The Many Ethics Violations of Mr. Tom Shepstone in South Blooming Grove

Today we take a look at the Village of South Blooming Grove's Code of Ethics, and where Village Planner Tom Shepstone has violated it.

Aug 20, 2024

Pictured Above: One of the very few moments when all members of The South Blooming Grove Village Planning Board were paying attention to what was being said at the August 15th, 2024, meeting.

If you want things to change all across America, you can do something: Hold your elected officials on the local level accountable for their actions.

As those politicians move up the food chain, you’ll help weed out the bad and dangerous ones by doing so.

I believe this is everyone’s civic duty. There is no one coming to save you. You have to stand up for yourself and your neighbors — yes, even those you don’t like — because no one else will.

So today, I’m going to share with you the story about a local hate group in upstate New York and how a Village Planner in small South Blooming Grove, is contributing to its reign of terror on local residents.

In Part 1 of our August 15th, 2024, Village of South Blooming Grove Planning Board meeting recap— which you can read right here — we detailed the numerous moral and ethical lapses of the South Blooming Grove Village Planner, Mr. Thomas Shepstone, of the Shepstone Management Company based in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

Before moving on from Mr. Shepstone and getting to Part 2, I'd like to share this comment provided to The Monroe Gazette from the Department of State in New York. This comment came after I asked them the following question:

"I'm looking to see what licenses and requirements a village planner must have. Mr. Shepstone runs every Village Planning Board meeting. He often presents misinformation and half-truths when residents of South Blooming Grove ask him difficult questions."

The Department of State responded: "Individuals employed by a municipality are bound by that local government's standards for employees with regard to ethics and conflicts of interest. (Emphasis added.)

The planning profession does not require a license or additional State certifications in order to provide services to local governments, planning, and zoning boards. "

So, there is good news and bad news here. The bad news is, as far as I know, Mr. Shepstone's licenses, or lack thereof, allow him to serve as the Village Planner for South Blooming Grove. A question I get from readers and residents fairly often pertains to these licenses and whether or not possession of them can be revoked via the holder's moral and ethical lapses. That doesn't matter here in the specific case of Mr. Shepstone, according to the Department of State. But take heart; it DOES matter for other village employees and consultants. For example, Mr. Scott Ugell, Village Attorney, and Gardiner Barone of the Monticello-based Bluestein, Shaprio, Frank & Barone, LLP. Mr Barone is the Village of South Blooming Grove's Zoning Board of Appeals attorney. Both men can and should be reported to the Supreme Court of the State of New York's Appellate Division for numerous instances with the actions of the ZBA and the Village Board. We covered Mr. Barone's lack of effort in disclosing, for example, Mr. Isaac Ekstein's involvement with the 1 Roanoke Drive application, which the Zoning Board of Appeals recently voted on. You can report both men to the Court here using this link.

The good news is that this answer from the Department of State provides South Blooming Grove residents with a pathway to address their issues and concerns with Mr. Shepstone. But I have one caveat to add in the form of some additional bad news: The bad news is that the current Code of Ethics does not sufficiently cover everything Mr. Shepstone has done. That means that most of the behavior demonstrated by Mr. Shepstone in our last article is more of a matter for the Orange County District Attorney's office than the Orange County Board of Ethics.

That doesn't mean he's entirely off the hook, though. So today, we’re going to take a look at how Mr. Shepstone is specifically violating the Village’s Code of Ethics.

As the Village Planner, Mr. Shepstone is still bound by the Village of South Blooming Grove's Code of Ethics. So for those of you who don’t know, the first thing you will want to do is make sure your local municipality has one. Learning the ins and outs of that Code of Ethics will be invaluable when you need to stand up and hold your local elected officials accountable.

You can read the full Village of South Blooming Grove Code of Ethics here, but I'd like to direct your attention to § 18-6, which says:

"No officer or employee of the Village and no organization or service chartered by or directly or indirectly sponsored or supported by the Village shall:

A. Discriminate or cause segregation, directly or indirectly, based upon gender, creed, race, age, or national origin or allow said factors to affect the recruitment, selection, placement, assignment, compensation, or promotion of any officer, employee, or member of said organization or service."

