We've Got Brown Drinking Water at This Dog & Pony Show (Part 1)
Residents of this small village in upstate New York don't have clean drinking water. But that hasn't stopped their village government from rubber stamping major development projects.
Above: Video from August 15th, 2024’s Village of South Blooming Grove Planning Board meeting. The last ten minutes got cut off, but you didn’t miss anything. All of the action happened earlier in the meeting.
Due to length, this recap is split into two parts. Today, we’re just covering Mr. Thomas Shepstone, since many residents have asked me to explain who he is and why he runs the SBG Planning Board meetings instead of the actual Planning Board Chairman, Solomon Weiss. Weiss says little and rarely asks questions of applicants who present business before the Board.
As always, Bonnie Rum took this video for Preserve Blooming Grove. If you’d like to keep up with what’s happening at Town and Village meetings in Blooming Grove, please visit that Facebook Page. Without Bonnie recording these meetings, nobody would believe what’s happening in South Blooming Grove or just chalk up resident concerns as “antisemitism,” as larger media outlets such as The New York Times have done in their coverage of similar issues here in our region.
My favorite Times story involving our area is when a reporter came to Pine Bush, sat in a McDonald’s for a few hours, talked to a mentally disabled adult without their guardian’s consent, quoted that adult, and then turned all that into a front-page story about antisemitism in upstate New York. This may sound like a tangent, but hang with me because we’ll circle back to that Times story in today’s post.
(My other favorite New York Times story: There was a tech company CEO — no, not one of the evil billionaires like this schmuck— I ghostwrote a guest editorial for that person, and we submitted it to a contact at the newspaper. About a week or so later, two Times reporters ran a story that was nearly word for word of what I wrote for the Tech CEO. Same sources. Same quotes. I remember this only because I was in the hospital when their version of my op-ed ran, and my Dad brought me The New York Times to look at while I was recovering. In the paper was the story. How’s that for a Get Well Soon gift? “Look, son, you’re in The New York Times, but someone stole your article, and nobody will ever know because you signed an NDA.”)
Who Called South Blooming Grove Residents Presenting Their Brown Water a “Dog and Pony Show?”
Mr. Tom Shepstone—of Shepstone Management Company, Inc. and the Village Planner for the Village of South Blooming Grove—responded to residents showing the Planning Board their brown drinking water as a “dog and pony show” during last night’s meeting.
Given that Mr. Shepstone lives 90 minutes away in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and thus doesn’t actually live near the consequences of his actions, this response should be no surprise. The same can be said about Warwick-based engineer Kirk Rother, who made a presentation concerning a property whose owner may have direct financial ties to Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein. Mr. Rother refused to provide any information concerning the owner of this property despite these concerns.
More on that presentation — about a “new city” behind Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove headquarters at 29 Merriewold Lane South tomorrow. Here’s a preview:
Above: Screenshot from the Yiddish-language message board, Ivelt.com, detailing a plan to create a new town at the current United Jewish Community headquarters in 2018. That same year, United Jewish Community founding member, and slumlord, Moche Halpern purchased 26 Virginia Avenue, which is part of the Green Area situation.
But let’s put a pin in that for now and focus on Mr. Shepstone first and how he relates to that New York Times article I told you about.
It’s not clear at this time how much, if anything, Mr. Shepstone receives directly from the Village of South Blooming Grove since the Village Clerk, Kerry Dougherty, often doesn’t respond to emails and almost never appropriately responds to FOIL requests. (I am still waiting on a whole bunch of FOILs that have been submitted as far back as March that have never been responded to, in some cases and in others — usually following bad news about the Village of South Blooming Grove on News 12 — receiving improperly dated notices about the Village’s “diligent search” for the requested records.
