South Blooming Grove mayor replaces entire Planning Board in latest change for village
Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
SOUTH BLOOMING GROVE - The village government got another jolt of change this week when South Blooming Grove's new mayor replaced the entire Planning Board, less than seven months after he took office.
Voters in a 5-square-mile village that has undergone a rapid demographic change already had replaced the full governing board in a pair of elections six months apart, installing a mayor and four trustees who were new to politics and mostly new to South Blooming Grove itself.
South Blooming Grove's mayor George Kalaj's campaign photo.
On Monday night, Mayor George Kalaj named five new Planning Board members rather than reappoint any of the current members. Two of his appointees had previously served as a backup members, known as alternates, but the others hadn't served at all.
March vote: Voters complete board turnover with two write-in candidates
September vote: Challengers win board majority in South Blooming Grove
Clovewood hearing: Speakers question impact of 600-home project
Hundreds of Hasidic families have moved to South Blooming Grove since 2015, choosing suburban homes and backyards over the congestion and expensive condos of nearby Kiryas Joel. They first exerted their voting clout in September by picking Kalaj over incumbent Jimmy LoFranco and electing two new trustees, creating a new board majority.
Voters finished that sweep of the Village Board in March by electing two write-in trustee candidates.
The next change came Monday with the Planning Board appointments. Kalaj replaced Chairwoman Donna Douglas with Solomon Weiss, and named the following other board members: Abraham Klepner, Yoel Ungar, Simon Schwartz and Raleem Broadhead-Moses. Schwartz and Broadhead-Moses used to be alternates.
The new board is scheduled to hold its first online meeting on Thursday.
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'Very disrespectful'
One ousted board member complained on Monday that Kalaj didn't tell her and her colleagues in advance that they were being replaced.
"I think it was very disrespectful that we found out on an agenda," Michelle Rivera said during the public comment session of the Village Board meeting.
"I'm sorry that I could not satisfy everybody," Kalaj replied.
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Other speakers complained that Kalaj had appointed no women - he did name one - and argued the village needed more diverse representation. Both the Village Board and Planning Board are now nearly all-male.
"It is what it is," Kalaj said in response.
Seeing diversity
Speaking on his behalf on Wednesday, two leaders of the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove said the criticism about lack of diversity on the boards was ironic because Orthodox community members had asked in vain to be appointed in the past.
Now, both the Village Board and Planning Board would each have four Orthordox members and one non-Orthodox member, including an African-American woman, Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern told the Times Herald-Record in a joint phone interview.
"We are here to work with all community members in the village, it doesn't matter religion or race," said Ekstein, who serves as the mayor's unpaid "legislative aide."
He and Stern said more than 350 Orthodox families have moved to South Blooming Grove in the last three years alone and yet had no representation until the September election. They also argued the village has violated federal law since its founding by stripping houses of worship from its zoning – a synagogue-blocking omission that they said would soon be fixed.
"We were nice enough for the last five years not to sue the village," Ekstein said.
South Blooming Grove, incorporated in 2006, had only 3,100 residents in the most recent estimate but has huge tracts of undeveloped land. The Planning Board reviews and approves plans for residential and commercial development, including a pending proposal to build a business park off Museum Village Road and Route 208.
The site of the proposed 600-home Clovewood project, off Clove Road and Route 208.
The board's composition is most significant now for upcoming votes the Planning Board and Village Board must take to conclude the environmental review for the 600-home Clovewood proposal at the site of the former Lake Anne Country Club. The two boards have been jointly overseeing the Clovewood review since 2018 and held public hearings on the proposal in August, December and January.
The next step in the review is for the developer’s consultants to submit a final environmental impact statement that addresses questions and comments made at the hearings or in writing on the draft version of that document.
The South Blooming Grove Fire District building on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021.
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