Saturday, August 12, 2017
Hearings to allow public to weigh in on proposed Town of Palm Tree
The spectacle of a divided electorate in Monroe could not have been more stark than in the town elections of 2013.
That November, residents from the bulk of Monroe streamed to the polls to vote for Emily Convers and her United Monroe running mates, enduring long lines and ballot shortages to try to overcome what they knew would be a unified vote for the opposition by Kiryas Joel residents.
But voters on the other side of Route 17 did the same thing in mirror image, turning out in droves to cast ballots for Harley Doles and his slate, the candidates endorsed by the Hasidic community’s political leaders.
Vote counts finalized more than two weeks later showed that 5,990 people outside of Kiryas Joel had voted for Convers for town supervisor, and only 396 had supported Doles. But the outcome was even more lopsided in Kiryas Joel: 6,418-6 for Doles. Doles had won the race by almost 800 votes, despite massive turnout and a voter enrollment edge in the two villages and unincorporated town areas outside Kiryas Joel.
Almost four years later, the 2013 election looms over a momentous decision about whether to split off Kiryas Joel into its own town. Under a proposal coming before the Orange County Legislature next month, the Hasidic village and its 10,000 voters would depart from Monroe and its contentious elections, and a new Town of Palm Tree would come into existence.
The Legislature vote is a preliminary hurdle. Monroe voters ultimately would decide on Kiryas Joel’s proposed separation in a townwide referendum on Nov. 7, but only if a two-thirds supermajority, at least 14 of 21 legislators, agree to let the petition proceed to a town vote.
County lawmakers will hold two public hearings on the proposal this week, one in Central Valley on Tuesday and another in Kiryas Joel on Wednesday.
Both Kiryas Joel and United Monroe are supporting the proposed town, having negotiated a reduction in its size and a separate legal agreement with conditions each side had sought. For Kiryas Joel, the proposal offers to conclude litigation over its expansion efforts and defuse tensions over its voters dominating Monroe elections. For United Monroe, it promises elections without Kiryas Joel’s voting blocs and the candidates they empower, and involves less land than Kiryas Joel leaders had initially sought.
“Separating from Kiryas Joel now means Monroe has control over our own zoning, Town Board, planning and future,” Convers, the chairwoman of United Monroe, wrote in a lengthy post on United Monroe’s Facebook page. “Not separating from Kiryas Joel now means being controlled by Kiryas Joel forever. That means high density housing throughout Monroe, that means people like Harley Doles on your Town Board ... forever.”
Doles, in a 2,100-word email on Tuesday to every county lawmaker and a couple dozen other people, questioned the premise for separating without exactly opposing it. Doles himself had suggested separating Kiryas Joel from Monroe upon taking office in 2014. And in his discourse on Tuesday, he argued that “most agree a new town has merit,” but complained about United Monroe negotiating terms that affect the town and bristled at the suggestion that Kiryas Joel had influenced town policies.
“Do they offer any proof?” he wrote. “No! The Where, When or How KJ get special treatment is never explained.”
A four-year land conflict
The Palm Tree proposal is the culmination of a conflict that began at the start of 2014, with the filing of a petition for Kiryas Joel to annex 507 acres from Monroe. That set off a charged debate over the growth of the densely populated Hasidic community and the impact its expansion would have on the otherwise rural and suburban areas surrounding the village.
The ensuing saga has since taken many turns in government halls and courtrooms. Today, Kiryas Joel, which had been 1.1 square miles since its first expansion in 1983, officially controls 164 more acres that the Monroe Town Board allowed it to annex in a climactic vote in 2015. Two court cases challenging that annexation are pending in a state appeals court, following a judge’s decision to dismiss them in October.
Two months before that ruling had come in, the Hasidic community tried a new approach by petitioning the county Legislature to authorize a referendum on separating Kiryas Joel from Monroe. The initial proposal would have joined 382 acres, including the 164 annexed acres, with Kiryas Joel to form a new town. Kiryas Joel leaders later cut 162 acres from the size of the proposed town in negotiations with United Monroe.
How the proposal will fare in the Legislature in September is unclear. The Monroe Democratic Committee announced last weekend it had passed a resolution urging lawmakers to let the proposal advance to a referendum, declaring it “the very essence of democracy” for people to choose their own government. The town’s Republican Committee hasn’t taken a position.
“The proposal to divide Monroe gives the people on both sides of the town the opportunity to solve a number of long-standing problems,” the Democrats’ resolution read. “We believe the people of Monroe should decide the shape of our town, and that the County Legislature should endorse the right of the people of Monroe to make our decision.”