B. Permit directly or indirectly, any Village property, equipment, or service use by any person or persons, organizations, corporations, or any other group which directly or indirectly discriminates as set forth in Subsection A above.

C. Allow the Village to knowingly possess any financial or business interest or dealings with any organization, which discriminates as outlined in Subsection A above."

The Local Hate Group and Mr. Shepstone's Connection

Mr. Joel Stern and Mr. Isaac Ekstein, both Village of South Blooming Grove employees and de facto mayors, are also the founding members and, in the case of Mr. Ekstein, the president of the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove (herein just "UJC"). This organization meets the FBI and Southern Poverty Law Center's definitions of a hate group. How? If you are joining us and missed our previous coverage, the SPLC definition of a hate group is as follows:

"A hate group is an organization that—based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities—has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. We do not list individuals as hate groups; we only list organizations. The organizations on the SPLC list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity—prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines. The FBI uses similar criteria in its definition of a hate crime: [A] criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. [Emphasis and links added.]

The United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove actively discriminates against both my fellow Jews — the organization has referred to us as "Half-Jews" in their publications, and the secular residents of the Area. For example, residents in South Blooming Grove are often referred to derisively as goyim (non-Jews) in videos produced by the organization. (More on one such video very soon. We're currently working on getting it translated.)

Despite claims to the contrary, this organization is also not an official not-for-profit organization recognized by the IRS. According to an IRS spokesperson, under Federal Law, the IRS is not allowed to comment about the specific activities of a particular not-for-profit organization. So, I could not confirm if an investigation into Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein's group is underway. What I can do is encourage the people reading this to download this form from the IRS, print it out, and mail it to:

Internal Revenue Service

Whistleblower Office – ICE

1973 N Rulon White Blvd.

M/S 4110

Ogden, UT 84404

What do you put in the IRS form?

When asked to provide its Form 990s, Mr. Ekstein and Stern deleted its English-language website and left only the Yiddish one. (This is a form of discrimination since only some members of the Jewish community, myself included, can read Hebrew and Yiddish, while secular residents can’t read it at all.)

Above: Despite having its tax-exempt status revoked by the IRS in May of 2022, the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove continues to operate and raise money.

The UJC didn't provide Form 990s because its non-profit status was revoked in 2022 despite its continued operations in the community.

As I showed you in Part 1, Mr. Shepstone can be seen at the UJC Headquarters, participating in a South Blooming Grove Community Design and Review Committee meeting (CDRC) — and approving projects without going through the proper channels according to the Yiddish language Blooming Grove Report. Despite being an official Village of South Blooming Grove publication, that newsletter is not released to all residents; it's only available on Yiddish language message boards such as Ivelt.com and private channels such as WhatsApp.

So, just by examining the long history of intimidation, scare tactics, lawsuits against both Washingtonville and the Washingtonville Central School District, PR stunts, and general harassment exhibited by Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein and their organization — that this organization sufficiently meets the definitions laid out by the FBI and Southern Poverty Law Center. (Despite my best efforts, calls and emails sent to the Southern Poverty Law Center on this issue have not been returned. I’ve been attempting to get them to officially give the designation of a hate group to the UJC.)

It should be noted to the residents of Blooming Grove that Town Councilman Simon Schwartz, also a member of the South Blooming Grove Planning Board, is a member of the UJC. In the case of Mr. Schwartz, at this point, I've provided everything there is to share with the Town of Blooming Grove. So, whether or not they act to remove Mr. Schwartz from his position on the Town Board due to his conflicts of interest and ties to a hate group is a question you, the Town of Blooming Grove residents, will need to ask your Town Board about.

The Village's Code of Ethics prohibits any business done by and between members of the UJC before the Village because of the organization's activity as a hate group.

