Gutsy Letter to the Editor, Kiryas Joel

 

Letter to Editor, April 15, 2016

THE BRAVERY AND COURAGE OF A KJ RESIDENT!

From the files of United Monroe:

John Allegro and I [admins. of the FB site] received another illuminating letter from a Kiryas Joel resident this week. We wanted to share it with you. It requires a lot of bravery to write such a piece. We applaud him and appreciate him entrusting us with his identity and his words. I have cut and pasted the letter here and we have removed his name to protect him from harm. Emily.

“I write this letter in response to the recent ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ efforts by Gedalya Szegedin (KJ Administrator) to meet county executive Newhouse and the legislative leaders to – supposedly – try to find a way to bridge the gaps between KJ and the county.

I should have written this letter to the Times Herald Record, but since this is addressed to the public and Gedalya, I think that both pay more attention to your site for that matter, so I chose to write it to you.

For the purpose of this letter, I will refer to KJPE as ‘Gedalye’ because he stood out front and center to defend the KJPE behavior, but it is meant to him and his bosses, all the way up…

As a lifelong KJ resident I feel obligated to clarify some points here.

First and foremost, the village of Kiryas Joel has been created by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum OB”M in 1977, so that people can live a quiet suburban life, in peace with its neighbors, he devoted most of his books on the matter of being respectful to host governments and even to host people.

He would have never ever allowed his followers to:

• Sue to get the KJ School District
• Sue to get the pipeline
• Sue to get sewer capacity
• Sue to get annexation

He would have went to all lengths to get along respectfully with neighbors and other governments, not by threats or suites of any kind.

Now, the situation that we – KJ Residents – are put in by Gedalye, is a dire one, on several fronts, most of which affects all of KJ, and some of which effects only the Alliance members which count over 40% of KJ.

Housing

Anyone who wants to apply for a building permit to build in KJ today, has to pay the following fees, PER UNIT:

• $6,000.00 for Water
• $3,000.00 for Sewer
• $5,000.00 for Community room

The rationale behind it is, that the land owners are sucked, and then they pass it on to the buyer, and the buyer is forced to go along with the skyrocket sale price because Gedalye will protect the land owner / developer by not issuing any future permits until he has sold what he has paid for, and at the end of the day, Gedalye and the land owners are happy, but the buyer – KJ Resident – is struggling to put bread on his table and pay his mortgage.
The fees mentioned above does not include if there’s any easement by the KJ Village that is no longer needed, in which case he would ask for its release over 100 K.
One would expect that after paying so much for a unit, you would have a parking space, room for the kids to play safely on grass, playgrounds, etc. but that is not the case if you look at any development recently built, and how the kids play with their bikes on the roadway, because they don’t understand that the $14,000.00 that was charged by Gedalye for the unit they live in and will grow up in should take care on all of their problems…

Water

The rate that KJ Residents pay for water use is $3.75 per 1,000 gallons, it used to be $2.75 per 1,000 gallons up to Jan/2015, but it went up to cover the costs of water use in KJ.

One might wonder why the cost of water in KJ is so high, there is a poultry plant in KJ owned by Gedalye’s uncle, the average daily water consumption of that plant is 113,000 gallons, with peak day production usage as high as 176,000 gallons, so that is a total of 41,245,000 gallons of water per year used by the KJ poultry plant, and paid for by every KJ Resident; I am not aware of any refund check ever issued by KJ poultry to every KJ Resident for contributing to the upkeep of the plant.

That does not include the odors and the other health hazards that the poultry plant causes, and it does not include the fact that over 40% of KJ Residents doesn’t even use the meat processed at that plant because of trust issues, and it does not include the fact the KJ Residents who use it, pay for it much more than what is paid for KJ meat in other areas such as Monsey, Brooklyn, etc.

If KJ poultry were to pay for its own water use by itself, by trucking or other means, we wouldn’t need the pipeline or the Cornwall well at all.

One might wonder if that is all true so why are the 4,200 + families quite, and why don’t they revolt for change ?

The answer: a scary one, Molestation charges

It has been used not once, not twice, not 10 times, but more.

So here’s how it works, Gedalye – through a surrogate, who is also a municipal employee (I will not name him here, but if anyone is going to try to deny it, I will post the name and salary of that surrogate) – would threaten that person that he will file charges against him that he molested a child, fi that person will not back off, he will proceed with having his Public Safety arrest that person for probable cause on alleged molestation.

Now, let’s stop here, before we proceed with the criminal justice process that follows.

