A Movement Begins...

In my last post, I left off at a turning point.

Hundreds of people were attending town board meetings in the fall and winter of 2012.  We were disgusted by the Monroe Town Board's behavior.

Supervisor Sandy Leonard slammed her gavel, and shouted at frustrated residents.  Harley Doles, the Acting Supervisor, rattled off his pie-in-the-sky visions for the movie theater the Town Board had just purchased, without public input, and Councilman McQuade accused citizens of antisemitism for absolutely no reason at all, as often as he could.  Councilman Dan Burke was in a constant state of agitation and irritability, and Councilman Colon was the king of the face-palm. He looked absolutely  miserable.

What the citizens quickly discerned from these unpleasant meetings held at the Senior Center in Monroe, was that this Town Board had no interest in representing all of the citizens of Monroe.

Harley Doles, Acting Supervisor, the man I mentioned in my last post titled "Enter the Villain" was the guy calling the shots.  Sandy Leonard, the Town Supervisor, was merely a figurehead.  An ill tempered one at that, but she wielded no power.

Doles, in relationship to the newly purchased movie theater, was acting on his deluded desires for a legacy.  He wanted his name on the Town movie theater, and he wasn't going to let something as frivolous as hundreds of unhappy taxpayers get in his way.

He was on a mission.  A mission to spend Town money as though it was his own.

He was, and still is, a puppet for the Kiryas Joel leaders who elected him.

The State of New York is an odd and redundant place.  We have Towns.  Then we have Villages which sit inside of Towns.  So, we have a Town Supervisor and Council, then there are Mayors and Trustees who govern the Villages inside of the Towns.  Very redundant.  And wasteful.

In the Town of Monroe, there are three Villages:  Village of Monroe, Village of Harriman, and the Village of Kiryas Joel.

The Village of Kiryas Joel is unique, and illegal.  It's entirely Hasidic and separatist. There is no separation of church and state within this Village, and there is no way for anyone to purchase land or an apartment in this Village if you are not Hasidic.  Complete segregation.
What is also interesting about Kiryas Joel, is that the leaders decide who their citizens vote for.  So, on election day, citizens are sent numerous phone calls, flyers, and even trucks with loud speakers travel throughout the one-square-mile-village, to ensure a high voter turn out every time.  On election day, the Kiryas Joel citizens walk up to their polling place where day laborers are stationed outside with instruction cards for them which tell them exactly how to vote, and who to vote for.

The citizens of Kiryas Joel (KJ), head into the polls and do exactly as they are told.

The leaders of Kiryas Joel then have in place their very own puppets in the Town government, and get whatever they want.  In the case of the year 2013, it was land, land and more land.  But, I will get to that later.

So, Harley Doles was installed in Town government to do the bidding of the Kiryas Joel leaders.

And that he did.

But Doles also wanted a movie theater, and the KJ leaders said, "Sure, go ahead, buy your theater, and have fun!  It will be a great distraction to the people of Monroe when we try to steal 507 acres of land next year!"

So, here we all were.  Sitting in interminable meeting after meeting.  Speaking at the podium.  Getting interrupted, shut down, screamed at, disrespected, abused, and ignored.

It was at these meetings that I met some of the people who I would come to love, and call some of my dearest friends.

Lolie Farrell, for a shining example.  Monroe resident of almost 40 years.  Mother of five, Grandmother of many. And a spit-fire with a heart of gold and boundless energy.

Lolie and I became fast friends and she's like a second mom to me.  My favorite afternoons happen when Lolie stops by for a cup of tea and we talk about Monroe, family, life, and love at my kitchen table.  She's a stunning icy-blue eyed red head who could run circles around most people half her age. 

Lolie stood up, fearlessly, and entered into the first of what was to be two lawsuits against the Town of Monroe against their purchase of the movie theater.  We were in this together, big time.

Our law suit helped stop a lot of the damage which could have been done financially in Monroe since the Judge on the case granted an injunction disallowing the Town of Monroe to open the theater, or do any work outside of necessary repairs until the judge made her decision.  This held the spending at bay for quite some time while we organized, and formed what was to become the largest, most powerful grassroots organization in Orange County, New York:  United Monroe.

By the Spring of 2013, after countless Town Board meetings resulting in more and more enlightenment as to just how bad our Town government was, we were ready to form our non-partisan coalition.

We learned that the voters outside of Kiryas Joel voted their party line in all local elections.  Monroe is almost exactly 50 percent Democrat, 50 percent Republican.  Kiryas Joel, on the other hand, doesn't vote party line.  The citizens vote for whoever the leaders tell them to.

So, if KJ leaders want the Democrat to win that year, the Democrat wins, because half of the rest of Monroe votes Democrat.

I realized this pattern could not continue.  I realized that in order for the REST of Monroe to have some representation in government, we needed to stop voting our party line in local elections.

After all, Town Council people do not decide on gun rights, gay rights and abortion.  This is local government!  There is no reason at all for partisanship on the local level.  At all.

So, I decided to form a third party- inclusive of all, where all Monroe citizens could cast their votes.

At this point, we had hundreds of supporters for the "Save the Theater" movement.  We had hundreds of email addresses, and the Town Board meetings were packed every month.  We had the beginnings of a movement, and we needed to keep up the momentum.

In April of 2013, I scheduled a meeting in the back room of our local pizza place, Planet Pizza, who were so generous to host us.

This was the night we were going to vote on a name for our movement.  I wanted to make sure all of the people who had stepped up since day one were heard and involved.  People like Mike and Diane Egan, Phil Gagler, Cristina Kiesel, Debbie Behringer, Marc Miller, Eileen Ruddy, Neil Dwyer, and so many more.  These people formed the backbone of our organization.

