On one level, the Sept. 30 referendum in Bloomingburg, N.Y., is a sort of boring governing question — whether the village of Bloomingburg should fold itself into the larger, surrounding town of Mamakating.
Dig a little bit deeper, and it gets more intriguing. There’s a big developer here, who wants to build nearly 400 townhomes in a village of 420 people. Joining with Mamkating gives Bloomingburg the ability to block the development.
“I want the village to be like it was eight years ago when I moved up here,” resident Frank Gerardi told Bloomberg News reporter Freeman Klopott. “It was a quiet place, a nice little town.” It gets better. Gerardi is now the mayor of Bloomingburg, having defeated the incumbent who supported the development.
But here’s what makes the vote next week so interesting: The development would be a community for ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews. They would become the majority of the town:
It’s an amazing story. Read the Bloomberg report in its entirety.