That person is done, killed without a bullet, no one would want to look at him, talk to him, or stand next to him, and every one would warn their kids not to stand next to that person, even if he is your neighbor, cousin, brother-in-law, brother, husband etc., that person is basically done in his social life, for life, before any court proceedings begin.

Of the alleged molestation charges, not one of them was sustained in court, but the damage was done, and the victim didn’t have the guts to countersue, because he was trying to reclaim his own life and his own family.

For the record, it has been used as a threat for someone who constantly complained to KJ Mayor Wieder abut the horrendous odor that was being emitted from the KJ poultry plant’s pre-treatment facilities on a daily basis, until the EPA started slapping them with hefty fines.

Now I will address the situation which over 40% of KJ residents (Alliance members) endure:

Since the alliance has a view on certain religious and political aspects which is different than that of Gedalya, he decided to make their life miserable, using the village government power, wherever he could, although the methods changed over the years, the mission is still the same, hurt them until they leave.

In the 1990’s it meant rocks thrown at bedroom windows in the middle of the night, car tires slashed, car windows broken, a home with 30 + mothers and newborn babies burned down in the middle of the night on July/21/1996 because of the fact that a rabbi from Brooklyn was about to make a fundraising diner in an adjacent building the following afternoon, the rabbi’s sin: he had similar views to that of the alliance.

It proceeded with refusing to grant building permits, site plan approvals etc. for any Alliance affiliated school or synagogue, with few exceptions.

There is a synagogue in KJ that has been used since the late 1970’s as a place of worship, it also housed a living quarters for Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum OB”M, it was deemed a revered place due to the fact that rabbi Teitelbaum used to pray there at in last few years of his life.

I have been praying there for almost 30 years, until Gedalye’s congregation sued that it lacks special use permit for a synagogue, the courts ruled that it may not be utilized as a place of worship until such special use permit is issued by the planning board; there was an application submitted to the planning board, but Gedalya said: Hell, no, I will never allow the planning board to approve such a special use permit, and so it remains shut as of Dec/2009.

Btw, the planning board and ZBA members here are just following Gedalya’s marching orders, I am not sure if they ever read once the NYS building code book, or the NFPA publication, they are just there to serve Gedalya.

There is a wedding hall that has opened in the village of Woodbury in 2010, that did not sit well with Gedalya, so the old playbook was utilized, people were beaten, threatened, etc. until some 30 + criminal police reports were filed with the State Police, perpetrators were arrested and charged, guilty pleas were entered, and Gedalya ran out of soldiers willing to go to jail for him, so far he doesn’t have 1 person willing to go to jail for him.

In a way, Gedalya is worse than the mafia, because the mafia – as brutal as they are – try to support their men in time of need, but Gedalya uses his men like batteries, if he no longer has any use of them he would dump them, no matter how hard and faithful that person served him.

One might wonder where the Law Enforcement agencies were all these years, the answer is as follows: 1. People were afraid for the most part to report to police, and 2. Gedalya used to paint a picture for the Law Enforcement agencies that the Alliance are a bunch of crazy mentally ill folks and so it is not worth paying attention when they call 911, and that is worth to breach serious protocols at the highest levels of government to look the other way when complaints do come in.

Recently, that has drastically changed for the better, to the credit of the current leadership at the State Police, Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and countless other Law Enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels who are – for the most part – no longer taking Gedalya’s bait.

So, if anyone would question KJ Residents would want to move out of KJ into Monroe, Woodbury, or Blooming Grove? The answer, they prefer to move out of Gedalya’s bloody trap, of which less than 10 people benefit, and the rest suffers.

And to Gedalya: you need a medicine, that is called: Get used to get along with your constituents and with your neighbors.

• Drop the pipeline lawsuit, or hand it over to Orange County so all municipalities along the route can share it.
• Drop the annexation lawsuit.
• Stop the $14,000.00 robbery per unit.
• Get your planning board to approve the shul.
• Relocate KJ Poultry plant somewhere near the Hudson river where you will have an unlimited supply of water and sewer, at a cheaper cost.
• Stop the molestation charge threats.
• Don’t go to Steve Neuhaus or to the county legislature, they can’t provide you that medicine or the constant care that you need to adjust yourself to reality, don’t use up the precious time of the county government to conceal your true illness.
• The old tricks that were mostly successful for over 30 years are no longer effective, so you have to take that medicine asap or your empire will collapse very badly.

 

Gedalye: Get used to get along with your constituents and with your neighbors.”

END

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