This is an incomplete list of records The Monroe Gazette has attempted to obtain from the Village of South Blooming Grove via FOIL since March of this year:
-Emails sent from Mr. Joel Stern to the Department of Transportation, Marangi Waste Management, and the Orange County Deputy Commissioner of Public Works, Travis B. Ewald. (This is in relation to the creation of a second, illegal, garbage pickup district, which resulted in the New York State Comptroller's investigation into the Village.)
-Emails Sent from Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein to Congressman Pat Ryan’s staff concerning the Congressman’s photo-op in South Blooming Grove. (This is the only time the Congressman has been to South Blooming Grove, despite public pressure for him to help get the EPA and FBI involved in the situation.)
-Security Camera Footage taken at Village Hall of Mr. Stern, after midnight, taking boxes from the Village offices and loading them up on a truck, which was then seen dropping off those boxes at the United Jewish Community HQ on March 21st, 2024. This action followed the announcement of the Comptroller investigation. The Comptroller’s office won’t comment on Mr. Stern’s activity here.
-Contracts signed by Spindler Bulk LLC and the Village of South Blooming Grove concerning water delivery to the Village’s wells, a practice the Village told the Orange County Department of Health it no longer does despite evidence to the contrary.
-Full list of village “public safety officers” and requests for reimbursements filed by them. (A UJC Passover Patrol driver told The Monroe Gazette that he was being paid by a man who identified himself as a “Public Safety Officer for the Village.” That driver also said that the man was paying him out of pocket and then filing for reimbursement with the Village.)
-Mailchimp invoices paid between 1/1/23 and 4/1/24 (This would prove that The Blooming Grove Report is something the Village pays for.)
-Emails sent between Mayor George Kalaj, Confidential Assistant to the Mayor, Joel Stern, Legislative Aide Isaac Ekstein, Trustees Asher Guttman, Yitzchok Feldman, Zalmon Rosner, and Deputy Mayor Abraham M. Weiss between January 1st, 2023 and January 1st, 2024 concerning The creation and distribution of The Blooming Grove Report.
-Invoices and other paperwork between attorney, Nora Murphy, and the Village of South Blooming Grove. Mrs. Murphy was on the DEC call in April, advocating for the Clovewood development on behalf of the Village. In July, Mr. Joel Stern asked Mayor George Kalaj to again retain the services of Mrs. Murphy to investigate the creation of a public safety division to replace the Town of Blooming Grove police department. (If you’re confused as to why there’s a man claiming to be a public safety officer paying employees of Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein’s not-for-profit out of pocket, and them reimbursing that expense with the Village, that makes two of us.)
One resident last night shared that she had not had her FOIL requests complied with for over a year. Adrianna Concilio, another South Blooming Grove resident whose situation we previously covered here, also has not had FOIL requests responded to in over a year. You can see the full list of questions from Adrianna here that the Village has not bothered to answer.
Mr. Shepstone has previously misled South Blooming Grove residents about the proper notification requirements involving business before the planning board. He told Mrs. Concilio previously:
“First of all, the state law has NO REQUIREMENTS, I just want you all to understand, it's common practice with every municipality, to give some kind of notice. Okay that’s number one, but it’s NOT a requirement of state law. You can check it yourself if you don’t believe me but there is NO requirement in the state law to give ANY kind of notice whatsoever other than to put a notice in the newspaper. That’s it. … MY position has always been, if you’re here YOU got notice” (Emphasis Added.)
Of course, the New York State Committee on Open Government did not agree with Mr. Shepstone’s position, telling The Monroe Gazette:
All meetings of a public body must be noticed in compliance with Section 104 of the Open Meetings Law.
§104. Public notice.
1. Public notice of the time and place of a meeting scheduled at least one week prior thereto shall be given or electronically transmitted to the news media and shall be conspicuously posted in one or more designated public locations at least seventy-two hours before such meeting.
2. Public notice of the time and place of every other meeting shall be given or electronically transmitted, to the extent practicable, to the news media and shall be conspicuously posted in one or more designated public locations at a reasonable time prior thereto.
