How Did a Bog Turtle Save Chester & Other Reader Questions
The latest on the Clovewood case, Monroe Village Mayoral candidate Alex Melchiorre's campaign finances, and turtle power in Chester.
Pictured Above: According to Village of Chester Mayor, John T. Bell, the endangered bog turtle could be the reason why ICE did not proceed with its concentration camp planned for 29 Elizabeth Drive. When asked directly about the bog turtle claim, an ICE spokesperson did not address that claim specifically. Only stating that they have no new facility openings to announce at this time. US Fish and Wildlife, who oversees the management of endangered species, told The Monroe Gazette that only ICE could say whether or not the bog turtle’s presence played a role in their decision making.
Photo credit: Lisa Brouellette/USFWS
Once a week I’ll do a Reader Q&A on local, state, and national events. If you are a paid subscriber of The Monroe Gazette, you’ll get the video and audio of the Q&A. For our free subscribers, I’ll publish the transcript a few days later, which you can read below.
Everyone is welcome to email their questions to BJ@MonroeGazette.com or send questions anonymously using either Signal — I can be reached at bjmendelson.32 — or to our anonymous PO BOX: PO BOX 5, 996 Route 17, Stop 2, Arden, New York, 10910. Make sure not to include a return address in order to remain anonymous.
-BJ
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Reader Q&A Transcript From March 11th, 2026
BJ Mendelson: Well, hey, in the interest of trying to write less, I’m going to do something new. So this is going to be an experiment of our mailbag, because I get a lot of email from readers, a lot of Signal messages. And so sometimes it takes me forever to get back to them because I’m trying to juggle doing Stupid Sexy Privacy stuff and then doing the Monroe Gazette and everything else on top of that. So it’s a lot of work.
So I thought it might be a little faster if we answered your questions this way. if you don’t mind, we’re going to try this and if you like it, we’ll do it again. You can send me questions at BJ@MonroeGazette.com There’s one Z and two T’s in gazette, MonroeGazette.com BJ@MonroeGazette.com And you can also message me on Signal anonymously at bjmendelson.32, the number 32, bjmendelson.32 on Signal.
So let’s see what we got here in the mailbag this week. This is something from December.
Chester Gets Land Preservation Bill Passed. So What Gives in Blooming Grove?
Things have been so crazy. So you might have missed this, but Chester has a land preservation deal. It’s sort of same thing that Blooming Grove was trying to get that Kathy Hochul vetoed. And Chester actually got it through and Blooming Grove didn’t. And so people want to know what the difference is. I have a really long answer from Supervisor Jeroloman who’s up for reelection by the way that sort of gives his answer on it. And then we’ve got the Joel Stern version of events, where he’s talking about Blooming Grove and the land preservation deal. The thing that’s important right now is that Blooming Grove is still trying to get that land preservation thing through.
According to Stern, Blooming Grove “snuck” this new attept through at the last minute since Chester got one. Stern did his usual thing of calling Jeroloman anti-Semitic and saying the Town board is anti-Semitic and engaging in conspiracy against the Jews. You know, just the whole, like, completely bullshit, insane things like that real estate developers like Stern and Ekstein have gotten away with over the years. “If we don’t get what we want, it’s antisemitism, it’s anti-chassidim.” I don’t know where things stand right now with Blooming Grove’s attempts at land preservation. That’s the question that we keep getting asked. I don’t know where that is right now. I will reach out to Supervisor Jeroloman.
The One Car Police Car Accident
The town of Blooming Grove isn’t very happy with me right now. We’re trying to get information on a single car police vehicle accident that occurred through a FOIL request and they really haven’t been cooperative with that. And also their police chief, Alex Melchiorrie, is running for mayor over in Monroe, which is super fucking weird And so another question that we got, let me just make sure I’m reading this correctly. this question is, “Can the town of Blooming Grove police chief Alex Melchiorre run for mayor of the Village of Monroe? Can you hold both positions?”
The Town of Blooming Grove doesn’t have a problem with this, according to Supervisor Jeroloman. We didn’t get a clear answer on what would happen if Melchiorre is the Blooming Grove police chief and elected as the village mayor. We should know Wednesday the 18th. That’s the Village of Monroe election. So if you live in the Village of Monroe, you make sure you get out there and vote.
At this point, you know how I feel about Dwyer, Ferraro and O’Connor. I like Neil Dwyer. I’ve met him. I don’t always agree with everything that he’s said and done. Clearly with the ICE thing, we don’t agree. I like Andy Ferraro. He seems like a nice guy. He’s also the only Democrat on the board as far as I know. Not that that matters locally, because as we say at The Monroe Gazette, if you live in Orange County and this is true for Rockland and parts of Sullivan … You don’t have Democrats and Republicans.
You have people who work for the real estate developers and people who don’t. So we did reach out to the Attorney General’s office to see if there’s a conflict of interest if Melchiorre was both Mayor and Police Chief. The New York State Board of Elections didn’t identify a conflict of interest with Melchiorre RUNNING, so for whatever that’s worth. But as we see in New York, the laws are only enforced when you’re on the opposite side of the people in power.
