דא העצט קאלהון קעגן די סטעיט פארן געבן גרענטס פאר קרית יואל May 12, 2002 Kiryas Joel's deep pockets In 5 years, village won millions more in grants than cities
By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
[email protected]
Kiryas
Joel – One recent overcast morning, Kiryas Joel leaders gathered on
Satmar Drive before a line of arranged backhoes and dump trucks to
announce the start of a $1.6 million sidewalk repair project in the
village.
Mayor Abraham Wieder stood at a lectern in the street
and gave a speech explaining the importance of sidewalks for a Hasidic
community that bustles with pedestrians. And he made sure to thank Gov.
George Pataki and state Sen. William Larkin Jr. for helping deliver
$1.3 million in state grants to cover most of the cost.
"For us, this is a means of daily life, and it is very important," Wieder said.
Over
the years, Kiryas Joel has been quite successful at demonstrating its
needs to those in government who can help. A Times Herald-Record study
has found that the village received almost $15 million in federal and
state grants over the last five years – millions more than Middletown
and Newburgh, cities twice the size of Kiryas Joel.
The village
of 13,000 people took in almost $6 million more than Newburgh from 1997
to 2001 and over $9 million more than Middletown during that period,
according to figures the Record obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act.
The total grant amounts for five Orange County
municipalities with low median household incomes were: Kiryas Joel,
$14.9 million; Port Jervis, $10.8 million; Newburgh, $9 million;
Middletown, $5.7 million; and Walden, $792,015.
Kiryas Joel
leaders say they've done well getting grants partly because income
levels in their village are far below those in most places. Also, since
their rapidly growing village was incorporated only 25 years ago, they
simply have many urgent infrastructure projects that need funding, they
say.
"None of them are luxury items," Wieder said in an
interview. "They are needed almost on an emergency basis." He added:
"We can only tax the people so much."
But for Kiryas Joel
critics, the figures confirm their suspicion that the village's bloc
vote – the tendency of its residents to vote for public officials their
leaders endorse – wins it grants and other favors from state and
federal politicians.
Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano put it bluntly: "They're successful for one reason – their political clout."
More on the results
Among
the five surveyed communities, Port Jervis also did well, especially
for its size. In fact, the city of 9,000 people got more money on a per
capita basis than Kiryas Joel.
Still, much of that city's $10.8
million is accounted for by a single grant – a whopping $8.1 million
awarded by the state Environmental Facilities Corp. in 1999 to overhaul
Port Jervis' aging water system. Subtracting that amount, the city
received a modest $2.7 million during the period in question.
That
same is true, to a lesser extent, of Kiryas Joel. Its sum was boosted
by $6.8 million awarded in 1997 and 1998 to build a sewage treatment
plant. But even without that money, the village still would have gotten
more than much larger Middletown.
Aside from the money for the
sewer plant and sidewalk repairs, Kiryas Joel received the following
major grants: $3.8 million for water-system improvements; $1.25 million
for a women's center; $750,000 for a slaughterhouse; $400,000 for a
business center; $400,000 for homebuyers' assistance; and $195,000 for
a park.
Of the village's $14.9 million in funding, $14 million
came from the state, and two grants totaling $900,000 came from the
federal government.
One distinction should be made: Middletown
and Newburgh's largest grants were ones they automatically get each
year through a formula, without having to apply and compete against
other municipalities. They were community development block grants –
multipurpose funds from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development
Department.
In New York state, smaller municipalities like Kiryas
Joel and Port Jervis apply competitively for those funds through the
Governor's Office for Small Cities. Both have won grants through that
office each of the last two years.
One reason Walden's grant
total is relatively low may be that it didn't apply for community
development funds between 1997 and 2001.
For the five years prior
to 1997, Walden received $2.2 million in such grants. But it hasn't
applied for any since 1996 because it's been unable to use the $600,000
it got that year to create senior citizen housing, said Kerron Barnes,
a Walden grant consultant.
"If you have a project that's started and you haven't spent the money, then they're not going to give you more," Barnes said.