3. The public notice provided for by this section shall not be construed to require publication as a legal notice.
4. If videoconferencing is used to conduct a meeting, the public notice for the meeting shall inform the public that videoconferencing will be used, identify the locations for the meeting, and state that the public has the right to attend the meeting at any of the locations.
5. If a meeting will be streamed live over the internet, the public notice for the meeting shall inform the public of the internet address of the website streaming such meeting.
6. When a public body has the ability to do so, notice of the time and place of a meeting given in accordance with subdivision one or two of this section, shall also be conspicuously posted on the public body's internet website.
And yes, since this question comes up a bunch, the village attorney, Scott Ugell, is well aware of all this non-compliance and has not responded, probably because he’s got other legal problems of his own — like explaining threats of murder and his alleged cocaine-fueled trip to Boston starring a sex worker named Lenny.
Previous government officials have confirmed that Mr. Shepstone is compensated via fees for each project presented before the Planning Board. Thus, Shepstone is financially incentivized to get as many projects before the board as possible. In late 2022 / early 2023, the same source confirmed that Mr. Shepstone adjusted the project application form and fees for the Village to further enrich himself.
When Mr. Shepstone was the Village Planner in Monticello, residents accused him — according to the Times Herald-Record — of being “too cozy” with developers who had business before the board. This led to Monticello stripping Shepstone of some of his duties. When Mr. Shepstone served as the Town Planner in Bethel, he was also stripped of many of his responsibilities. In Bethel, and this is something residents of South Blooming Grove should listen to closely, Town Board members took issue with the number of applications that appeared before the Planning Board that were filled with inaccurate or otherwise erroneous information.
If you watch the video at the start of this post, you’ll find at least one South Blooming Grove resident — who requested not to be identified — correctly pointing out all of the deficiencies in nearly every project presented before the board. Mr. Shepstone, at least at one point in his career as a Village Planner/consultant, did look closely at applications submitted to him. We know this because when he was the Milford Township Planning Consultant, he regularly rejected applications for having insufficient information. One of the victims of the old Mr. Shepstone — before he was presumably hit by a bus and replaced with a pod person — was a proposed Home Depot. (Mr. Shepstone, and Mayor George Kalaj of South Blooming Grove, did not reply to requests for comment about the sudden change in approaches concerning applications Mr. Shepstone will review.)
For clarity’s sake, I did speak with Orange County attorney Richard B. Golden about what does, and does not, make up a completed application for a Planning Board. Mr. Shepstone had made a point at the July 18th, 2024, Village of South Blooming Grove Planning Board to say that Orange County did not have the final say on this matter. This concerned Musueam Village Gardens — also discussed in the video above as the first item. Mr. Shepstone had told the public that the application was online in July during the meeting but then hilariously failed to locate it. You can see this happen at 8:02 in the video below from July’s meeting.:
Mr. Golden said the following about the completeness of applications:
As with many areas of the law, precision of language is critical. Whether or not an application pending before a municipal board is “complete” will depend on that particular municipality’s zoning and subdivision codes; the County has no input or control with respect to such matters. However, certain (but not all) municipal land use applications in Orange County are required to be sent to the County Planning Department pursuant to NY General Municipal Law Sections 239-l, -m, -n.
When a required site plan, special permit and other identified applications are sent as required by GML 239-m, then a “full statement” of the application must be sent to the Planning Department, which is required to have certain information included. If a “full statement” is not properly sent, it is sometimes roughly called “incomplete” (although it is technically not a completeness issues, but whether it satisfies the “full statement” requirement).
When, as in the application of the Museum Village Gardens, the matter referred to the County Planning Department per GML 239-m is a subdivision, then no “full statement” is required at all (and no “completeness” issue arises), the only thing that is statutorily mandated to be sent to the County Planning Department is the proposed subdivision plat, which was sent to the County Planning Department for this application. The Planning Department can request additional information, but the law does not mandate that the local municipal board comply.
