Above: Watch this first. The song is catchy as hell. I kind of love it.
In case you missed it, The Monroe Gazette sent in a massive FOIL request to the Village of Monroe, which you can view here.
This FOIL request was submitted following allegations that new Monroe Mayor Alex Melchiorrie dropped all enforcement actions against properties belonging to Avrohm Flohr and Lipa Deutsch. The two Satmar landlords were instrumental in getting Melchiorrie, Joe Mancuso, and Nancy Peifer elected to the Village Board in March 2026.
Incumbent Trustee Debbie Behringer showed the public her true colors last year by not bothering to fact-check disinformation spread by her friends Dorey Houle, Tony Cardone, and Sal Scancarello about the Village Police. She appears to be along for the ride with these three new Trustees.
So, to put it bluntly, residents of the Village of Monroe: if you want any shot at fixing this situation, all four of these people need to go.
And don't trust Mayor Alex Melchiorrie's friends to help you achieve this goal either.
Dorey Houle, a former Town Board member and twice-failed State Senate candidate, and Tony Cardone, a former Town Supervisor and current Interim Village of Walden Manager, happily attended Melchiorrie's first meeting as Mayor to congratulate him.
Recall also that Houle, Scancarello, and Cardone actively stalled and prevented expansion of the Village Police into the Town of Monroe in order to help bolster Melchiorrie’s election chances.
(Another reminder to all Monroe residents that you don’t have adequate police coverage factually and specifically because of these three bozos. Mr. Scancarello, by the way, can hardly be bothered to attend Town meetings, while still collecting a salary from taxpayers.)
So, they’re Melchiorrie’s pals. Not yours.
While Houle, Cardone, and their weird friends have a lot to say about the dysfunction of the Town government during public comment at Town meetings, you’ll notice they have nothing to say about what’s happening in the Village. (And nothing too, might we add, about Scancarello’s frequent absences from Town meetings.)
Funny how that works.
The first thing Mayor Melchiorrie did was to pull a Tony Cardone and limit public speaking time to three minutes at Village meetings—there was no previous time limit for the last near decade—and to further restrict public comment by stating that comments had to be on agenda items only.
There was no previous restriction there either.
Attendance at Village meetings is generally sparse, making you wonder why such restrictions were needed in the first place.
You can see these restrictions in action during the latest Village Board meeting, below.
You can also see Avrohm Flohr praise the new administration at 42:00, saying, “We have a new mayor and board and its felt in every step of the way, in a positive way.” Later adding, “You should continue on in all the great ways you’re doing.”
Just remember that the next time Houle and Cardone’s creepy friends keep saying, “promises made, promises kept” at a Town Board meeting.
(And if you see Tony Cardone at any of these meetings, feel free to ask him if it’s true Lipa Deutsch bribed him in order to advance certain projects before the Town of Monroe Planning Board. Detusch has stated Cardone expected bribes for projects like the Monroe Commons. Cardone denies taking bribes.)
One of the properties at the center of this sprawling controversy, according to two reliable sources with direct knowledge of the matter, is 42 Maple Avenue, aka Spa 42, which is advertised in the commercial above and owned by 42 Maple Avenue LLC.
Below is a TikTok video showing the inside of Spa 42:
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The results of that Village FOIL, or at least a status report on it, is due September 16th.
We know the records we’re asking for exist thanks to a reliable source.
We also know that issues concerning Spa 42 have been known to the Village, going back to the previous administration.
The following is a photo of a bus dropping off customers to Spa 42, sent in from a Village resident to the former Mayor, Neil Dwyer, this time last year.
So we’re really hoping the Village doesn’t try to pull a Dorey Houle and claim the records we’re looking for don’t exist. Or that this issue involving Spa 42 is somehow new to them.
(Never forget: Former Town Board member, Dorey Houle, opened the Town of Monroe up to a FOIL lawsuit in the Fall of 2025, which would have cost taxpayers at least $80,000, simply because she refused to turn over documents that she was seen on camera in possession of, and even said in that video that she had.
So, to blatantly not release public records that the public can confirm you have is known as “Pulling a Dorey Houle.”)
If the Village tries to pull a Dorey Houle, that would mean us having to file an Article 78 against the Village, which is going to cost the village at least $80,000.
This is bad.
Village residents should not have to pay for Alex Melchiorrie, Nancy Peifer, Joe Mancuso, and Debbie Behringer’s game of “Hide The Files.”
If there’s nothing to hide, there shouldn’t be a problem releasing the documents we asked for, including the body camera footage of the inspections of such locations including 42 Maple Avenue.
Right?
Hopefully, we get the documents and video we requested, and then we can share it with you as proof of these allegations.
From there, it’s really up to the Attorney General’s Public Integrity Bureau to investigate Melchiorrie, Deutsch, and Flohr.
If you are a Village of Monroe resident, I encourage you to fill out this form and ask Letitia James to do so.
Is she going to do something?
But that’s not the point.
The point is to document this stuff and report it as much as you can.
Documentation is how you defeat authoritarianism, no matter what form it takes. This is because authoritarianism requires the majority of people to either not think or question what’s happening around them, or to simply not know what’s happening.
Our job — this includes you — is to provide that factual and verifiable documentation of what’s happening.