Not
that that has stopped Kiryas Joel. It received back-to-back grants in
2000 and 2001 from the Small Cities Office to build a chicken
slaughterhouse and a business center. Construction has not begun on
either.
The sidewalk grant
In 1999, a
committee of Orange County representatives sat down and reviewed local
applications for state funding to support "transportation enhancement"
projects, such as walking trails and sidewalks. After discussion, they
ranked nine projects and sent their list to the Department of
Transportation.
Kiryas Joel's request for $2 million to repair
sidewalks ranked eighth. But when the state announced grant recipients
in March 2000, the project made the top three. The village was awarded
$400,000.
To state Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, this reshuffling
of priorities seems curious, especially since the other two projects to
get funding were ranked first and second by the county's advisory
committee.
"I would just find it interesting that the first two
were approved," said Calhoun, a Blooming Grove Republican whose
district includes Kiryas Joel and who has been a critic of the
village's leaders.
Not interesting at all, said Christopher
Dunleavy, Orange County's acting planning commissioner. He said the
county's project ranking was purely advisory – and subject to change at
the state level.
"It's not shocking or irregular," Dunleavy said. "Basically, we screen and recommend, and they decide," he said.
Bob
Dennision, a DOT regional director, said administrators from several
state agencies picked the grant winners, and it was not usual for them
to rearrange priorities. He said they weigh numerous factors, including
whether a project could get funding through other programs.
To
finance the sidewalk repairs, Kiryas Joel cobbled together the $400,000
grant with two others from the Department of Transportation: one for
$800,000, the other for $100,000. The $100,000 grant – drawn from a pot
for multimodal transportation projects – was secured by Sen. Larkin,
according to Kiryas Joel's village clerk, Gedalye Szegedin.
The bloc vote
A
look at the lopsided results of some recent elections in Kiryas Joel
show what is meant by the village's bloc vote: 2,825-56 for U.S. Rep.
Benjamin Gilman in 2000; 2,333-25 for Pataki in 1998; and 1,817-63 for
Larkin in 1996, his last contested race.
Calhoun found herself on
the wrong side of the bloc in 2000. In that race, village voters
rebuked their critical assemblywoman by throwing 2,547 votes to her
Democratic challenger, James Sollami. Calhoun still won by a large
margin. (Kiryas Joel will be removed from her district next year under
a recent change in district lines.)
Critics believe the
village's ability to deliver a solid bloc of votes to a candidate gives
it disproportionate influence in the corridors of power, and not just
for getting grants.
After all, Kiryas Joel has gotten the state
Legislature and two governors to repeatedly support its public school
district for disabled children, despite court rulings that found the
district an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and
state.
"They know it's important to make the right friends, and they do," DeStefano said.
He
recalled meeting with village leaders in the early 1990s when he was
the county's Democratic chairman and being told the village would
support candidates who could do two things: win, and support Kiryas
Joel once in office.
"They make no bones about it," he said.
Gilman and Larkin, both Republicans, did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article.
But
in a 1999 interview with the Record's editorial board, Gilman bristled
when asked if the village received preferential treatment. He said he
had written letters supporting Kiryas Joel grant applications, but had
done so for many municipalities in his district. And, he added, he
couldn't guarantee that Kiryas Joel or any other place would actually
get a grant.
"This is a federal program, and agencies have to
make that decision," he said. "It would be inappropriate for anyone to
assert that there has been any political involvement."
Wieder, for his part, expresses frustration at the constant harping on his village's voting habits.
"Why
are we singled out – and it's almost always held against us – for the
way we vote?" he asked. "We are trying to put in the best candidates
for the village. I don't see what is wrong with that."
He said
the voting had little to do with the village's grant success. One
reason the village has gotten funding, he said, is that it was
incorporated only 25 years ago and is still building up infrastructure,
such as water and sewer systems.
"We are addressing issues that other villages and towns have taken care of a long time ago," Wieder said.
Szegedin,
the village clerk and main grant writer, said there may also be a
simpler reason Kiryas Joel wins grants: it applies. Other communities
may not do so as vigorously, even as they bemoan Kiryas Joel's success,
he said.
He put it this way: "You can't win a lottery without buying a ticket
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