County Legislator Myrna Kemnitz, who issued that statement as the Democratic Committee’s secretary and who will vote with the Legislature on Sept. 7, later said she’ll keep an open mind at the upcoming public hearings, but believes Monroe residents should get a chance to vote on the proposal. Three other lawmakers have so far stated support, and one has come out in opposition.
Monroe reactions
Reactions in Monroe have been mixed, colored by attitudes toward Kiryas Joel, United Monroe and Doles, and by changes that have taken place since the 2013 election. Two Town Board candidates backed by United Monroe won seats in 2015 with a surprising assist from the smaller of Kiryas Joel’s two voting blocs, shifting power away from Doles and his board allies. And several previously dormant housing projects are now under way or awaiting construction, raising the prospect of a growing Hasidic population outside Kiryas Joel.
That suggests to some separation skeptics that a bloc-vote influence may reemerge, even though only about 200 of the 12,580 town voters outside Kiryas Joel are from Hasidic households.
Dan Burke, a former town councilman who lost his seat in the 2015 election, raised a host of issues he said had not been addressed yet, including a detailed analysis of the potential impact that Kiryas Joel’s separation will have on Monroe’s town finances. But he pointed out that he voted in 2015 to encourage Kiryas Joel to separate, and said he’ll vote for the Palm Tree proposal if a referendum is held.
Burke suggested in an email, though, that further discussions take place, writing: “The strong desire for the formation of a new town for our neighbors in the Village of Kiryas Joel presents the opportunity and the leverage for a Grand Plan that would negotiate and settle all issues and allow peace between neighbors for many decades.”
Kiryas Joel Administrator Gedalye Szegedin recently proposed to meet with Woodbury leaders to try to settle their legal conflicts, a potential sticking point for some county lawmakers in the upcoming Palm Tree vote. Woodbury and seven other municipalities, along with the county itself, are parties to one of two lawsuits challenging Kiryas Joel’s annexation. Both challenges are pending in the Appellate Division, and would be rendered moot by the creation of Palm Tree, since the annexed land would be part of it.
Supporters argue the benefits of the town proposal outweigh any misgivings, particularly if the alternative to separating is that Kiryas Joel elects a new Town Board and exerts its will over development in the entire town.
Addressing some of those qualms in her Facebook post, Convers argued: “This means that all of those concerns you have about all of the aforementioned issues will be multiplied by 13,000 acres instead of 56.”
http://www.recordonline.com/news/20170812/hearings-to-allow-public-to-weigh-in-on-proposed-town-of-palm-tree
That November, residents from the bulk of Monroe streamed to the polls to vote for Emily Convers and her United Monroe running mates, enduring long lines and ballot shortages to try to overcome what they knew would be a unified vote for the opposition by Kiryas Joel residents.
But voters on the other side of Route 17 did the same thing in mirror image, turning out in droves to cast ballots for Harley Doles and his slate, the candidates endorsed by the Hasidic community’s political leaders.
Vote counts finalized more than two weeks later showed that 5,990 people outside of Kiryas Joel had voted for Convers for town supervisor, and only 396 had supported Doles. But the outcome was even more lopsided in Kiryas Joel: 6,418-6 for Doles. Doles had won the race by almost 800 votes, despite massive turnout and a voter enrollment edge in the two villages and unincorporated town areas outside Kiryas Joel.
Almost four years later, the 2013 election looms over a momentous decision about whether to split off Kiryas Joel into its own town. Under a proposal coming before the Orange County Legislature next month, the Hasidic village and its 10,000 voters would depart from Monroe and its contentious elections, and a new Town of Palm Tree would come into existence.
The Legislature vote is a preliminary hurdle. Monroe voters ultimately would decide on Kiryas Joel’s proposed separation in a townwide referendum on Nov. 7, but only if a two-thirds supermajority, at least 14 of 21 legislators, agree to let the petition proceed to a town vote.
County lawmakers will hold two public hearings on the proposal this week, one in Central Valley on Tuesday and another in Kiryas Joel on Wednesday.
Both Kiryas Joel and United Monroe are supporting the proposed town, having negotiated a reduction in its size and a separate legal agreement with conditions each side had sought. For Kiryas Joel, the proposal offers to conclude litigation over its expansion efforts and defuse tensions over its voters dominating Monroe elections. For United Monroe, it promises elections without Kiryas Joel’s voting blocs and the candidates they empower, and involves less land than Kiryas Joel leaders had initially sought.
“Separating from Kiryas Joel now means Monroe has control over our own zoning, Town Board, planning and future,” Convers, the chairwoman of United Monroe, wrote in a lengthy post on United Monroe’s Facebook page. “Not separating from Kiryas Joel now means being controlled by Kiryas Joel forever. That means high density housing throughout Monroe, that means people like Harley Doles on your Town Board ... forever.”
