An effort to establish a town in Orange County took a step forward with the delivery of a petition to the county legislature. Village of Kiryas Joel leaders are initiating the process.
Village of Kirays Joel leaders Monday delivered a petition with signatures from more than 2,400 Monroe residents to establish the Town of North Monroe. They say 650 signatures were required. The leaders say they will press forward with all efforts to fully secede from the Town of Monroe and the petition is the first step in the process. In a statement, Kiryas Joel Village Administrator Gedalye Szegedin says, “We believe that this is the most practical and reasonable solution to resolving a long standing issue in our region, recognizing the different needs of both communities, and allowing each community to coexist in peace and harmony.”
Grassroots organization United Monroe has been a staunch opponent of Kiryas Joel’s current proposal to annex 507 acres, a proposal that has been challenged and is still in court. Emily Convers is United Monroe chairwoman.
“The concept of a North Monroe is simply a back door to the annexation,” Convers says.
Szegedin says the split will allow each new town to decide which public and community services and facilities it finds desirable. For example, he says the new town would facilitate the consolidation of the local fire districts as well as the alteration of the school district boundaries between the Monroe Woodbury and Kiryas Joel School Districts. Democratic Assemblyman James Skoufis has long spoken out against the annexation proposal and when the Town of North Monroe idea became public in mid-August, Skoufis had the following reaction.
“The one benefit is that it would remove the block vote, or block votes, from Town of Monroe elections,” Skoufis says.
Convers also sees this as a positive, with a caveat.
“And, yeah, it is great that the KJ leadership wouldn’t have undue influence over town board members, and that’s a huge issue in the town right now, but not at the expense of all these hundreds of rural acres which would be immediately become high density We already have water and sewer concerns,” says Convers.
Skoufis says if the Town of North Monroe concept is a back door to annexation, then he would strongly oppose the effort.
“The timing is very curious,” Skoufis says. “Why is this being presented and advanced in parallel to the annexation case that is in court right now.”
Kiryas Joel officials have previously said that they need to expand, as do many communities, and take issue with the type of opposition they face.
The petition documents include reasons for the proposed change and state that Monroe is Orange County’s most populous town, with 45,000 residents, more than 60 percent of whom reside in Kiryas Joel and its vicinities on the north side of Route 17. The vast majority of the village’s residents are Satmar Chasidic Jews, who choose a lifestyle in high density development, close to friends and family who share the same culture and language. Conversely, many residents in the Town of Monroe, living on the south side of Route 17, seek a more rural lifestyle with low density development and have opposed growth within the Village of Kiryas Joel and its expansion through annexation. The statement continues that a new Town of North Monroe will allow both communities to retain their characters and identities and choice to develop as desired.
The petition says that the Town of Monroe contains 13,632 acres of land and after the proposed split, would contain 12,550 acres.