If you’re working with the people in power, then they don’t enforce any laws. Just look at South Blooming Grove as a good example of that. So if the question is, “Can Alex Melchiorre be both a police chief in Blooming Grove and Mayor in the Village of Monroe?” We don’t know. It depends on who feels like enforcing the laws around these parts, and as you might have guessed, New York State has mostly left our region twisting in the wind.
Speaking of which … What’s Going On With The New York State Comptroller?
We do have a story coming on Thomas D’Napoli. On his audit of South Blooming Grove and why he’s hiding it. D’Napoli’s office denies that they’re hiding it, yet can’t explain why the SBG audit has never been listed once in their newsletter as an ongoing audit for two years (and counting.)
Jennifer Freeman, Director of Communications for Thomas DiNapoli, did however answer two of our questions. So the first question we asked Jennifer L. Freeman, who again is the Director of Communications for Thomas DiNapoli, was we want to know essentially like what is going on with the South Blooming Grove audit.
Like I said, it is never, never mentioned in the weekly newsletter that DiNapoli releases. So if you go back through the archive of the weekly newsletter since March of 2024, to the present it has never been mentioned. That doesn’t mean it’s not listed on the website. That’s something they pointed out was, they said that sometimes, they list everything that they do on the website. But I specifically wanted to know what the hold up is. And so what they said about the South Blooming Grove audit is, quote, “an audit will be issued when it is completed. During the audit, we identified matters requiring additional review, which has impacted the timing of the audit. All completed audits are released publicly and published on our website.” They said they would stay in touch with us. That was the last time we’ve heard from them. I did send a follow-up request asking whether or not these irregularities were reported to the attorney general’s office or to the FBI. And so they said “we can’t elaborate on that,” … which of course, but you still sometimes as a reporter, you have to ask obvious questions just to say that you asked. Because sometimes people will get cute and be like, “well, you never asked us.”
What’s The Latest on ICE in Chester?
When we’re talking about the situation in Chester, we only know what we know and ICE lies.
So anything that ICE says really can’t be taken factually. Personally, I think it’s journalistic malpractice to take anything that the Trump administration says with 100% truth. We now have another example of this. Just to use something that I saw on the news this morning of the US military dropping a US-made Tomahawk missile on a girls’ school.
And there’s a reporter, there’s video footage I’m going to use in upcoming Gazette post, of a reporter saying to Trump, the US military has evidence suggesting that we dropped a Tomahawk missile on a girls’ school in Iran. And of course, his response was, “I don’t know about that.”
So.
You can’t take anything that they [the Trump Regime] say seriously. It’s just unethical, I feel, as a journalist, which is why I’m supremely pissed at, you know, Straus News and The Photo News and their whole assortment of papers because they’ve done what I feel is like both sides-ing fascism with the Chester warehouse story. Where they interviewed people who were excited about the Chester warehouse or thought it was a good idea. it’s like, you know, look, fascism …
There’s no two sides to this.
As a journalist, your job is to answer, basically to protect your readers and answer their questions. A journalist is no different than a plumber, right? Where with the plumber, you call up a plumber because you have a problem. Hopefully not a terrible problem because … Who hasn’t been there?
But you call them up because you have a job that needs to be done. Like you have a question that needs to be answered. You have a problem that needs to be solved. And journalists do the same thing. The journalist’s job is to... you give them money or you give the media outlet they work for money, although that model is dead, those days are over.
So now the business model for journalism is you give the journalist money directly And then in exchange the journalist asks the questions that you have and gives you answers and tries to get you the truth.
So quoting something that is absolutely detrimental to a reader’s health and safety, like say, people that are excited about a detention center opening up, or people that are like “yeah, war in Iran is good actually.”
You don’t need to do that. There’s no two sides to fascism. It’s wrong, it’s evil, we know it’s evil. We have collectively as a society agreed that it’s evil.
So anyway, like it’s tangent, but this long wave saying with the Chester Detention Center, we don’t know what’s happening. Here’s a fun rumor though and I have to qualify this and tell you it’s a fun rumor only.
Fun Rumor Alert: The Bog Turtle
So at the March 9th Village of Chester board meeting, Mayor Bell told a few people that were in attendance that, from what he was told, and we’ll get to that in a second, from what he was told, ICE is not proceeding with a warehouse, and that the warehouse was sold to someone else. (Fact check: It was not.)
Bell went on to claim that the reason ICE isn’t proceeding is because of the presence of the bog turtle, which is an endangered species here in New York. it’s a protected species federally. And so what that would have meant for ICE is there’s all sorts of federal laws about endangered species or protected species. And even though ICE runs roughshod over pretty much whatever it wants, it would seem in this situation, if the mayor’s story is to be believed that ICE didn’t want to go through the process of, “all right, well, the bog turtle is here. How do we work around it? How do we mitigate it? Can we mitigate it?” They didn’t want to do any of that.
