Dear Woodbury: Have You Tried Being Normal for a While?
It wouldn't be a Kathryn Luciani story without an ethics scandal. Lucky us, we've already got one!
Pictured Above: At least one of your current Woodbury Town Board members. This story will explain.
Howdy,
Things have been hectic lately, so I’ll be increasing the frequency of my posts. I thought Southern Orange County was going to quiet down after Tony Cardone, Kathryn Luciani, and Dorey Ghoul were chased out of town.
Stupid me.
Because then we had the phantom South Blooming Grove election, the ongoing helicopter saga, the proposed Chester concentration camp and secret New Windsor ICE offices, and now everyone in local politics has decided to get syphilis and act crazy.
Ok. I don’t know for sure if the people I write about have syphilis, but there’s an outside shot at least one of them do.
Keep an eye on your inbox, is what I’m saying.
And if you’re not receiving our newsletter, visit MonroeGazette.com for the latest.
With the increase in posts, I’ll keep them shorter—at least shorter for me anyway.
The ABC’s
A. Yes, I am running for the State Senate as an independent. I’m not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party. One party seems to have been taken over by white supremacists who love war, while the other has been taken over by corporate interests and billionaires who also love war. If you can distinguish between the two, please let the rest of us know!
We’re seeking volunteers to gather signatures. If you’re interested, email me at bj@monroegazette.com.
All you need to know about the campaign:
I’m not taking donations over $35. I refuse to accept money from PACS, LLC, and anyone connected to the real estate industry. I want to ban all private financing of elections in New York with a constitutional amendment.
I believe Trump will try to screw with the Mid-Term elections, so I want you to visit this website, apply to get an early mail ballot, and then write me in as your State Senate candidate if you live in Orange County. Voting early and getting your ballot in before election day is going to be supremely important. We want enough people to vote all across America in such high numbers that nothing the Trump Regieme says or tries will matter.
I believe Healthcare is a human right. I want to pass the New York Health Act. State Senator James G. Skoufis does not. He says it’s too expensive. I believe he’s right to express that concern, but wrong to use it as an excuse to force New Yorkers to choose between groceries and medicine. In fact, I think it’s kind of heartless. Not only will the New York Health Act pay for itself, but it’s the right thing to do when over 1.2 Million New Yorkers could lose their health insurance by the end of this year. To say nothing of everyone else struggling to afford their premiums, medications, and co-pays with the plans that they have. Ask anyone with Medicare who has hearing, vision, or dental problems.
B. No, we’re not in Iran for any legitimate reason beyond the president wanting you to forget he’s been accused of attempting to coerce a teenage girl into sexual acts, followed by hitting her when she refused to cooperate.
More specifically, the victim told the FBI that Trump was forcing her, a teenage girl, to give him a blow job. She refused. She bit him on the dick. And then Trump slapped her on the head.
That’s the current president of the United States. An alleged pedophile.
Now, call me crazy, but the appropriate response to credible accusations of pedophilia isn’t bombing a school full of teenage girls.
But that’s exactly what the president of the United States, an alleged pedophile, did.
The Associated Press was informed by U.S. officials that the missile that hit the girls school was likely ours. Fox News and other regime friendly outlets will tell you otherwise.
I mention this because you might be hearing, “Why are we at war with Iran?” You might be asking yourself that question.
Fascists are constantly trying to re-write history. So it’s important we all be clear on the answer. And that the answer does not get lost to history.
The answer everyone needs to share is this: “The president was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl, so he wanted to blow up some other teenage girls in a country where no one would care if he did.”
Six American soldiers are dead right now for that exact reason.
C. Also, if you’re not deeply alarmed by this bullshit, you should be:
-If you appreciate our work, consider supporting us by participating in our annual subscriber drive. We aim to sign up 500 new annual subscribers by the end of the year. It’s just $120 for the year, which is less than what you’ll probably pay for most things as oil prices soar.
In Local News: What The Fuck, Woodbury?
Recently, the Woodbury Republican Committee sought a candidate for Town Supervisor.
This was due to New York State’s decision to eliminate odd-year elections. The change means everyone who ran and won in 2025 have shorter terms. Including the current Woodbury Town Supervisor, Jacqueline Hernandez, a Democrat.
In a normal scenario, the Supervisor typically serves a two-year term. Hernandez’s 2025 term is only one year long, expiring on December 31, 2026. She will be running for re-election again this Fall.
In Southern Orange County, we don’t have Democrats or Republicans in the normal sense.
