BLOOMINGBURG – The Mamakating Town Hall drew a modest crowd for the meeting held to explain the mechanism and background for the voter-initiated dissolution referendum that will be held in Bloomingburg on Tuesday, September 30. A report by the Laberge engineering/architectural group from Albany was presented and most comments were devoted to how pleasant a place Bloomingburg and the area is... or used to be.

The move to dissolve the village came out of the ongoing battle between village and surrounding Town of Mamakating residents and developer Shalom Lamm, who is building a large town home cluster of 396 units, and filling his numerous village properties with Hasidic renters and businesses.

If the referendum passes, the village board — elected to office last spring — will have to develop and accept a plan of dissolution, within 180 days, that will specify when the village will cease to exist, and which municipal services will continue, how they will be paid for, and how village assets and liabilities will be dealt with.

The petition for dissolution was submitted on July 1 under the NYS Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act, after which the village board passed a resolution calling for a referendum on July 24.

What is clear from the demographic study in the Laberge report is just how tiny Bloomingburg is. With a total of 1.84 miles of road, and a population of just 420 in 2010, it's very clear that the addition of 396 large town homes would totally transform the place.

The Town of Mamakating, which Bloomingburg will dissolve into should the referendum pass and further steps succeed, had a population of 12,085 in 2010.

The vote to dissolve the village is seen in various ways by the parties involved. For some it is an essential step to prevent the village from being taken over by newcomers, most likely Hasidic Jews moving up from Brooklyn. For the developer, and new village residents, the vote is another in a series of acts that he sees as ethnic discrimination.

The report also points up another salient fact about Bloomingburg. Of the 190 occupied housing units, 127 are rented and only 63 are owner occupied. The report lists 31 vacant units. Median household income is similar to that of the Town of Mamakating, at $50,000.

In the event that the village votes yes to dissolution, the report lists a summary of what will happen to municipal services. The part time mayor position will be abolished, with his/her duties to be assumed by the Mamakating supervisor. The three person village board of trustees would also be abolished and all their responsibilities shifted to the town board. The same would happen to other village positions, and the village hall would become a property of the town.

Some services, street lighting and sanitation, would be paid for with special taxing districts, while others would be moved under the town budget. The major cost by far, a newly built public sewer system projected to cost upwards of $300,000 per year to maintain, would become its own district, run by the town.

The Laberge report mentions a "developer payment" of $214,518 to be included as part of the sewer district budget for the next five years.

All local laws, including the village zoning law established in 2005, will remain in effect for up to two years after the date of dissolution.

The Laberge report finds a likely 3.4 percent decrease in property taxes for village residents, should dissolution occur, and a corresponding decrease for town property owners of 1.6 percent... based on a combination of savings and state tax credits set aside to encourage consolidation of municipal governments, which the Laberge report estimates at $610,074 per year. Lamm, meanwhile, commissioned and mass-mailed a counter report from the Shepstone Group — currently involved in planning for the Thompson Educational Center/China City of America project as well as numerous municipal projects around the area — that attacks the Laberge report on a number of fronts.

"The [Laberge] report lists the assumed sources of savings and revenues that go into these projections, but never offers the precise calculations involved or even states what the town and village budgets are," Shepstone's report notes. "It is not apparent what base figures were used to calculate the impacts on the Town of Mamakating budget."

Also under fire were costs of the sewer project, which was supposed to go on line, under state order, next month.

"The analysis of impacts on sewer costs is wholly inadequate and highly misleading. The sewer fund rates are not explained, for instance," reads the Shepstone report. "The report also fails to address the dependence of the new sewer plant operation on flows and revenues from a project the dissolution is clearly aimed at stopping, there already being litigation regarding the village's contractual obligations."

In fact, the counter report argues, the fact that the Laberge report fails to mention Lamm's project other than it being "obliquely referenced by an assumption that the developer will continue to make payments of $214,518 per year towards the costs of operation" makes for added questions regarding the entire dissolution process.

"The village cannot stop the project through dissolution and simultaneously count on its revenues to support the sewer system," Shepstone's report concludes. "If the project stops, then the sewer plant will be greatly underfunded, potentially throwing the costs of the $305,000 per year operation over to existing residents... None of this has been taken into account and it is a grievous omission from the analysis."

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation found the village's former plant not in compliance with pollution regulations and demanded that Bloomingburg replace its sewer treatment system years ago. Part of the deal for the Chestnut Ridge development was that Lamm would build a new, up to date sewer plant. That has been done, at a reputed cost of $5 million. However, that system has yet to be put into operation even though the DEC had set a deadline of this summer for the new sewer system to become operational, with an extension into October.

Questioned at the meeting, village attorney Steve Mogel said the DEC had agreed that the village had made great efforts to come into compliance and granted more time for the completion of the new sewer plant and bringing it online. He then added that the developer, Lamm, is responsible for this.