Where’s this information coming from? So some of you might know that Brian T. Boone, on the Village of Chester Board, is the father-in-law for assemblyman Brian Maher. s=So Brian Maher, some of you know, claims … and there’s no reason to, I don’t think he’s lying to people.
Like, I don’t think Brian Maher is lying to anybody, but the story goes is that Brian Maher spoke with someone who was somehow connected to the director of ICE and …
After speaking to that person, someone at ICE is alleged to have called Brian Maher and said, “yeah, the Chester thing isn’t happening.”
I have no reason to believe Maher is lying.
Most people that I’ve talked to, including Chester town supervisor Brandon Holdridge, also doesn’t believe that Brian Maher is lying. But the story is sketchy, right?
You mean to tell me that this random ass New York state assemblyman, while away on active duty, had the time to speak with some higher up at ICE, who he won’t name, and then someone else at ICE, who he also won’t name, told him that the deal is dead?
It’s just sketchy. Like, again, I don’t think he’s lying. I’m not calling Brian Maher a liar, but as a journalist, my radar definitely went off when I heard that. So that’s probably where all this information is coming from to Bell.
So I suspect that the bog turtle thing is probably connected to this nexus between Brian Maher and ICE and Boon and Mayor Bell. I don’t think there’s any reason to lie to people. I think everyone, from what I can tell anyway, everyone is just as confused as everyone else.
So I tell you that because you might be hearing a lot about the bog turtle. My personal suggestion, and hope is that if you are a graphic designer or artist or if you know a graphic designer or artist, I definitely encourage you to make drawings and make art featuring the bog turtle. And maybe that’s our sign here in Orange County that we use whenever we protest ICE or DHS or whatever else the regime is doing. Maybe the bog turtle should be our symbol.
So that’s sort of the bog turtle story. For now.
Skoufis And The Power of Low Expectations
Let’s see what else we got. So Skoufis put out a thing. Days after I said I was going to for state senate, his newsletter announces he is trying lowering prescription prices.
Listen, any legislation that saves you money is good legislation.
It doesn’t matter if it’s introduced by Skoufis, it doesn’t matter who introduces it. These things are good. So the fact that he’s introducing legislation on this is great. Nobody’s saying that that’s bad. But. I also I don’t think it’s enough. I really don’t. There’s 1.2 million New Yorkers, myself included, who are gonna lose their health insurance no later than December 31st. Most of us will either have lost it or been kicked off of it for one reason or another, because the money that was originally going to Medicaid, much like for those of you who might be receiving SNAP, you know, the money that went to SNAP and Medicaid, they took that out and that’s what’s funding ICE.
They (Congressional Republicans) took that money and moved it over because I don’t know if anyone pays attention to like how Congress budgets stuff. I do. You know, the whole deal with the super conservative Republicans is “no new tax increases.” So anything that you want to spend on, you have to cut from something else. When they want to spend all this money on ICE, it had to be cut from something else.
So that’s where the money came from. And now you have 1.2 million New Yorkers who are going to lose their health insurance. Have hospitals such as the one in Newburgh, which are at risk of closing because a lot of hospitals in New York, particularly upstate, are dependent on the aid that comes through Medicaid.
People don’t, and this isn’t anyone’s fault, but the government, especially Democrats, but the government is really bad at explaining to people where their money goes and how it comes back to them in the form of services. So people think Medicaid goes to poor people, but they don’t understand that they are also receiving Medicaid, right?
They don’t, because the Medicaid might get to them through a different name or under a different company that is acting like a third party service provider for the government to get you Medicaid. It changes depending on what state you’re in. So they might not realize that they’re getting Medicaid.
And so that’s part of the problem. And the other part of the problem is that Medicaid doesn’t just go and provide health insurance for people that can’t afford health insurance. Medicaid goes to hospitals. It pays for a lot of different programs. And so when we talk about cuts to Medicaid, we’re not just talking about taking insurance away from people. We’re talking about taking money away from hospitals and all these different programs and offerings. And so all of that money went away to pay for ICE. And in New York State … it’s not that they’re not doing anything.
To be clear, Governor Kathy Hochul has asked permission to take people like myself who are on Medicaid and put us onto the lowest tier of health insurance that’s provided through New York State. So that’s something that the federal government has to approve. They are looking, if you look at the one house, one budget plan that was put out by the state Democrats this week, they’re proposing a corporate tax hike. A billionaire tax. And what they want to do is use some of that money to patch holes in the system.
There Are Two Kinds of People Right Now. Which One Are You?
The problem is that I feel that there are two kinds of people right now. There are people, and again, I don’t care what political party someone is, I truly don’t. I also don’t care if someone’s liberal or conservative. It’s not a factor to me. What’s a factor to me is if you’re a white supremacist. If you’re a white supremacist, I have a problem. But if you’re a conservative Republican, who cares?
Anyway, so there are two kinds of people. And so the first group of people are people who understand that we’re living through an emergency and people who don’t, and that’s the other group.
