Just a reminder that Caruso tried to sell us the idea of creating a village by saying it would prevent annexation and wouldn't cost us anything - - before he decided that he never said it.
This is from Yeshiva World, an orthodox, but not Satmar, news service, back in August 2006.
ROL: Campaigning
and cajoling have risen to a fever pitch as residents brace for a momentous
referendum next week on whether to turn most of the town into a village.
Two
years after residents petitioned to form a village, hoping to prevent
neighboring Kiryas Joel from taking control of Woodbury’s rural western fringe,
the issue is finally coming to a head – attended by a cacophony of arguments
and last-ditch pleas.
One plea came in the unusual form of a letter signed by
Kiryas Joel Mayor Abraham Wieder and mailed to Woodbury homes this week. His
message paints Kiryas Joel as a good neighbor and urges voters to reject “the
formation of a new layer of bureaucracy.”Another Kiryas Joel angle: A village
official who lives in Woodbury recently mobilized other Hasidic residents and
signed up more than 200 to vote in the referendum. Three-quarters of them live
in Brooklyn but have summer bungalows in Woodbury.
Meanwhile, the two Woodbury factions that
fought bitterly over Bill Brodsky’s 451-home development plan are now battling
over the village proposal – again accusing each other of misleading residents
and harboring ulterior motives.
Proponents, led by Ralph Caruso,
have formed the “Citizens for the Preservation of Woodbury” and distributed a
seven-page flier arguing that a village would hinder Kiryas Joel’s expansion
aims, without disrupting services or driving up taxes.
OCEAN, the citizens’ group led by Jonathan Swiller, disputes
those claims and has urged people to vote “no” because the consequences of
creating a village haven’t been adequately explained.
Suspicion is rampant. In fact, Kiryas Joel’s
efforts to stop the vote – it has a pending court challenge – or defeat the
proposal at the polls has made some wonder if the village’s leaders are
protesting just a little too much.
Is it actually in their interest for
Woodbury to form a village? After all, the thinking goes, why would the mayor
of Kiryas Joel ask residents to vote down the village – unless he wanted them
to do the very opposite?
Kiryas Joel Administrator Gedalye Szegedin
dismissed this line of argument yesterday, pointing out that the village’s
officials and real estate interests have consistently opposed the proposal
since it surfaced in 2004.
“Everybody has been singing with the same
voice now for two years,” he said.
In a final twist, it turns out the roughly
200 voter registrations turned in on Monday were too late to make the voting
rolls. The deadline was Friday.
But town Clerk Desiree Potvin said yesterday
those voters could still vote. They would have to come to Town Hall on Tuesday,
two days before the referendum, and present a property deed, utility bill or
other evidence that they spend at least part of the year in Woodbury.
The question being put to voters on Thursday is whether to incorporate a village encompassing all of the Town of
The proposal sprung from a desire to prevent the
expansion of Kiryas Joel, Woodbury’s densely populated neighbor. But whether it
would truly do so or merely create a costly extra layer of government is the
crux of the debate raging in town.
- See more at:
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/uncategorized/2273/kiryas-joel-village-vote-drawing-near.html#sthash.1qSmmXsC.dpuf
Emphasis by the Uncle.
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