It will come as a surprise to very few people reading this that the Village of South Blooming Grove, after Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein became de facto mayors of the Village, created a role for Mr. Shepstone not long after taking office. At the time, Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein informed Village Board members that Mr. Shepstone would be charged with guiding development in the Village. That was back in 2020. In 2024, we can plainly see the result of his guidance, which makes it troubling to hear him tell residents not to blame the Village’s growth for the bad water.
While true the South Blooming Grove Village infrastructure was aging, like its neighboring municipality in Monroe, It’s also true that under Mr. Shepstone’s guidance, the Village has seen an explosive amount of growth and has ignored at least two consecutive years of warnings from the Orange County Department of Health. During Mr. Stern, Mr. Ekstein, and Mr. Shepstone’s tenure, there has also been a spike in unpermitted construction (meaning no approval from the local government, the County, and the State) which has resulted in at least two lawsuits that are publicly known at this time. The first is the ongoing lawsuit between Orange County and the Village of South Blooming Grove over unpermitted construction that cut into Orange County’s Gonzaga Park property. The second is a personal injury lawsuit involving a Keen Equities laborer who was critically injured doing construction work on the Clovewood property long after the State DEC ordered violations, fines, and a stop work order. All of this happened on Mr. Shepstone’s watch.
Before we get into Mr. Shepstone’s weird shit, there’s one more thing about his work with the Village of South Blooming Grove that needs to be brought up again. The Monroe Gazette previously reported here that Mr. Shepstone would routinely meet with Mr. Stern, Mr. Ekstein, and the South Blooming Grove’s Community Design Review Committee (CDRC) at the United Jewish Community Headquarters. The same source we spoke with about Mr. Shepstone’s payment structure also confirmed conversations with Mr. Shepstone where he shared that the Village Planning Board was meeting at the United Jewish Community Headquarters, often before actual meetings took place in public view. Mr. Shepstone was dumb enough to allow for this to be photographed and shared in The Village of South Blooming Grove’s The Blooming Grove Report.
You’ll note that, according to The Blooming Grove Report, the CDRC is approving projects, even though ALL projects, not just some requiring subdivision, are supposed to go through The Planning Board and the Village Board for approval. (Shepstone is pictured on the far left in the picture below.)
Ok. What Does The New York Times Have to Do With Mr. Shepstone Though?
I’m glad you asked. That brings us to a man named Shalom Lamm. Local residents will immediately recognize the name. But since a lot of you are not local, let me explain: You know how Trump and the Republicans have been running around talking about voter fraud for what seems like an eternity now? As you know, voter fraud — while it does indeed happen in America — does not happen at the size and scale claimed by Trump concerning things like the 2020 election. (Trump’s own people said that, claiming that the 2020 election was the most secure one ever conducted.)
But do you know where the largest case of verifiable voter fraud ever occurred? Just over the border from Orange County in neighboring Sullivan, in the Village of Bloomingburg. The man at the center of that case? Shalom Lamm, who would be sentenced to prison by the Southern District of New York after pleading guilty to the charges. I know all this because I was (VERY briefly) involved with gathering information on the case and providing it to the FBI via John Kahrs and others. (This happened during my United Monroe days. At the time, United Monroe was looking to team up with other organizations in the area, but after one meeting with other regional groups, nothing came of it.)
The Times-Herald Record didn’t talk to me for their article covering the fallout from The New York Times story, but had they done so I would have told them, like I’m telling you now, that Mr. Lamm employed a PR firm — or someone like this jackass — and that person/agency was messaging reporters and other members of the media about the “rampant antisemitism” in Pine Bush / Sullivan County / Bloomingburg during the same exact time the walls started to close in on Mr. Lamm from the FBI.