That includes Mr. Shepstone hanging out there, using UJC computers to do work on behalf of the Village—as one former Village Board member confirmed—and holding Village meetings outside the public's view at the UJC headquarters.

So, before we get to the Capital Hill Project and Mr. Avaraham Bur Jacobowitz in our recap below, let's touch on Sections A and B of the Village Ethics Code as they relate to Mr. Shepstone and the UJC.

Section A

Section A says: "No officer or employee of the Village and no organization or service chartered by or directly or indirectly sponsored or supported by the Village shall:

The United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove is a hate group as defined by both the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center. It discriminates against all non-Satmar residents. This includes members of the Jewish community, such as myself, who are discriminated against since the United Jewish Community has put out newsletters calling the local Jews opposed to their endeavors "half-Jews."

-Mr. Shepstone has continued to preside over projects, such as Clovewood (to which Mr. Stern has financial ties) and 1 Roanoke (to which Mr. Ekstein has financial relations), that both discriminate against non-Satmar residents

In the case of Clovewood, the proposed housing development's goal is to provide housing only to Satmar residents during a nationwide housing shortage.

Above: The Clovewood DEIS (which can be found here) lies about how many affordable housing units it will provide (94 out of a possible 1,200 units. That translates to about 8% of the project’s total inventory being affordable.) The DEIS does, however, honestly state that the housing is intended for the Satmar Hasidic community, which could translate into violations of the federal Fair Housing Act by not renting or showing the units to Jewish residents who are not Satmar and non-Jewish residents.

-In the case of 1 Roanoke, removing green space for Mr. Ekstein's schul to have additional parking. Cutting into the green space would adversely impact residents as the green area is meant to help with stormwater management and prevent additional greenhouse gas emissions from being emitted during a national climate emergency.

-Numerous other projects approved by Mr. Shepstone, as part of the CDRC and Planning Board, where he presides over meetings, are often advertised exclusively in Yiddish and not otherwise advertised or made available to secular and other Jewish residents.

(A tangent: It pisses me off when people refer to the Satmar as "The Jewish Comunity." It's a subset of a subset of people who happen to be Jewish. It's more appropriate to say "The Satmar Community." Specificity matters.

While I have a deep love and affection for all my Haredi brothers and sisters, there are millions of us Jews here in America, and the Satmar does not represent the entirety of the Jewish community.

Be skeptical of people who try to lob us all together, as the law firm for the United Jewish Community so often attempts in their legal filings by saying they are writing on behalf of the Orthodox Jewish Community. This is factually inaccurate, as the Haredi are not Orthodox. If they were Orthodox, they would be called Orthodox. This law firm, Whiteman, Osterman, and Hanna LLP, knows this and intentionally tries to muddy the waters in their legal filings.

(FWIW, I think the people of Washingtonville and the Village itself have a pretty convincing case of harassment and libel against this law firm and should sue them, but that’s just my opinion.)

This is all a long way of saying that Mr. Shepstone, as the Village Planner, often authorizes housing projects that are knowingly and intentionally designed for one group of residents at the exclusion of all other residents. This preferential treatment of the government by a religious group at the expense of secular residents constitutes a violation of the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the NYS Establishment Clause.

Something else worth noting to the Orange County Board of Ethics is that the Village of South Blooming Grove recently passed a resolution affirming its intention to uphold the Fair Housing Act. This was done to secure grant funding from Orange County. Still, to this day, the Village has failed to provide any plan or programs to demonstrate its commitment to upholding the Federal Fair Housing Act.

That brings us to Sections B & C.

"B. Permit directly or indirectly, the use of any Village property, equipment or service by any person or persons, organizations, corporations or any other group which directly or indirectly discriminates as outlined in Subsection A above."

As mentioned, the CDRC and Village Planning Board, according to Mr. Shepstone himself, often meet at the UJC's headquarters. Since it's a hate group that discriminates against Jews and non-Jews alike, Shepstone is violating this point by allowing those meetings to occur at the UJC's HQ.