There are exceptions, like Woodbury Town Board member Brandon Calore. A far-right MAGA bigot. One who received over $20,000 in campaign support from State Senator James G. Skoufis through Skoufis’s independent expenditure committee, Protect Monroe-Woodbury.
The question of why someone like Skoufis, who spent thousands running for chair of the Democratic National Committee, would support Calore, during a national emergency is something for Mr. Skoufis to address. So too, are Mr. Skoufis’s attempt to ban masks at protests last year during an ongoing national emergency.
Calore even resorted to mailers—likely also funded by Skoufis—labeling incumbent mayor Andrew Giacomazza as a “RINO,” or Republican In Name Only. For clarity, “RINO” refers to Republicans who don’t align with the MAGA. Aka supporters of an alleged pedophile and his alleged pedophile friends.
Like I always have to say here: Not all Trump voters are MAGA. The majority are not. When I mention “MAGA,” I refer specifically to the 30-35% who consistently support Trump’s actions, even when they contradict themselves, such as the current war in Iran. Something that contradicts his campaign promise of avoiding endless wars.
The Monroe Gazette reported Skoufis to the New York State Election Law Enforcement Division for not disclosing all of his activity surrounding his shady expenditure committee. But, as we observed with South Blooming Grove, that department seems unmotivated to assist Orange County residents in doing much of anything. Ditto the DEC, the DOH, the AG, the Comptroller, and the Governor herself.
Calore is atypical for our area though. What we have instead of Democrats and Republicans are candidates who are supported by the real estate developers and candidates who are opposed to the real estate developers.
For example:
Can you be both a Mayor and a Police Chief?
Town of Blooming Grove Police Chief, Alex Melchiorre, seems to think so. And so too does his current employer, Town of Blooming Grove Supervisor, Robert Jeroloman.
But here’s what you need to know about that election.
Alex Melchiorre, former Village mayor Joe Mancuso, and Nancy Peifer are running at the behest of a landlord and a real estate representative, Avorhom Flour and Lipa Deutsch.
Between Flour and Deutsch, these two men have racked up an impressive amount of code enforcement and other building and property violations in Monroe.
So the thought is, Lipa Deutsch and Avorhom Flour want Dwyer, Ferraro, and O’Connor out from the Village Board. This way those three can be replaced with Peifer, Manusco, and Melchiorre, who will do whatever Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Flor have to say. That is why the majority party in the Village of Kiryas Joel is encouraging its members who live in Monroe to vote for Melchiorre and his ticket.
If that arrangement between Melchiorre, Deutsch, and Flor sounds at all familiar to you, it should.
That’s the same arrangement George Kalaj has in South Blooming Grove with Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein.
So, disaster looms in the Village of Monroe.
The Village of Monroe Election is on Wednesday, March 18th, at Village Hall and is open to Village residents between 6am and 9pm that day.
So.
Here we have an example of Alex Melchiorre, a Republican, running for Mayor in the Village of Monroe because Lipa Deutsch and Avroham Flohr want him to run against the incumbent mayor, Neil Dwyer, who is also a Republican.
That’s how politics work in Southern Orange County. Your party doesn’t really matter. You’re either working for the real estate developers or you’re not.
If this sounds familiar to Woodbury residents, it should, because former Woodbury Village Trustees Matthew Fabbro (and his Mom), and James Freiband, both Democrats, were actively working on behalf of developers like Wayne Corts and people speaking on their behalf like Mordechai Kellner.
Some of those real estate developers happen to be Satmar, but no serious person gives a shit about that. All anyone cares about is that we have wealthy people trying to buy our elections.
No different than what you see with Miriam Adelsen giving the alleged pedophile $100M and Elon Musk spending $290M to get the alleged pedophile elected president in 2024. (Miriam Adelsen, apparently, really wanted Trump to attack Iran. Her husband, now thankfully dead, wanted Trump to nuke Iran.)
So. Probably to the surprise of no one, Real Estate Developer Backed Kathryn Luciani is now the Republican pick to be your next Town Supervisor in Woodbury.
It’s the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends …
Let The Ethics Violations Begin
So, of course, this wouldn’t be a Kathryn Luciani story without an ethics scandal. And let’s get to her latest one … It’s pictured above. But the screenshot doesn’t make sense without the context, which is what we do here at The Monroe Gazette. Unlike at The Photo-News, who we’re absolutely sure will provide Mrs. Luciani with as much fawning coverage as they provided her over the course of her previous two-year reign of terror.