The majority of people are in that second group.
And so when I looked at the Democrat, you know, one house, one budget plan, which is just a proposal, like right now they’re negotiating. This is just a big negotiation right now between the assembly and the Senate and Governor Hochul.
It’s still not enough. It’s just, you can see that these are mostly, not all, most of these people, which I include Skoufis in this group, are wealthy. Our New York state representatives are the highest paid anywhere in America. And a lot of them are out of touch and a lot of them just don’t realize this is an emergency. Like this is a situation that’s not gonna get better.
As long as the regime is in place, they’re gonna continue to cut.
They’re going to continue to take things away. They’re going to continue to obstruct funding that was already proportioned to be spent. I am very concerned about FEMA funding, for example, even with Kristi Noem out, the head of, well, we don’t know how this is going work, but under Noem, who was, remember, the head of DHS, so she’s not just like, she was the head of DHS, and DHS covers like over 20 different federal agencies, one of them is FEMA.
Under Kristi Noem, where anything over $100,000 she had to approve and that delayed funding and a lot of people got hurt, a lot of people died and a lot of people didn’t get the assistance they needed because of that.
And so I have a great concern about what’s gonna happen this summer with FEMA once we start getting these severe storms again.
So for... For New York state, to me it’s not enough to just, it looks like they understand that there’s a problem, but they don’t, they’re not acting as if there’s a problem. There’s a disconnect that’s occurring and that’s what scares me.
So this is all stuff to pay attention to.
Like with Skoufis again, it’s great. You want to lower prescription prices, but what would be even better is having a universal healthcare coverage plan, which is the New York Health Act. That has been in committee for years now.
And we know it’ll save New York money. Even the Rand Corporation, which is as conservative as conservative can be, went out there and said, yeah, the New York Health Act will save you money in the long run.
Skoufis will tell you, it’s too expensive. And he’s right. Like he is right to say that. Like it’s not, it’s not a criticism of him to say that it’s too expensive. It is a criticism though, for him to use that as an excuse to not pass this bill.
Because if we pass the bill, we will save billions of dollars and we will save millions of lives. And we will also make New York state much more affordable for people to stay here. You know, the Democrats will always tell you, we don’t want people to move to Houston or Florida. I think the the Hochul quote last year was we want we don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach. No, people will stay if you give them health insurance coverage, that’s a big chunk of money every month. We’re talking about your drugs, your co-pays, your premiums, everything else. Co insurance. Sometimes you have surgery, some insurance plans. You know they want you to spend 10 % out of pocket.
Emergency rooms visits, you know, you’re talking about a couple hundred dollars too depending on your plan to check into an emergency room. So this will take care of all of that. This will cover everything and if you have Medicare, NYHA will not change your Medicare coverage at all .
You still have Medicare. NYHA covers what Medicare does not. It’s as simple as that.
And so I think about all of the, we have an older community in Orange County. New York State’s population is also on the older side. We have a lot of baby boomers and a lot of them need dental coverage. A lot of them need vision coverage. A lot of them need hearing coverage and they don’t get it through Medicare. So I tell you this because I saw the Skoufis newsletter and I was like, “what a joke,” because he’s just gonna do the minimum. Every corporate Democrat has the same playbook: Do the least and make it seem like they care about your pain while doing so. But if they did truly care about your pain, they’d be doing a fuck of a lot more.
There’s a lot of ways that this campaign, and remember it’s not a campaign, the whole point of me running is to make the New York Health Act front and center and to make sure that you know about what it is, what it does, and that you’re demanding it be passed.
I don’t care if like 500 people vote for me. I care if like 2000 people call Skoufis and call Eachus and call Brabenec and call Maher and call all the other Orange County Assembly people. And they start demanding NYHA get passed.
That’s a win. That’s how I win. That’s how we win. The campaign isn’t about me. It’s about you and getting you health care that doesn’t make you choose between food and medical care every month.
Where Are Alex Melchiorre’s Campaign Finances?
I’ve got this like long crazy email that I’m not gonna answer. A lot of people wrote to volunteer for the campaign, which is really cool. Thank you for that. I will have more information for you soon. I just am not … I’m not there yet.
There’s a lot that has to be done. My full-time job is helping to take care of a couple of disabled adults and I do The Monroe Gazette as a hobby. It’s not really a job.
Thank you though. For everyone that’s reached out, I will get back to you. I will absolutely get back to you. I got another question here. “Brandon, how do I find Alex Melchiorre’s campaign finances?”
He hasn’t filed them. It’s as simple as that. He’s running ads. Someone is definitely paying for road signs and he had at least one advertisement in The Photo News. Someone is, it could be him, it could be out of pocket, which is totally cool. But he is running with the backing of the majority political faction in Kiryas Joel That’s not a bad thing. I want to be clear. You can tell people to vote for whoever. Like, it’s a free country.
The problem, and I just had this whole conversation with someone like, the problem in Orange County isn’t that there’s a bloc.
