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Daniel Friedman
Former Ramapo Councilman Daniel Friedman died Friday morning after he reportedly jumped from the Bear Mountain Bridge. He was 30 and worked for the Rockland Legislature.
State police continued to search for his body in the Hudson River on Friday.
A car registered to Friedman was found at the entrance to the bridge and video surveillance camera shows a man walking to the middle of the span and jumping, state police Senior Investigator Brian Hoff said. [Read more…]
Peter Katz Photo: John Meore/ The Journal News
Peter Katz has become the first Ramapo resident to take the town to court for permitting the conversion of a single-family house into a school without approved site plans and other permits.
Katz argues in his legal action that Chief Building Inspector Anthony Mallia arbitrarily issued a temporary building permit for Congregation Yeshiva Zera Yakov to open a school at 101 Carlton Road and the Ramapo Zoning Board of Appeals incorrectly upheld Mallia’s decision as valid under town zoning law. [Read more…]
The headline in last Monday’s The Journal News read “Ramapo: State’s powers over building, fire inspections detailed.” Ramapo and Spring Valley now have State watchdogs “assigned to monitor the Ramapo Building Department [with] access to department records and [the power to] direct inspectors to address critical threats to life and public safety.” A proper subhead for the story could have been: “It’s about time.” The effort by local firefighters to get someone to step in and enforce the fire code regulations in the Town of Ramapo has been going on, literally, for decades. Standing in the way have been the federally indicted Christopher St. Lawrence, the Ramapo Town Board, and the bloc vote that keeps all of them in Town Hall.
To understand this sorry legacy of neglect requires a brief review of the history of tension between fire officials and numerous Ramapo and State politicians. [Read more…]
Spring Valley Mayor Demeza Delhomme Photo: Peter Carr The Journal News
“A nearly 2-year-old citizens’ legal action seeking to oust Mayor Demeza Delhomme from office on allegations of malfeasance goes before a hearing officer in 2017.
The Supreme Court’s Appellate Division in Brooklyn assigned retired jurist Nicholas Colabella to possibly hear testimony and then issue a report and recommendation. An appellate panel would then rule on the issue of Delhomme remaining mayor of Rockland’s largest village. [Read more…]
FBI Ramapo Education Technology Raids in March 2016 The Journal News
“On an unusually warm day in March, dozens of FBI agents and other law enforcement officers raided two dozen yeshivas and businesses that had tapped into a multi-million dollar federal program for financing computers and related technology at educational institutions.
More than 300 agents and officers descended on the ultra-Orthodox private schools and companies, seizing payment records, equipment and other documents as part of an investigation on whether the federal money had been misused. The agents hit additional religious schools in Orange County ultra-Orthodox community of Kiryas Joel and made at least one stop the same day in Brooklyn.
The FBI-led raids, which involved more than 22 separate search warrants in Ramapo, also included detectives with the Rockland District Attorney’s Office and local police departments. [Read more…]
“The state is appointing monitors with investigative authority to oversee the building departments in Ramapo and Spring Valley after years of fielding complaints from officials and first responders about the potentially dangerous lack of fire safety and zoning enforcement in those communities.
The state acted after several years of pressure from Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, D-New City, Rockland County Executive Ed Day and the Rockland Illegal Housing Task Force leaders. They have called for the state to potentially take over the inspection duties in Ramapo and Spring Valley.
The monitors will be assigned because the communities have not done enough to comply with state regulations, state Department of State spokesman Laz Benitiz said Monday. [Read more…]
Shalom Lamm and his townhouses in Bloomingburg Photo Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
From The New York Times December 15, 2016
As prosecutors painted it, the scheme seemed logical enough: If a rustic village in upstate New York would not approve a townhouse development that would more than quadruple its size, then bring in new residents, register them to vote and elect a new village board.
But the developers, according to an indictment unsealed on Thursday, took shortcuts that made the scheme easy to pick apart as fraudulent: They placed toothbrushes and toothpaste in apartments when no one was actually living there. They backdated leases to roughly the same period — the 30 days before the 2014 election required to establish legal residency for voting. They opened bank accounts and picked up mail at unoccupied home addresses. They arranged for bribes to scores of people to travel to the community to register to vote. [Read more…]
The following press release is from the Dept. Of Justice:
Three Real Estate Developers Charged In White Plains Federal Court With Conspiracy To Corrupt The Electoral Process In Bloomingburg, New York
Shalom Lamm and Others Charged in Voter Fraud Scheme in Connection with a March 2014 Bloomingburg Election
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), today announced the unsealing of an Indictment charging SHALOM LAMM, KENNETH NAKDIMEN, and VOLVY SMILOWITZ, a/k/a “Zev Smilowitz,” with conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process, in connection with an election in Bloomingburg, New York. Bharara also today announced the guilty plea of HAROLD BAIRD, a former Town Supervisor of Mamakating, New York, to conspiracy to submit false voter registrations, charged in a one-count Information unsealed today. [Read more…]
Bill Weber, former candidate for Ramapo Town Council, offers his thoughts on the double-digit tax hike and the general fiscal situation in the Town.
Read the full text of his press release at this link weberpressrelease-12-13-16-1.
Photo: Peter Carr/Journal News
One New Jersey township has gone further, with ‘cease and desist’ zones.
“The flurry of activity that comes with the spring housing market felt different this year in certain areas of Rockland.
Residents in some sections of Ramapo and surrounding communities began complaining on social media and at public meetings that they were being targeted by overzealous real estate solicitations, both in person and by mail, by people trying to encourage them to put their homes on the market.
In the months since, combating those unwanted solicitations has become a top priority for many local officials and communities. [Read more…]