What about Section C? “Allow the Village to knowingly possess any financial or business interest or dealings with any organization, which discriminates as outlined in Subsection A above."

About an hour and a half into Thursday’s Planning Board meeting, Warwick-based engineer Kirk Rother presented on behalf of an applicant who has allegedly been the chief source of Mr. Ekstein and Mr. Stern’s finances. This conflict of interest was brought up, and Mr. Shepstone commenced with discussion of the application and scheduling a public hearing regardless of these concerns.

Mr. Kirk Rother repeatedly refused to explain who the applicant was (beyond the LLC name), and Mr. Shepstone did his best to shut down the discussion concerning the financial conflicts of interest involving this property. That led to the following letters being sent to several federal and local law enforcement agencies, as well as to the Mayor of South Blooming Grove, George Kalaj, and the Village of South Blooming Grove Planning Board Attorney Daniel Kraushaar.

First, here is the email to the Planning Board Attorney, sent on August 17th, 2024:

Hi Dan,

As promised during the Thursday, August 15th, 2024 Village of South Blooming Grove Planning Board meeting, I did some digging into Mosayonu Grove LLC and did in fact find a conflict of interest involving Mr. Joel Stern and Mr. Isaac Ekstein, both paid village employees.

In short, members of the Haredi community in Kiryas Joel reached out to me a few months ago to stress that their religious leader, Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum, was not responsible for what was happening in South Blooming Grove, but that it was his brother, Zalman Teitelbaum.

A developer named Avrum Ber Jacobowitz works on behalf of Mr. Zalman Teitelbaum. These gentlemen have alleged that Mr. Jacobowitz, acting on behalf of the Rebbe (Zalman), has funded the entirety of Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein's operations in South Blooming Grove via the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove.

Regrettably, Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein let the IRS non-profit status of the UJC expire due to failure to disclose the appropriate forms that would have revealed their funding source.

Mr. Jacobowitz's family is listed on the official voting roles of South Blooming Grove as residing at 20 Shannon Lane. If this address sounds familiar, it's because this is also the address of the new mystery well that was suddenly announced by Mr. Kirk Rother as being available as a "gift" to the Village of South Blooming Grove during the same meeting on Thursday evening. (There are actually 16 people registered to the same address, with 13 of them sharing the same last name of Jacobowitz.)

(A note to readers: Mr. Kirk Rother declined to reply to questions about this “gift.” The DEC, as of this writing, could not locate any tests or approvals of this well.)

When asked to explain or disclose their relationship to Mr. Jacobowitz at a June 2024 Village Board meeting (the one held at 10:30am on a Friday after the regularly scheduled Monday meeting was abruptly cancelled at the last minute), both Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein refused to do so. That footage can be found here.

If you examine section 18-5 of the Code of Ethics, it's pretty clear about prohibiting village employees and other officials from using their position to further projects on behalf of others that they have a financial connection of:

“No elected official, covered employee or Village employee shall directly or indirectly solicit or receive compensation or agree to receive compensation for services rendered concerning matters before any Village agency, nor shall any such person accept other employment or engage in any business transactions or make any investments directly or indirectly which create a conflict with his or her official duties."

I will be filing a formal ethics complaint with Orange County to investigate, given that the Village does not have a formal Ethics Board.

I am alerting you to this issue now, and formally requesting that anything involving the Capital Hill application be suspended indefinitely pending the completion of such an investigation.

I'm also requesting that you write me back to confirm receipt of this message and to confirm that this application and business concerning it will be suspended pending an investigation.

Mr. Kraushaar did indeed write me back. To his credit, he is the only South Blooming Grove consultant / employee to respond to emails on the issues raised by residents.

After I got his confirmation, I sent the following letter to Mayor George Kalaj on Monday, August 19th:

Mr. Kalaj,

I am following up on a notice I gave Mr. Dan Kraushaar, the Village Planning Board Attorney.

