Tuesday, December 05, 2023
NY may change how villages are formed. Would that derail Hasidic village plans?
Two bills that tighten New York's rules to form a village may pose fresh hurdles for plans by Hasidic communities in Orange and Sullivan counties if Gov. Kathy Hochul signs either this month.
Both bills would update an old law that requires little more than a petition, a population of at least 500 people and a referendum to start a village. Critics say that simple recipe makes it too easy for a group of citizens to add a layer of local government that is largely obsolete and sought mostly as a way to seize power from a town government.
The bills were approved by state lawmakers in June and are among the last pieces of legislation left for Hochul to approve or reject in the final weeks of the year.
Each would raise the bar for a new village and demand studies of how it would affect taxes, services and other factors. One change alone in both bills would disqualify the village petitions in Orange and Sullivan if applied to them: raising the minimum population to 2,000 from 500.
Both village plans are tied up in court. In Sullivan, opponents of the proposed Ateres in the towns of Thompson and Fallsburg are challenging 22 petition signatures to try to get it voided. Their suit stopped the town supervisors from scheduling a referendum after they declared the petition valid in September.
In Orange, the five-year-long quest to create the village of Seven Springs in the town of Monroe is going through another round of litigation after Supervisor Tony Cardone rejected it as flawed in September.
Neither proposed village has 2,000 or more inhabitants: Ateres had 834 and Seven Springs had 597 when the petitions were filed. The question is whether both plans would fail for that reason if their backers win in court but Hochul has signed one or both reform bills.
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