And we’ve seen this in Woodbury. Like I have now actively been involved with three elections and the elections I’ve been involved with, I’ve won all three. So, we’ve beaten “the bloc” in all three. And the reason is simple. People don’t vote. We may have the highest paid elected representatives in New York state, but we also have one of the lowest voter turnouts across America.
And so the reason why the bloc vote is even a thing, like, yeah, for historic context, when people say the “bloc vote,” what they’re referring to is, before the creation of Palm Tree, it is true that voters in Kiryas Joel, unlike the other voters in Monroe, would come out and vote for a candidate. And they did have a system that would make sure that everyone voted. And sometimes that system’s utilization got a little sketchy. But two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m not saying that’s okay.
But. If the Kiryas Joel political party wants to endorse someone? I just don’t care. You shouldn’t either.
What we should care about is voter turnout because when we all vote, win.
When we vote, there is no bloc to worry about. And that’s true in Rockland County, that’s true in Sullivan County, that’s true in Orange County. If you come out and vote, you don’t have to worry about a bloc.
But, in the case of Alex Melchiorre, is that political party paying for his campaign? That’s something we should know about. Is Mr. Melchiorre’s campaign being funded by Lipa Deutsch and Avrohom Flohr? That’s not something Melchiorre has commented on despite his claims of transparency.
Some of you may know that name Lipa Deutsch. He is usually the middleman for lot of big projects that he works on behalf of, or he’s a representative of a property developer. So a good example is Monroe Commons, where Lipa Deutsch was sort of the front man for that. Deutsch is also the one that claims that he paid Tony Cardone money under the table in order to advance Monroe Commons. Of course, Mr. Cardone stopped a town board meeting to deny that claim. So there’s no way to know if it’s true without an FBI agent going through Tony Cardone’s income statements. (Not outside of the realm of possibility, by the way.)
And the other guy’s Avrohom Flohr. So Avrohom Flohr is another landlord in the village of Monroe. Both of them (Flohr and Deutsch) own property in the village of Monroe. Both of them have like a litany of building complaints. I just got all those complaints from the village of Monroe through FOIL. So essentially what’s happening Monroe is that you’ve got Lipa Deutsch and Avrohom Flohr, and maybe other people, who are pushing for Alex Melchiorre and Nancy Pfeiffer, and former Monroe Mayor, Joe Mancuso.
And those are the people that are running with the support of Flohr and Deutsch and major political party in Kiryas Joel. So, do with that information what you will. The concern that I have is you want to avoid a South Blooming Grove situation where, you know, George Kalaj is a puppet and he just does, and we can say it’s factually, he just does whatever Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern tell him.
So we definitely don’t want that to happen in the Village Monroe.
If you ever want to see who is funding a political candidate, I’m going to give you the six steps on how to do so here:
Who’s Funding Your Least Favorite Political Candidates?
I just wanted to give you the steps. There’s six. Number one is go to elections.newyork.gov. It’s elections.newyork.gov.
Click on campaign finance.
Click on search candidates and disclosure.
Then you’re going to click on Contributions by Recipient.
And then you can see over on the left where it says candidate name.
So just for example, you’ll enter Melchiorre and a little box will pop up as you’re entering.
Like don’t spell out his whole name, just write like M-E-L-C-H-I-O. A little box will show up as you’re completing his last name. And it’ll say Alessio Alex Melchiorre, Mayor 580753. You will select that little box that pops up.
Then you’re gonna click on the search button.
You could repeat these steps for any candidate and you will see all of their contributions.
And just for my campaign, I’m not taking contributions over $35. I’m not taking contributions from LLCs or PACs or anything remotely connected to the real estate business, unlike Mr. Skoufis.
Facebook Is Not An Accurate Reflection of Reality
Here’s what I wish people would know about Facebook. It is not an accurate reflection of reality. Monroe Matters and Families of Woodbury look huge until you realize that most of those accounts are people that don’t fucking live there, are people that used to live here, or they’re just bots or troll operations. So if you read the Mueller Report, going back to 2016, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and also lots and lots of bad actors here in America run troll farms.
And how it works is you hire someone, you go to like Fiverr.com, you find someone in the Philippines who knows English really well. And you say to them, look, I will pay you $3 for every like negative Facebook post that you leave or every anti-Trump Facebook post that you leave. I’ll just pay you. And there’s billionaires that pay for this stuff. I used to work in PR and marketing. Like this is not something I’m pulling out my butt. This is something that I’ve firsthand done for and organized campaigns on behalf of.
They call it astroturfing. It’s a really old term, but there is a lot of astroturfing in every Facebook group. Like Facebook as a platform is inundated, mostly because, you know, when Trump voters skew, they skew white, they skew older. A lot of them are like small business owners, but they tend to use Facebook. And what I’m trying to say is, demographically, they tend to use Facebook. so...
