approved for the grant, the Town Board had to pass a resolution basically verifying that the Board and Town employees adhere to the Fair Housing Act.

I was curious about this given the Greens at Chester and the potential for housing at that development to only be made available to fellow members of the Haredi community and not the larger Chester community.

So, I asked Supervisor Brandon Holdridge about how the Fair Housing Resolution that was passed last night impacts the Town of Chester in how they enforce that law. He said:

The requirements of the fair housing resolution are enforced passively from what I have seen during my time as Supervisor so far. Basically, no town official or employee is to say or do anything that would be discriminatory as per the Fair Housing Act. All town codes and state laws are to be applied fairly and equally across the board. I took a fair housing training earlier this year and that is really the long and short of it. I plan to have the department heads in town take a similar training annually to ensure there is no official or employee that isn't sufficiently trained on the subject. 

That’s great to hear, because The Greens is going to be a thing Town officials will need to keep an eye on.

There is a national housing shortage and a housing shortage here in New York. Allowing landlords and property owners to discriminate against people who want to live their housing because they’re not Haredi is unacceptable, not to mention, un-American.

In other Chester news, the Chester Music Series returns on June 4th with The Men of Soul.

Concerts are held every Tuesday at 7pm throughout the Summer with rain dates on Wednesday. You can get a full list of performers here. The performances take place over at 12 Banks Street in the Jarvis Boone Memorial Amphitheater.

May 28th, 2024 Village of Washingtonville Special Meeting

I reached out to the mayor of Washingtonville for more information on this one. The video above is all of five minutes, so I feel like there’s a lot of context needed.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here other than there’s a bill in the State Senate that says the following:

Extends the dates allowing the Village of Washingtonville in Orange
County to issue serial bonds and extends the date up to which the
Village can use the funds to address accumulated deficits in the general
fund, water fund, sewer fund, and capital projects fund.

The Village had to approve a home rule request, which they did so at this meeting.

Town of Monroe: 857 Lakes Road LLC

This one is starting to rise to a level of being its own story.

I spoke with the owner of 857 Lakes Road LLC, David Jaroslawicz, after receiving a tip about activity occurring around 857 Lakes Road.

This property is on the other side of the proposed Henry Farms development.

Mr. Jaroslawicz stated that people have been dumping illegally on his property for many years. So, he finally had enough and put up a fence and cameras to help catch whomever is doing that dumping.

He stated that the local police and the Town of Monroe Building Department have not been any help in assisting him with catching the perpetrators. This does not at all sound like a surprise given other complaints concerning the Town of Monroe Building Department in this area.

Mr. Jaroslawicz also stated to me that, due to his frustration with the Town of Monroe Building department, he may be inclined to sell the property to the haredi developers who often approach him about building housing on it.

So, yeah. I think everyone should be paying close attention to this one. It’s not fair or right for people to be dumping on this property without consequence.

This is yet another reason why the Town should sign an IMA with the Village. This inter-municipal agreement (IMA) would allow the Village Police to patrol the entirety of the Town and help enforce both the law and the codes. (Alternatively, the Town and Village can also become co-terminus, which would allow the Village Police to also patrol the Town.)

SBG: 16 Sterling LLC & Blooming Grove Holdings LLC

Mr. Shmiel Stern, according to publications in The Times Herald Record, is on the hook for $7M. He is the owner of 16 Sterling LLC, Blooming Grove Holdings LLC, and numerous others in the area.

I am working on a major project involving the LLCs in South Blooming Grove. You can see the beginnings of that work here. The Department of State has not yet got back to me on whether or not they would help provide some assistance in getting the Articles of Organization for each of these LLCs.

That means, without their help, this will be a long and expensive process. So, hang with me.

I’ll do the best I can to get the spreadsheet done and share what I find.

Mr. Shmiel Stern has already popped up a few times in this process. So I’m curious to see how many LLCs he’s behind as this project gets underway.

Induced Demand

I did a poor job of explaining this yesterday.

But basically, here’s how induced demand works:

If you say something is all you can eat, sooner or later, someone’s going to come and put that concept to the test.

If you add a third lane to Route 17 / Interstate 86, then yes, temporarily, you would see an improvement in the flow of traffic.

But in time, people will notice that improved traffic flow, which will encourage more people to drive and use the third lane.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in many, many, years of working in marketing and public relations, it’s Monkey See. Monkey Do. This is a universal truth about humanity.

So, over time, that third lane, which was supposed to alleviate the traffic, will now get just as backed up as the original two lanes.

I know. I know. It sounds ridiculous, but the data supports this.

So, if you live in Orange County, you have a choice.

You can spend $203M to add a third lane to Interstate 86 and enjoy the few years of traffic relief it’ll get you.

Or.

You can spend $277M to bring the Port Jervis Line serviced by New Jersey Transit and Metro North into full time operation.

Meaning, there’s always a train looking to take you where you want to go, as opposed to how the Port Jervis Line operates now, which is that the train shows up whenever it fucking feels like. And if you don’t like that? As it says in the New Jersey Transit app: Fuck you.