It’s PR 101. Cover the bad shit about you in the news with good shit. Or in this case, shit that’ll help your cause. It’s very easy to get away with everything Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein are doing in South Blooming Grove when you believe the community is filled with antisemites. In fact, that was the exact tactic Stern and Ekstein’s buddy Moche Halpern tried with Washingtonville.
When it comes to the potential for bad publicity, historically, the Satmar will try to get out of it by painting any criticism as anti-semitic, something residents of Blooming Grove and all of Southern Orange County know all too well. What better way to distract from an FBI investigation than by ginning up controversy in the same community you want to develop? That’s exactly what happened. I know this because I’ve worked in PR and Marketing since I was 18. I literally wrote a book on this stuff. But here’s how this all connects with Mr. Shepstone …
Above: Screenshot via The Times-Herald Record showing Mr. Shepstone’s presentation on behalf of Mr. Shalom Lamm’s company, Sullivan Farm.
Mr. Shepstone was an employee of Shalom Lamm’s company, Sullivan Farm. While Chestnut Ridge was being presented to the Town of Mamakating Board, Mr. Shepstone argued on Mr. Lamm’s behalf that the development, after the Town rescinded the permits for Chestnut Ridge on the (correct) belief that development, would only provide homes to Haredi residents and discriminate against secular residents — sound familiar? — Shepstone claimed that wasn’t true and provided the Town with bogus information to prove his claim. As described by The Times-Herald Record at the time:
“It was a convoluted description in which Shepstone was trying to prove to the board of trustees, minus absent trustee Rivkah Mosesson, that even with sole Hasidic occupation the development will not exceed the water, sewer and traffic parameters outlined in its original SEQRA. Mayor Russell Wood said after the meeting that he understood Shepstone was describing the development as purely Hasidic in order to counter what the town said in its rescission of the development’s approvals. However, Shepstone never tried to present any statistics in which the development might be occupied by some Hasidic families who have more children but drive less, mixed with non-Hasidic families that might have fewer children but would drive more.”
It’s not clear at this time if Mr. Shepstone still has a working relationship with Mr. Shalom Lamm, whom I want to stress, is a convicted felon. Mr. Shepstone is listed as a trustee, along with Mr. Lamm, on the Wurstboro Airport Foundation. As of 2020, according to ProPublica, the Wurstboro Airport Foundation has assets totaling over $13M, expenses totaling $698,812, and total revenue of a $1. The last year that the foundation reported revenue was in 2013, during the time of the FBI investigation, at $200,000. (Mr. Shepstone declined to reply to questions about his connections to Shalom Lamm.)
What Weird Shit Did Mr. Shepstone Say?
If you watch the video from this month’s meeting at the top, you’ll see Mr. Shepstone will not answer questions from the public concerning the water and sewage situation. He’ll also cut people off and be rude and dismissive of resident complaints. But he’s got plenty of weird shit he wants to say on the Internet, such as …
Mr. Shepstone maintains a Substack of his own, which you can read here. He has worked many years as an advocate for the natural gas industry — insert easy joke here about how he’s filled with it.
“Natural Gas, what’s that?” You may ask. Well, it’s this stuff that was directly attributed to killing at least 20 people in Mr. Shepstone’s home state of Pennsylvania. So, we can factually say that Mr. Shepstone, a man from Pennsylvania, has advocated for policies that have verifiably killed his fellow Pennsylvanians.
In many cases, in his newsletter, Shepstone regurgitates what others in the natural gas industry are saying to people, editorializing solely through headlines.
But there are specific examples, such as this one, where he himself calls Climate Change into question by saying:
“That was 700-1,100 years ago and Greenland was obviously much warmer than today, yet the climate scaremongers at CNN would have us believe warming invisible to the naked eye peering at the above charts is somehow an existential climate crisis. It isn’t, so let’s all calm down, adapt to whatever climate comes about and go about our lives.”
I’ll let NASA address this claim directly:
Which will cause …
When asked whether he felt Climate Change, which he denies exists in his newsletter, is a clear and present danger to South Blooming Grove and New York State residents, Mr. Shepstone did not reply.