If you ever lpost something on Facebook and you’re like, wow, and I didn’t get a lot of engagement, let me tell you that the numbers you see don’t matter. Like the likes don’t matter because I’ve posted stuff where I’ve seen no engagement, but it’ll be something that I get stopped for and people will ask me about, or I’ll get a ton of emails about, or I’ll see like something that I’ll post on Facebook that doesn’t get a lot of engagement will get a lot of traffic on the Monroe Gazette. I urge you to not take these numbers seriously. And to also not think, that if you post something on Facebook, your work is done because it’s not.
If you’re posting about politics, about Woodbury, for example, in a Woodbury group, that’s great, but you’re only reaching like 1% of the entire community. You are missing so many people out there. So anytime you talk about Facebook, I always have to say to be careful with what you see on Facebook. Beause a lot of it’s bullshit, a lot of it’s fake.
I try my best to fact check, you know, I do. A lot of other people do as well. And so I get these screenshots, like I get these screenshots from from Monroe Matters So like I got one here from like Rich Goldstein and it’s a picture of a house and there’s a bunch of boxes in front of it and he’s like, “This is what happens under the current administration of the village of Monroe and we need change and that’s why you should vote for Alex Melchiorre.” That’s bullshit.
Here’s my bet. I would bet, let’s see, what can I bet that’s like not, that’s valuable and important, but not … I bet my pinky finger, if you go to Worley Heights right now, if Alex Melchiorre and Nancy Pfeiffer and Joe Mancuso are elected to the Village Monroe Board, I would bet you my pinky that by the end of their term, the Village Monroe will look like Worley Heights right now.
So when you see someone post crazy shit on Facebook, you can ignore it.
Or you can send me screenshots. Thank you for sending me screenshots, because it’s only way I see some of this stuff. I’m not allowed in either Monroe Matters or Families of Woodbury because fact checking is apparently now allowed. It upsets too many people, I’m told.
So your screenshots are often how I stay in the loop om some things. For example that’s the only way I would know that Kathryn Luciani is out there gathering signatures for Paul Arteta. You know, pro-ice Sheriff Paul Arteta?
So it’s good to keep an eye on this stuff, but again, just be careful. So let’s see what else we got. Am I researching the bog turtle? Yes, I am researching the bog turtle. We already covered that.
For the record: ICE did not, I asked ICE … ICE does get back to the Monroe Gazette, which is really funny. It’s funny, like who writes this back and who doesn’t? Like people that you would never think would write us back, like the White House, wrote us back. The White House wrote us back.
But like, if I try to ask Thomas DiNapoli a tough question about South Blooming Grove, we don’t get an answer. I’ve tried to ask Kathy Hochul repeatedly about the South Blooming Grove phantom election, no response. Nothing from Congressman Ryan either. Probably because he doesn’t want to upset his buddies:
Above: Congressman Pat Ryan (right) with Isaac Ekstein (left) and Joel Stern (Far left.) Both Ekstein and Stern are at the center of numerous state and federal investigations right now. But we’re sure Pat Ryan is going to help get to the bottom of some of those, like the FAA and the helicopter issue, in no time. Right Pat?
I know some of you have seen the commercial Hochul put out, where there was a guy with like a vanity license plate that was revoked by the DMV.
And so she [Hochul] recorded a campaign commercial where she calls the guy up and she’s like, well, “I’m working real hard on your behalf and I think everyone should pee before you go.” Beause that’s what the license plate said. And so I wrote to Hochul’s press people. I was like, look, she’s got a time to comment on this, but she has not released any statement on South Blooming Grove. None. Nothing on the water, like nothing on misappropriation, potentially of federal funds. Nothing on this forever comptroller audit, nothing about the stolen election. Just you name the subject that we talked about in South Blooming Grove and Hochul has not commented on any of it.
So it’s funny like who responds to us and who doesn’t. And just generally speaking, like this is a good pro tip is that Republicans will, Republicans will always get back to journalists. Always, always, always, always. And they might be completely full of shit.
Like last year, there was something that we were doing at the Monroe Gazette. I don’t remember what it was, but I called. It involved something that was being discussed on the Senate floor. And I called Senator Kennedy from Louisiana. You know, the one with the fake foghorn leghorn accent. We called him up. We asked for comment. They got right back to us. I didn’t speak to the senator directly, but like, his head communications, called us right back. And we called Schumer and Gillibrand. You know what we got? Nothing.
Never heard back. So Republicans, generally speaking, are very good at communicating. They’re very good at, even if they’re telling you bullshit, they’re very good at communicating the bullshit, and Democrats are not.
What’s The Latest on the Helicopter & Clovewood
Yes, we’re still working on the helicopter issue. I’m kind of working in conjunction with someone, but I won’t tell you who.
I’m sort of waiting for their information to come out so that my information can be timely. I know this from the South Blooming Grove situation because there’s so much to consider, and it’s best to write about it when people are thinking about it. I will have a follow-up on the helicopter; I’m just waiting for this information to be released, which should be soon.
