www.preserve-ramapo.com
Rockland County Times
Ramapo residents’ pleas to halt zoning and building code changes to the northeastern quadrant of the town fell on deaf ears last Wednesday, Jan 20, during a hastily arranged Zoom meeting. After all was said and done, the Town Board unanimously voted to continue a process it began in 2018 that proposes to re-zone and re-purpose its semi-rural northeast corridor, making way for future development. [Read more…]
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Ward 1 Ashley Leveille |
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Ward 2 Sabrina Charles-Pierre |
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Ward 3 Sherry McGill |
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Ward 9 Brenda Carole Anderson |
Linda Valentine Ward 4 (Please Write in Linda’s name)
Robert Romanowski in Ward 6 [Read more…]
“NAACP lawyers say the East Ramapo school district owes them $4.3 million for winning a voting rights lawsuit decided in May.
The district says the tab should be $1.
If forced to pay the full award, the district might have to fire some 50 teachers, administrators, psychologists and others in a mostly-minority district already facing $5.4 million in unanticipated costs from the Covid-19 pandemic, interim district superintendent Raymond Giamartino says. [Read more…]
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision declaring East Ramapo’s method for electing its school board violated the Voting Rights Act.
The lower court decision handed a victory to the NAACP in its decade-long battle to wrest board control away from a white, Orthodox Jewish voting bloc.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the East Ramapo school district’s claim that policy preferences like lower taxes – not race – had led to school boards dominated by Orthodox Jewish candidates.
They noted the nine-member board has pursued policies contrary to the interests of the the district’s 11,000 public-school students, nearly all of whom are Black or Latino. [Read more…]
“The village has agreed to review a Hasidic Jewish school’s expansion plans, after settling a federal civil rights lawsuit which claimed the village discriminated against and blocked the project.
Under the agreement reached in U.S. District Court, Central United Talmudical Academy of Monsey gets a promise that its updated expansion plans will be reviewed in a timely manner by the village land-use boards, while the village gets the school’s promise to follow village procedures.
Airmont also is relieved of a legal burden. The village still faces a federal lawsuit from a coalition of the congregations and civil action by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. The village previously lost two cases involving discriminatory zoning blocking residential houses of worship and dormitory housing involving Hasidic and Orthodox Jews since the village’s 1991 incorporation. [Read more…]
“Federal prosecutors are urging a judge to sentence six Ramapo residents to prison for their involvement in stealing millions of dollars from a federal program designed to provide computer technology to underprivileged students.
Peretz Klein and his wife, Susan Klein, both of Spring Valley; and Monsey residents Simon Goldbrenner, Moshe Schwartz, Ben Klein, Sholem Steinberg and Aron Melber all entered guilty pleas to conspiracy charges in February.
Sentencing had been delayed from June due to the coronavirus pandemic and is expected in mid-January, according to a memorandum submitted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. A hearing is likely after defense attorneys file their sentencing memorandums with the court. [Read more…]
“The New York State Education Department is again looking at how to enforce state law requiring that academic instruction in private schools be “substantially equivalent” to public schools, holding virtual meetings this week that focused on the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn.
Those are the places where the issue of education in ultra-Orthodox yeshivas has fueled bitter disputes, with leaders of large Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish populations fighting to preserve what they see as educational freedom as activists say some yeshivas fail to prepare boys for a productive future and civic involvement.
Earlier proposed guidelines were struck down in court and proposed regulations were put on the backburner by the state after intense opposition.
A state education official said this week that such guidelines would be issued in 2021.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to consider an appeal involving a Hasidic Jewish congregation’s 13-year-old plan to build a rabbinical college with apartments for students and their families amid 130 acres straddling routes 202 and 306. [Read more…]
Filmed in Ramapo, the documentary tells the story of the RLUIPA law and it’s consequences. It’s now available online with Amazon Prime. (View trailer here and for the Amazon catalog listing, click here.)
RLUIPA (2000): No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution, unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person, assembly, or institution, is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” [Read more…]
“As absentee vote-counting winds down, Democratic state Senate candidate Elijah Reichlin-Melnick and Assembly Republican hopeful Michael Lawler have won election in their respective races, elections officials said.
Lawler’s ousting of seven-term Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee means Democrats will lose a seat in the Assembly while still maintaining majority control of the lower house. Reichlin-Melnick succeeds a Democrat, David Carlucci, and his party will continue to hold the majority. [Read more…]