This is a formal request that all projects involving Mosayonu Grove LLC should be suspended indefinitely until the Village has completed an independent, and thorough, investigation into the financial ties between Mr. Stern, Mr. Ekstein, and the applicant, Mr. Jacobowitz.

This request also extends to any other projects Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein may have financial ties with, such as 1 Roanoke Drive (Ekstein) and Clovewood (Stern, via his employer Jacob Gold, Keen Equities second largest investor.)

Mr. Joel Stern and Mr. Isaac Ekstein's United Jewish Community organization is alleged to have been funded almost entirely by Mr. Avraham Ber Jacobowitz (sometimes spelled Avrum Ber Jacobowitz.)

"No elected official, covered employee or Village employee shall directly or indirectly solicit or receive compensation or agree to receive compensation for services rendered concerning matters before any Village agency, nor shall any such person accept other employment or engage in any business transactions or make any investments directly or indirectly which create a conflict with his or her official duties."

I will be filing a formal ethics complaint with Orange County to investigate this situation, given that the Village does not have a formal Ethics Board, and I have also reported it to the appropriate authorities in the Orange County District Attorney's office.

I am alerting you to this issue now because, as I'm sure you're aware, it's not a crime unless you were told something was illegal and you decided to act regardless of that notification.

Consider this your formal notification.

Any action committed to this Capital Hill project, or any other project involving Mr. Jacobowitz, after this notification may open yourself, Mr. Stern, Mr. Ekstein, and the Village of South Blooming Grove to potential legal action.

It is what it is.

“It is what it is” is a sign, if you look at the top photo in this post, that Mayor George Kalaj put on the wall to harass residents of South Blooming Grove. I hope he doesn’t mind me “borrowing” his catchphrase.

So, there you have it.

By allowing the Capital Hill project to appear before the planning board, despite its potential deep financial ties to two Village employees and their local hate group without any sort of discussion or investigation of those ties, Mr. Shepstone is in violation of Section C.

That means, if you allow me to use a baseball analogy, Mr. Shepstone just used his last strike.

Now do you understand why knowing your local municipality’s code of ethics is so important?

One More Thing ...

Before we move on to Part 2 of our recap, you should know that this Monday, August 26th, at 8pm, at Village Hall (811 Route 208, Monroe, NY, 10950), there is a South Blooming Grove Village Board meeting.

This is the one Mayor Kalaj, Joel Stern, and Isaac Ekstein are often in attendance for. So, if you're mad about how things are going in South Blooming Grove, this is your chance to grill Stern and Ekstein directly.

(Don't bother with Kalaj; not only is he a useless placeholder, but he does whatever Stern and Ekstein tell him. So please direct your comments to them, not Kalaj. He may insist that he makes the final decisions, but if you ask him to name an instance where he has voted against something Stern and Ekstein have suggested, he likely won’t be able to name one.)

I won't be at this meeting, but that's okay because I'm unimportant. My "dog and pony show" only works in limited doses.

YOU are essential; however, and YOU need to be at this meeting.

So, South Blooming Grove residents with brown water should bottle it up and leave it on the Village Board's desk quietly and politely. (You don’t want to raise the ire of the Town of Blooming Grove police department officers at these meetings.)

Any area resident in Blooming Grove and Washingtonville — because all of this impacts you — is encouraged to print the following and leave it on the desk of Mr. Stern, Mr. Ekstein, and the Village Board members. If they take the Talmud as seriously as they claim, they'll no doubt be familiar with this one:

Above: The Talmud has multiple explicit references that forbid lying and deception. The above paragraph is just one of them. Given how much Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein profess to be religious, they should be well informed about this, but their actions toward South Blooming Grove residents say otherwise.

The translation reads: "The Holy One, Blessed be He, hates three people: One who says one statement with his mouth and means another in his heart, i.e., a hypocrite; one who knows testimony about another person and does not testify on his behalf; and one who observes a licentious matter performed by another person and testifies against him alone."

I think, given everything I just laid out for you in today’s post, there is plenty to discuss with Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein at this Monday’s meeting, don’t you?

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