We announced the candidates who would be running against Harley Doles, Gerard McQuade and Rick Colon that coming November of 2013 on the newly formed, "United Monroe" line.

I was going to run for Town Supervisor.  I was a reluctant candidate.  But, having put the word out for people to contact us if they were interested, and having received no responses, I knew I had to put my money where my mouth was.

The months to come would prove to be life changing, monumentally enlightening, and extremely difficult.

 To be continued......

Enter the Villain

You know when you meet someone, and they give you a bad feeling......like, a feeling in your stomach, you just can't quite describe?

I got that feeling the first time I spoke with our Monroe Town Supervisor.

It was like I was being swindled, with every word he chose, every attempt to "win" me over, I became more and more uneasy.

I can deal with a salesperson.  He or she has a sale to make, and they want you to feel good about buying whatever they're selling.  With the Supervisor, it was different.  He was just lying.

In November of 2012, my neighbor called me to tell me that our brand new, six cinema multiplex theater in our village was purchased by our Town Board.

The theater had gone out of business, rather quickly.  Not because people weren't attending movies, but, because the owner had gotten himself into legal and financial trouble and wound up in prison.

The bank took the building, and subsequently auctioned it off.

The Town Board, at a budget meeting, with no public present, and without any prior public input, resolved to purchase the movie theater, at auction, the very next day, for up to one million dollars.

The Board sent one Councilman to the auction where he won the bid for $880,000.

The Town Board had no business plan and no fleshed out, concrete idea as to what they could or would do with this building.  In the Times Herald Record article, Board members mentioned that they planned on possibly using the building as a Town Hall.

They took it off the tax rolls which means the School District alone was losing $40,000 in tax revenue.

There were two other bidders at the auction who wanted to buy the building to open up a movie theater, which would have kept the building on the tax rolls.

So, after I received the phone call from my neighbor, and read the Times Herald Record article covering the Town's purchase, I decided to make a few phone calls.

My sense of curiosity couldn't let this one slide.

My first call was to then Town Supervisor, Sandy Leonard.  She was unavailable to take my call.

My second call was to one of the bidders on the building who was named in the Times Herald Record article.  He is a successful developer, and in fact, is responsible for the construction of the Eitz Chaim Synagogue in Monroe.  He was kind enough to take my call, and he shared with me his intention was to buy the building and open the movie theater. He had done his homework, understood the structure of the building, and shared with me some of the issues the building had, including water damage as well as the need to upgrade the projectors.  He also shared with me his surprise that a municipality would buy such a building since the floors are slanted for stadium seating and are not built for office use.

My next call was to Acting Supervisor, (current Town Supervisor),  Harley Doles.  This is where that feeling comes in.  That bad feeling.  That feeling that you're talking to a shyster of epic proportions.  That the person on the other end of the phone is cunningly calculating your angle, and is playing to it, while speaking in a stream of non-sequitur sales pitches, oozing deceit and corruption.

I said, "Councilman Doles, I'm calling to ask about the Town Board's purchase of the movie theater".

The first thing out of Doles mouth, instead of a positive, reasoned explanation, was this:

"Yes, Ms. Convers, did you know that the other two bidders were going to turn the theater into an office building?  We saved the building!"

He is the savior in this story.  And he is also a liar.  I know this, because I had just spoken with the other potential buyer, who didn't give me a creepy, weird, ominous feeling at all.  In fact, the other guy is a husband and dad of two kids and lives in Warwick, and was quite friendly and kind.

I went on to say, "What are you going to do with the building, Mr. Doles?"

Here's where it gets even more odd.

I had done a charity theater production for the Presbyterian Church earlier that year.  Doles was a member of the Presbyterian Church and knew that I was in that production.  Here was his angle.

"Ms. Convers, you like theater, don't you?  You know the Troiano's? They're going to run the theater!  We're going to have stage productions, and they're going to run it!  It's going to be great!"

I shared with Mr. Doles my concerns about their lack of a concrete plan, and the fact that they spent almost a million dollars on a building without taxpayer input.

He continued to bob and weave and convince me that I will love it, because I'm "in the theater".

The Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center is only minutes away and has been struggling since it was built.   Museum Village has a community theater troupe and a theater.  The School District has multiple plays each year.

I was a theater major in college.  I do love the arts.  I don't love liars, and I don't trust a man like Harley Doles to provide me with arts and culture.  Nor do I want someone as disjointed and irresponsible as he is to use my tax dollars to provide a cultural center for me.

I decided to attend some Town Board meetings to get a look at our government at work.

I was not alone.  Many people showed up to the Town Board meeting which immediately followed the Town's purchase of the movie theater.  And for many different reasons, people were not pleased.

It was the Town Board's response to this displeasure that was the most enlightening.  It was immediately apparent to me that the Town Board was not working for the people in that room that night.

There were other forces at play here, and the more I organized and the more I attended meetings, the more I understood the level of corruption we were dealing with.

To be continued..........

Why Blog?

In my small New York town, we've created a movement.

A movement for change.  A movement for preservation.  A movement to end and expose corruption wherever it lives.

This blog will be a place for me to talk about our movement, the amazing United Monroe organization, and its unbelievable volunteers. 

I'll be writing about how we got started, and how we grew to be the largest grassroots group Orange County has ever seen.

I'll be writing about our message and our story.

In my own words.

This is my first blog entry.  I will commit to posting a new entry every week.

I hope my readers find it interesting, educational, and if I'm lucky, inspiring.

Thanks for reading.

Emily