Kiryas Joel’s split from Monroe overwhelmingly approvedBy Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
@ChrisMcKenna845
Posted Nov 7, 2017 at 11:34 PM Updated Nov 7, 2017 at 11:34 PM
MONROE - Town voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved Kiryas Joel’s secession from Monroe, a proposal that will create the first new town in New York in 35 years and resolve conflicts over Kiryas Joel’s recent expansion efforts and longstanding clout in Monroe elections.
More than 80 percent of Monroe’s voters supported the formation of the Town of Palm Tree, according to complete unofficial tallies from the Orange County Board of Elections.
Both the majority political faction in Kiryas Joel and the United Monroe citizens group had urged their voters to support the separation, making the outcome of Tuesday’s vote all but assured in advance. Voter approval of the separation had seemed likely since July, when Kiryas Joel officials and United Monroe leaders finalized a legal settlement that included their mutual support for a new town with 162 fewer additional acres than Kiryas Joel had originally sought.
Kiryas Joel leaders cheered the voting results Tuesday night.
“Today is truly an historic day that will usher in a new era of peace and stability for all the residents of Monroe,” Village Administrator Gedalye Szegedin said in a statement. “We would like to thank all the voters in Monroe for their overwhelming support. They chose a better path forward, one of diplomacy and compromise instead of angry rhetoric and litigation.”
Under the terms of the deal reached in July, United Monroe will now withdraw its court appeal challenging Kiryas Joel’s annexation of 164 acres in 2015, and Kiryas Joel will cease its own court effort to annex 507 acres instead. The future Town of Palm Tree will consist of Kiryas Joel - including the land it annexed - and 56 more acres.
The added territory gives the Hasidic community room to expand. For residents of the two villages and unincorporated areas that remain in the Town of Monroe, the separation means Kiryas Joel’s voting blocs will no longer control Monroe elections. The drawback is that Monroe will lose about $1.9 million a year in tax revenue and will have to raise taxes and take other steps to make up for it.
The new town won’t come into existence until 2020, unless expedited by special legislation enacted in Albany after state lawmakers return in January for the 2018 session. Assemblyman James Skoufis, a Woodbury Democrat, has said he is writing a bill that would speed up the effective date for Palm Tree and secure additional state aid for Monroe-Woodbury School District to recoup some revenue it will lose. Monroe-Woodbury will lose a relatively small amount because it will cede 220 acres to Kiryas Joel School District to put all of the future Palm Tree in Kiryas Joel School District’s domain.
[email protected]Editorial: County gets new town and a chance for calmPosted at 2:28 PM Updated at 2:28 PM
The new Town of Palm Tree, created with overwhelming support from the Village of Kiryas Joel and the Town of Monroe in elections Tuesday, is a welcome development both for what it means and for how it came to be.
What it means for the next 10 years is that the divisive politics and resentment that have been prevalent in the Town of Monroe for a decade or more should fade. No longer will elections be about them and us. Palm Tree voters will control their fate and Town of Monroe voters will decide theirs. The separate school districts serving the two communities will be able to cooperate, as all neighboring district do.
The two towns will be able to grow the way their residents wish to grow. In Monroe, that is likely to mean less dense housing and in Palm Tree we can expect to see more of the kinds of clustered housing that is necessary where families are large and children choose to live near their parents.
The new town offers a place for those families who might have gone beyond the old village borders in the past more room in which to live in an environment that will welcome the kind of development required to support such growth.
Another important element is a truce over annexation. The new town will not try to expand for 10 years and the community group that has been opposing much of the activity in the Village of Kiryas Joel, United Monroe, will withdraw its court appeal challenging annexation.
The results on Tuesday were best summed up by Village Administrator Gedalye Szegedin who noted that the voters “chose a better path forward, one of diplomacy and compromise instead of angry rhetoric and litigation.”
That is all the more remarkable considering some of the angry rhetoric that emerged late in the campaign for county executive, fueled by Steve Neuhaus in his attempt to portray his opponent as “Scary,” as his literature practically screamed, for being associated in any way with Kiryas Joel even though on Tuesday Neuhaus got more votes from the village than his opponent.
Such scare tactics were part of a discussion the Sunday before the election when an expert on anti- Semitism and the radical right called on people to hold leaders accountable if their actions normalize hate.
“It’s incredibly important to confront politicians who make these kinds of statements and point out, in a positive way, why they’re wrong, why they’re demonizing, why they’re isolating the people,” Mark Potok said.
That becomes even more relevant when considering how the new Town of Palm Tree came into being. It was not elected officials in Orange County who made this happen, although they did not block the effort when it came to a vote. It was the two combatants, the ones that had been at odds for years, who decided that they needed to meet and to find a way to settle their differences.
Now, we will have to see if those officials continue to inspire distrust and division or if they follow the enlightened path of those in the towns of Monroe and Palm Tree.