Although I guess it’d give them something new to put in their Letters to the Editor section instead of yet another nothing burger of a letter from NPC (Non-Playable-Character) Assemblyman Karl Brabenec.
For those with a short memory, you may remember other ethics scandals and other allegations involving Kathryn Luciani such as:
Deep Breath
Giving herself a massive raise on her first day on the job as Town Supervisor, a long, long, long list of people resigning from their positions in the Town because they didn’t want to work for her, pressuring Town employees to fire other Town employees and volunteers for making fun of her on the Internet, throwing out the Town Ethics Code so that she can hire her son to work at the animal shelter, joy riding in the Town vehicle, the repeated disasters at the animal shelter ranging from the Kitten in the Dryer, overcharging Monroe residents via an IMA conjured up by Tony Cardone, to sewage runoff potentially contaminating the reservoir water. Something Mrs. Luciani knew about for a long time and did nothing to remediate while repeatedly lying to the public, sending out newsletters and official town communications using Comic Sans moving town meetings to a time people couldn’t attend, moving town meetings to a potentially unsafe building, the constant fighting with the Village Board, conjuring up stories about one Woodbury resident, which apparently was concocted while Luciani and Gretchen Weiners were in a broom closet together, and two consecutive tax increases without offering Woodbury residents additional services.
There’s probably more I’m forgetting.
Anyway.
So, to say people do not want Mrs. Luciani to run for office is probably the local challenger for understatement of the year. But it’s not about what the people want. It’s about what the real estate developers want.
We know this is true because at the meeting where the Republican Committee decided to nominate Luciani, there was a massive walkout and multiple resignations were submitted. I reached out to Committee Chair, Dan Lux, to discuss the walkouts and resignations. As of this writing, The Monroe Gazette has not heard back from him, but was able to confirm the story through multiple attendees at the meeting. So not even the Republican committee wants Luciani to run again outside of Calore, Gretchen Weiners, Chair Dan Lux, and Ralph Caruso.
That brings us to Mrs. Luciani’s since deleted Facebook post. Pictured above.
What she’s saying in that post was the topic of discussion at a recent executive session of the Town Board. Thanks to Luciani — and sources at the Town and Village — was that the discussion involved the current location of Town offices and the state of things in their current building.
The thing is, Executive Session is supposed to be confidential. This allows your local government officials to discuss sensitive or confidential information involving things like union contract negotiaitons and hiring and firing decisions. Like the decision the Town of Cornwall made when they suggested Mr. Calore get his hat and leave their highway department.
So, somebody broke the executive seal and told Mrs. Luciani what was being discussed, which resulted in her Facebook post.
Is it illegal? It doesn’t seem so, but we’re looking into that. It is; however, definitely unethical.
If we had to guess, the clown is Brandon Calore. Our second guess is Gretchen Weiners. Although we’ve heard she’s at least been amendable to working with the new Board majority. Mr. Calore has not been, to nobody’s surprise.
Your friends at The Monroe Gazette put in a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request to see if there were any communications sent to Luciani by Luongo and Calore the week of the Executive Session. Both Calore and Luciani deny they sent anything. (Probably because, since The Monroe Gazette has been around for a while, they’ve smartened up and know that people can FOIL text messages from private phones if you’re an elected official using them for public business.)
I don’t think I need to tell you how important ethics are right now. From the federal level all the way down to the Woodbury Town Board. Nobody’s an angel. We don’t expect our elected officials to be angels either. But we do expect them to do the right thing on behalf of the people they were elected to represent, and not their wealthy donors.
Mr. Calore and Mrs. Luciani have, repeatedly over the last two years, demonstrated they’re not going to do that. They’re going to serve their donors and ignore all the rules because New York State’s various departments likes to pretend Orange County doesn’t exist. Two wrongs don’t make a right. You do the right thing and follow the rules because that’s the job. If you are incapable of doing that job, you shouldn’t be there.
If you’re a Republican that hasn’t been indoctrinated into the MAGA Cult, which is most of you, I encourage you to not sign any of Mrs. Luciani’s petitions.
And if she does fail upward onto the ballot this Fall, I encourage you re-elect Mrs. Hernandez.
Thus far, the relationship between the Village and Town has never been better. And Mr. Skoufis has no allies where he can try to ram through the desires of real estate developers — like merging the Town and Village, remember that one?
Given what’s happening on the State level with the dysfunctional Democrats, and on the federal level with crazed white supremacists and the Epstein class calling all the shots, having a local government where there’s very little to complain about is kind of nice. And that’s what the Village of Woodbury and Town of Woodbury have right now.
Why ruin it?