There are a couple of court cases that have been decided recently that are really important. The first one is Town of Blooming Grove vs. Village of South Blooming Grove and the DEC. That’s the Clovewood case, which we’ve been following closely. If you’re watching this and you’ve made it this far, you’re probably aware of this court case; it’s a safe bet you are. However, a new judge was assigned to the case, and this judge decided that no one has standing. Isn’t that nice?
Because again, in New York State, the laws are only enforced if you’re wealthy and powerful enough to get them enforced. Otherwise, it’s optional.
The Town of Blooming Grove doesn’t have standing, and the three or four residents of South Blooming Grove who joined the lawsuit were also told they don’t have standing, which is just ridiculous.
It’s a bad decision. One of the plaintiffs in that case has their property flooded by the work that’s being done on the Clovewood property. So how can you say that they haven’t suffered an injury, which would give them standing?
It’s just ridiculous. I hate saying that to you because it feels like a cop-out, like I’m not doing my job of looking into it. But it’s just a poor decision from the judge. Please don’t take that to mean “they” control the courts. We need to stop using “they” as a blanket term in our community.
Something that is factually true, which has been categorically peer-reviewed and documented, is that the Satmar community has considerable political influence. That’s a statement you don’t need to hide from; it’s a fact backed by over 50 years of evidence.
Remember: It’s okay to criticize Israel, especially given recent conflicts. It’s also okay to have criticisms of the Satmar community
However, it’s not okay to say things like, “they control the court,” because that ventures into anti-Semitic conspiracy theory territory, which is what we want to avoid.
It is acceptable to say that the New York State Democratic Party, in particular, has demonstrated vulnerability to that political power.
Look, I wasn’t born here—I was born on Long Island but grew up here. When I attended elementary school at North Main in Monroe, I distinctly remember the Kiryas Joel Supreme Court case. Essentially, Governor Mario Cuomo was asked, “If the Supreme Court says that the Kiryas school district is illegal, what are you going to do about it?” Cuomo responded, “Well, we’re just going to redo the law. If they strike it down, we’ll redo the law.” He actually said that. (This is all documented in the book, The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel, by the defendant in the Supreme Court case.)
So you can say, as someone who lives in South Blooming Grove, Rockland County, or even near where Kiryas Skever — Which is a distinct branch of Haredi from the Satmar — that is being built in Bethel, that the Satmar and other sects of the Haredi community has demonstrated outsized political influence.
Now, do we know for a fact that political influence played a role in this case? No.
As a reporter, I can’t definitively say that to you. I don’t know. Is it possible? Certainly. It absolutely is possible. It’s the same reason why Letitia James won’t act on South Blooming Grove. Over the last 50 years, the New York State Democratic Party has chosen to work for those who do vote because people in New York State don’t.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that isn’t...
We should be able to discuss that. We should be able to say that the reason the Satmar community might receive what we perceive as “preferential treatment” is that they vote, while we don’t. If we voted, we wouldn’t have this problem. It’s on us. It’s not a “them” thing; it’s an “us” thing.
The fact is, we don’t show up, and that’s really the core problem. It’s not “they,” it’s not the bloc, it’s us. We are the problem.
I did reach out to the supervisor to see if they’re going to appeal, and the answer is yes. So the situation with Clovewood is not over yet.
Maybe it’s just me as an optimist, but I feel that we haven’t even begun the fight. We really haven’t.
If I had a car, I would be out there knocking on doors and getting my petition signed. I would be out there asking people in South Blooming Grove, “I need 30 of you.” We currently have six; I need 30 property owners in South Blooming Grove who want to go to court and say, “I want to do what Thomas DiNapoli won’t do, which is a complete audit of the village’s finances.”
Then I would want you to release those documents because I believe we’ll find wrongdoing. If we find wrongdoing, then maybe these people will get prosecuted. There’s a lot that’s going to happen with South Blooming Grove, so don’t take the dismissal of the Clovewood case as the end. It’s not.
The other court case involves Gonzaga Park There were two lawsuits from Orange County against the Village of South Blooming Grove. One was about a completely illegal attempt at eminent domain, and the court recently ruled that this was completely illegal. Orange County won that case.
Now, regarding the second case, I suspect Orange County will win, but I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want to invoke the commentator’s curse—where I say that Orange County will win only for them to lose tomorrow. But I’m optimistic that Orange County will win that case, and I think that is causing some action over at 58 Fort Worth. I want you to pay attention to this. This is sort of the last thing we’ll discuss today because I’ve already talked longer than I anticipated.
As you know, 58 Fort Worth is where the helicopter and the helipad are located. It’s also where George Kalaj alleges he lives. I don’t believe he lives there. The Monroe Gazette has kept tabs on that property for over a year, and he’s rarely, if ever, there. It was particularly amusing that the one time real reporters visited his door was the one time Kalaj happened to be there. That’s a whole story we haven’t shared yet, but we’re going to get to it.