I know how I’d rather we spend that money.

Do you?

May 28th, Village of Monroe Planning Board

Oy vey.

Ok. So, I’ve already covered the Monroe-Woodbury Islamic Center elsewhere.

And just last month (April 2024), the engineer for the center claimed they addressed the stormwater pollution problem. The Village disagreed with that assessment.

I’ve also reached out directly to people who operate the Islamic Center asking about what’s being done concerning the stormwater, and whether or not the new Islamic Center would have a mechanism for a Call for Prayer (the Adhan.) This was brought up at last night’s meeting, and honestly, it’s the first time I’ve seen it mentioned anywhere.

To be clear: I am not aware of whether or not the new center will feature a call to prayer. It was just a concerned that was raised last night, and I am inquiring about it.

7:32pm: I spoke with the Islamic Center’s President, Mohammad Hasan Miah. He informed me that there is a call to prayer. It’s done in such a way that it can only be heard within the building and not by the neighbors.

95% of the people who spoke last night spoke on behalf of the Islamic Center, asking for the project’s approval.

The other 5%, or more specifically, three neighbors who spoke, oppose the project due to the flooding, lighting (and headlights in their bedroom windows), and potential invasions of privacy.

Here’s what I think we all should pay attention to:

Whenever a group of people, any group of people, says in Southern Orange County, “We want to live in peace with our neighbors” your bullshit detector should go off.

Because over the last fifty years, the people saying, “We want to live in peace with our neighbors” are often the most notorious violators of health, safety, and building codes.

So, while this is unfair to the Islamic Center, the burden is on them to prove, not just say, that they will be good neighbors. This burden is the same for any religious group in Southern Orange County.

Is that right? No.

Is that fair? No.

But people around here have been very, very, badly burned by the Satmar while trying to be accommodating.

And they are rightfully skeptical of religious groups coming into the neighborhood that say one thing and then do the other.

If even a fraction of what was shared by one neighbor about the center is true — for example, The Islamic Center was accused of clear cutting without a permit in 2017, and this clear cutting caused flooding in a nearby property — Then that skepticism would again be reinforced.

We don’t want that to happen.

What we want is for the people claiming religious freedom to live up to their claim of being a good neighbor. Together, this will get us past the last half-century of skepticism and distrust.

It’s not anti-islam to question the Islamic Center, and ensure that steps are being taken to remedy any problems that might have been created first, before anything further gets built.

Much in the same way, it’s not anti-semitic to question the actions of the Netanyahu-led coalition in Israel or the actions of hanhallah.

It’s being a good neighbor to ask your neighbor to be fair and proper in their treatment of each other.

I didn’t get that these problems are being addressed from last night’s meeting.

What I got was, “when the project is finished, these issues will be resolved.” To me anyway, that’s not acceptable.

Many of the people who spoke last night spoke about the need for a place to practice their religion freely, and while that’s true, people also have a right to live in peace and quiet FREE from religion.

Your right to religious freedom comes from a constitutional precept that states no one shall stop you from practicing your religion.

It does not mean your right to practice your religion freely should come at the expense of the people around you.

Put another way: Your right to religious freedom does not, and should not, come at the expense of other people.

The problem in America is that the second someone goes, “My religion my religion” all conversation stops.

Our courts just shrug their shoulders and go, “There’s nothing I can do. Religion has been invoked.”

This leads to stuff like Roe v. Wade being overturned. “My religion” trumps your rights to bodily autonomy.

This is wrong.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Above: Constitutional Law professor, Jamal Greene, breaks down how to better balance our rights in the legal system. This would move us away from the winner takes all rulings our Justices issue now.

Elsewhere in the world, when someone starts with the “My religion, my religion” nonsense (and it is nonsense, I’ll remind you that at least a quarter of Americans identify as secular, non-religious) those rights are balanced against the rights of other individuals.

So, in a normal functioning government, yeah you’d have a right to build a mosque, but because you’re building a mosque in a residential neighborhood, that right does not mean you can just steam roll over your new neighbors.

Despite our government not being functional at this time, we should all work together to restore it where it works as intended.

That’s the idea all those people you went out and celebrated this Memorial Day Weekend fought and died for.

As Abraham Lincoln said during the Gettysburg Address, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

It’s an imperfect union. Our job is to work together to fix it.

And working together means practicing what we preach when it comes to being a good neighbor.

The Village Planning Board requested a draft resolution of a negative declaration for SEQRA, but made NO decision this evening. That was in part because of a June 11th ZBA meeting coming up that the Islamic Center’s representatives need to appear at.

So, I hope the Islamic Center can remedy whatever issues there may be. When asked about the stormwater situation, the president of the center stated, “Our Landscaping engineer and Civil engineer submitted a site plan to the planning board regarding the drainage system to run the water towards orange turnpike (the front side of the building, not toward any neighbouring house).”

That’s great news.

I hope, once all parties are satisfied, that they get their project approved.

Everyone’s welcome to the party.

We just ask that you follow the rules like the rest of us.