In 2019, New York State passed legislation requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 40% no later than 2030. Mr. Shepstone did not respond to requests for comment about how his actions in rapidly approving projects, despite factual inconsistencies concerning their climate footprint, help the Village of South Blooming Grove work toward meeting New York's stated goals. In fact, Orange County Planning Commissioner Alan J. Sorensen confirmed to The Monroe Gazette that, as of this writing, his office has not received applications from South Blooming Grove officials — which includes Mr. Shepstone — for preserving green space within the village. That includes programs such as this one where Orange County has pledged to provide matching funds for that purpose.
As noted previously at The Monroe Gazette, land preservation acts as a carbon sink. The more land you preserve, the fewer greenhouse gas emissions you can emit. Mr. Shepstone also did not reply to requests for comments about whether he still advocates for the natural gas industry while maintaining his role as the Village Planner in South Blooming Grove.
I sure hope our friends at the Environmental Protection Agency are listening as they continue their investigation into construction and development in South Blooming Grove. An EPA spokesperson has confirmed to The Monroe Gazette that the investigation is ongoing, but there are no other details at this time.
There are parallels between the current situation in South Blooming Grove and Jackson, Mississippi. In Jackson, Mississippi, the State Department of Health did not notify or consistently document the city’s issues with its water and sanitation system, which led to its failure.
“The MSDH oversight failures obscured Jackson’s long-standing challenges, allowed issues to compound over time, and contributed to the system’s eventual failure,” said the inspector general, an independent group inside the EPA that began investigating Jackson’s water woes in September 2022.”
In the case of South Blooming Grove, Orange County (at the very least) documented issues with the South Blooming Grove water system in 2022 and 2023. Mr. Shepstone was informed of these issues and concerns, as were Mr. Ekstein and Mr. Stern.
However, in no documentation FOIL-ed by The Monroe Gazette, has Orange County acted against the Village of South Blooming Grove over these violations.
Most — but not all — Orange County representatives often do not reply to requests for comment, and in this specific case, Orange County’s Department of Health — as of this writing — has not responded to a direct yes or no question:
Is the Village of South Blooming Grove currently in compliance with the Orange County Department of Health’s orders?
During Thursday’s Village of South Blooming Grove Planning Board meeting, Mr. Shepstone would not answer that question multiple times throughout the two-hour meeting.
I’m going to caution you that the meeting video at the top of this post will be tough to watch. So, before I get into part 2, let’s have at least one laugh from Thursday night’s proceedings:
Above: After taking office, South Blooming Grove Mayor George Kalaj illegally fired the Planning Board members. He did this without notice or reason provided for their dismissal. Mr. Abraham Klepner, pictured above, was appointed to the board. At last night’s meeting, Mr. Klepner spent almost all of it playing on his phone, much like his friend on the Zoning Board, Sholem Leiberman, did.
I guess Mr. Klepner skipped his Talmud reading involving the principal of Geneivat Da'at. This is a concept in the Halakhah (all of Jewish law, basically) that prohibits misrepresentation and deception, but more specifically, theft.
As a Planning Board member, Mr. Klepner has a moral, ethical, and fiduciary responsibility to all South Blooming Grove residents to pay attention during meetings and ask questions concerning the projects before the Board. He did none of that last night.
Mr. Klepner would later freak out when I asked about what he was doing on his phone, which you can see in the video above, stating, “I don’t have to tell you.” I guess he’s not familiar with Chullin 94a: “This is as Shmuel said: It is prohibited to deceive people, and even to deceive a gentile.” (Emphasis added.)
Only after he was reminded that he’s bound by the Village Code of Ethics and has a responsibility to all residents of South Blooming Grove to pay attention to what’s being said at meetings did Mr. Klepner put his phone away.
As my grandmother would say, “What a schmuck.”