Whether he lives there or not is beside the point at this moment. What’s important is that part of the plan for the Mangin Bypass is to build a road connecting from Seven Springs Mountain Road—or adjacent to it—that would go through Gonzaga Park and then empty out by cutting through Woodbury, briefly touching a tiny slice of Woodbury before entering Kiryas Joel at the end of Seven Springs Mountain Road
For years, Stern has been discussing the Mangin Bypass. So the concern now is: if they lose the Clovewood case and these Orange County cases, what sneaky maneuvers might they attempt next? Knowing these individuals (Stern and Ekstein), I can say this because I’ve been following them for over two years; these individuals will likely try to build some sneaky scheme through 58 Fort Worth.
This is something to watch, especially if you’re a Town of Monroe resident. In the Town of Blooming Grove court case, one of the allegations was that South Blooming Grove illegally took land from the Town of Blooming Grove, which they did. They expanded the Clovewood property well beyond its original size, and that expansion covered land that did not belong to the village of South Blooming Grove.
The concern is that this could happen in Monroe. I’ve already alerted Supervisor Richardson and the Town of Monroe Building Department.
We’ve also submitted a FOIL request for all documents involving 58 Fort Worth and all permit requests. However, since the Monroe Gazette is the one asking, South Blooming Grove has delayed the response by 90 business days. So it’s going to be a while before we receive anything. Another journalist is also working on this and has submitted a FOIL request for permits related to 58 Fort Worth.
This is something to keep an eye on because I fully expect some kind of deceptive move regarding the Mangin Bypass.
How can I help protest the ICE concentration camp and support an emergency ban?
Okay. Last but not least, “Does it make sense to call Orange County if you don’t live in Orange County?”
This is part of the Neuhaus campaign, where we’re asking people to send ice scrapers to his office. The answer is yes. It doesn’t matter where you live right now. There will come a point where it’s important for Orange County residents to step up and be heard. But right now, we’re just going for volume. We’re just going for noise. If you live in Dutchess County, Ulster County, or anywhere within 50 miles of Chester and you’re upset about the concentration camp, you should absolutely call Steve Neuhaus’s office and tell him you don’t want it. You should urge him to publicly pledge to sign an emergency ban that would prevent ICE from setting up a detention facility or concentration camp anywhere in Orange County.
As we know from what happened in New Windsor, a story broken by the Monroe Gazette—which Congressman Pat Ryan refuses to credit us for—I did say he left his balls in Iraq, so I understand if Pat has some issues with us. I stand by that statement, by the way. If you want to know why, stick around next week and I’ll tell you why.
So yes, it is still important to send Neuhaus your ice scrapers. It is still important to make phone calls. This is all crucial. We should all be jamming his phone line. The phones in Orange County’s government should ring every day, every hour, until that emergency ban is passed—period. This effort requires everyone, including those in our region who might be impacted by ICE.
I was trying to communicate to the ICE group that I’m a part of that if you live near an ICE detention center, they’re gathering information on you, whether you know it or not, or whether you like it or not. Most of that information is commercially available. So, you might not live in Orange County, but they could say to a data broker, “Give us data on everyone who lives within 50 miles of Chester, New York.” Within that radius is Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, New Paltz, and Nanuet. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people who aren’t in Orange County but may get caught in this dragnet as part of ICE’s process to protect their detention center.
This issue will affect you even if you don’t live in Orange County, which is why it’s so important to call.
I’ve received that question a lot. Here’s a related one:
What is the Orange County Legislature doing about ICE?
We haven’t been able to confirm this. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer on the matter. That could simply be because they don’t want to say anything; I understand. What I have been informed is that at least the Democrats have put together legislation for an emergency ban. However, they want Neuhaus to publicly commit to signing it because he has to be the one to terminate the agreement between DHS and ICE to house people at the Orange County Jail. He also has to be the one to sign this emergency ban. So it’s kind of a twofer.
The legislature seems to be dragging their feet on it.
I’ll have more to say about that soon; it’s something I’m currently working on. In the meantime, you should call your Orange County legislator and express your concerns. We don’t know what’s happening with ICE and DHS in Chester. We don’t know what’s occurring in New Windsor. We’re uncertain whether they are going to expand their presence in that building. There’s just a lot we don’t know. We would really like some kind of reins put in place on what ICE can and cannot do in Orange County, and the sooner we act, the better.
The time to act has long passed. So if you have an Orange County Legislature representative, even if you’re unhappy with them, like Peter Tuohy, you should still absolutely call them and demand this legislation be passed as soon as possible. No more stalling.
If you like this Q&A, we’ll do more of it. If you have a question, you can email me at bj@monroegazette.com (that has one Z and two Ts) or you can find me on Signal anonymously at bjmendelson.32. We also have a PO Box where, as long as you don’t put a return label, you can send us mail anonymously. It’s PO Box 5, 996 Route 17, Stop 2, Arden, New York, 10910. That’s like an anonymous Dropbox. You can send us anything anonymously.
That’s all I have. Stay safe, get vaccinated, and keep your gas tanks full.
-BJ