Doles, in a 2,100-word email on Tuesday to every county lawmaker and a couple dozen other people, questioned the premise for separating without exactly opposing it. Doles himself had suggested separating Kiryas Joel from Monroe upon taking office in 2014. And in his discourse on Tuesday, he argued that “most agree a new town has merit,” but complained about United Monroe negotiating terms that affect the town and bristled at the suggestion that Kiryas Joel had influenced town policies.
“Do they offer any proof?” he wrote. “No! The Where, When or How KJ get special treatment is never explained.”
A four-year land conflict
The Palm Tree proposal is the culmination of a conflict that began at the start of 2014, with the filing of a petition for Kiryas Joel to annex 507 acres from Monroe. That set off a charged debate over the growth of the densely populated Hasidic community and the impact its expansion would have on the otherwise rural and suburban areas surrounding the village.
The ensuing saga has since taken many turns in government halls and courtrooms. Today, Kiryas Joel, which had been 1.1 square miles since its first expansion in 1983, officially controls 164 more acres that the Monroe Town Board allowed it to annex in a climactic vote in 2015. Two court cases challenging that annexation are pending in a state appeals court, following a judge’s decision to dismiss them in October.
Two months before that ruling had come in, the Hasidic community tried a new approach by petitioning the county Legislature to authorize a referendum on separating Kiryas Joel from Monroe. The initial proposal would have joined 382 acres, including the 164 annexed acres, with Kiryas Joel to form a new town. Kiryas Joel leaders later cut 162 acres from the size of the proposed town in negotiations with United Monroe.
How the proposal will fare in the Legislature in September is unclear. The Monroe Democratic Committee announced last weekend it had passed a resolution urging lawmakers to let the proposal advance to a referendum, declaring it “the very essence of democracy” for people to choose their own government. The town’s Republican Committee hasn’t taken a position.
“The proposal to divide Monroe gives the people on both sides of the town the opportunity to solve a number of long-standing problems,” the Democrats’ resolution read. “We believe the people of Monroe should decide the shape of our town, and that the County Legislature should endorse the right of the people of Monroe to make our decision.”
County Legislator Myrna Kemnitz, who issued that statement as the Democratic Committee’s secretary and who will vote with the Legislature on Sept. 7, later said she’ll keep an open mind at the upcoming public hearings, but believes Monroe residents should get a chance to vote on the proposal. Three other lawmakers have so far stated support, and one has come out in opposition.
Monroe reactions
Reactions in Monroe have been mixed, colored by attitudes toward Kiryas Joel, United Monroe and Doles, and by changes that have taken place since the 2013 election. Two Town Board candidates backed by United Monroe won seats in 2015 with a surprising assist from the smaller of Kiryas Joel’s two voting blocs, shifting power away from Doles and his board allies. And several previously dormant housing projects are now under way or awaiting construction, raising the prospect of a growing Hasidic population outside Kiryas Joel.
That suggests to some separation skeptics that a bloc-vote influence may reemerge, even though only about 200 of the 12,580 town voters outside Kiryas Joel are from Hasidic households.
Dan Burke, a former town councilman who lost his seat in the 2015 election, raised a host of issues he said had not been addressed yet, including a detailed analysis of the potential impact that Kiryas Joel’s separation will have on Monroe’s town finances. But he pointed out that he voted in 2015 to encourage Kiryas Joel to separate, and said he’ll vote for the Palm Tree proposal if a referendum is held.
Burke suggested in an email, though, that further discussions take place, writing: “The strong desire for the formation of a new town for our neighbors in the Village of Kiryas Joel presents the opportunity and the leverage for a Grand Plan that would negotiate and settle all issues and allow peace between neighbors for many decades.”
Kiryas Joel Administrator Gedalye Szegedin recently proposed to meet with Woodbury leaders to try to settle their legal conflicts, a potential sticking point for some county lawmakers in the upcoming Palm Tree vote. Woodbury and seven other municipalities, along with the county itself, are parties to one of two lawsuits challenging Kiryas Joel’s annexation. Both challenges are pending in the Appellate Division, and would be rendered moot by the creation of Palm Tree, since the annexed land would be part of it.
Supporters argue the benefits of the town proposal outweigh any misgivings, particularly if the alternative to separating is that Kiryas Joel elects a new Town Board and exerts its will over development in the entire town.
Addressing some of those qualms in her Facebook post, Convers argued: “This means that all of those concerns you have about all of the aforementioned issues will be multiplied by 13,000 acres instead of 56.”
http://www.recordonline.com/news/20170812/hearings-to-allow-public-to-weigh-in-on-proposed-town-of-palm-tree
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