"This is not a sprint. This is a marathon. We are up against the
Terminator. It will not stop," Holly Roche, one of the leaders of the
Rural Community Coalition, reportedly said. The group is concerned
property and school taxes will dramatically rise and the rural character
of the area will be lost if the school is allowed to open. The school’s
developer, Shalom Lamm, is also building a large 396 unit townhome
complex promoted in Yiddish in Brooklyn as the new Satmar hasidic
village of Kiryas Yated Lev although he has publicly denied knowledge of
the ads. Lamm is a Satmar hasid.
Bloomingburg Residents Meet To Plan Opposition To Planned Satmar Hasidic Village
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
About 60 people trying to stop the development in downtown Bloomingburg, New York of a private school for hasidic girls met yesterday afternoon, the Times Herald-Record reported.
Bloomingburg’s population is approximately 420.
"This is not a sprint. This is a marathon. We are up against the Terminator. It will not stop," Holly Roche, one of the leaders of the Rural Community Coalition, reportedly said. The group is concerned property and school taxes will dramatically rise and the rural character of the area will be lost if the school is allowed to open. The school’s developer, Shalom Lamm, is also building a large 396 unit townhome complex promoted in Yiddish in Brooklyn as the new Satmar hasidic village of Kiryas Yated Lev although he has publicly denied knowledge of the ads.
Members of the Concerned Citizens Group of Pine Bush, which works to preserve the rural quality of the Pine Bush Central School District, also attended the meeting.
"We're trying to get school taxpayers involved. High-density housing is never good for a school district. This isn't religious,” the group's leader, John Kahrs, reportedly said.
Joann Root of Crawford attended the meeting. She insisted religion was not the issue and neither was the school itself.
"The school really isn't the problem, it's a symptom of the problem. They're not even here and they already say they don't want to be part of our community,” she reportedly said.
Mamakating Supervisor Harold Baird told the Times Herald-Record that he understood why people are concerned.
"I know what it's all about," Baird, who said he has family in Nanuet and Monsey, areas with significant hasidic populations, reportedly said. But be he also called a raucous town meeting on the issue held in Bloomingburg in late September "an angry mob scene," and noted that he had walked away from the crowd. That meeting had been cancelled after the town hall was filled to capacity with more people seeing to get in. It was rescheduled at the same venue with the same amount of seats available by town officials supportive of the new development, which caused the rescheduled meeting to descend into chaos.
But at Sunday’s meeting most people reportedly politely asked questions and asked what they could do to help the cause. Others reportedly wanted to know if they could change their rural mailing addresses from Bloomingburg to another nearby town so their property values would not be hurt.
"This is not about anti-Semitism. It's about anti-corruption,” a local resident reportedly said.