Kauneonga Lake, NY – Will the newly registered voters in Bethel turn the results of the November elections? That was the unspoken question at a meeting of the town board on September 9 in Kauneonga Lake.

The board is pursuing a legal battle against United Talmudical Academy (UTA) over a shul and community center that UTA constructed on Schultz Road. The town claims the building is unsafe and was built without the proper permits. The Hassidic community that uses the building has leveled charges of racism against the town, which officials and residents have vigorously denied.

As a result of the conflict, some 175 members of the Hassidic community have switched their voting registrations from Brooklyn, where they live most of the year, to Bethel, where they live six weeks of the year. In a town where about 2,500 voters usually go to the polls, 175 votes is not an insignificant number.

At the meeting, supervisor Dan Sturm said he would continue to pursue the lawsuit even if it resulted in “1,000 new voters” because it involved public safety and it was the right thing to do.

Several members of the board and community commented that under current law, the registrations were legal because the law merely requires that a resident live in the town for 30 days before an election in order to be eligible to register and vote.

During the public comment period, Gail Rubenfeld, a lawyer, said there were other requirements of the relevant law, for instance, that a voter must have a significant tie to the community. She added that anyone could challenge the registrations.

Council member Vicky Vassmer-Simpson said that, in her view, if such challenges were to be made, it would be the role of members of the Democratic and Republican committees to bring them, not elected officials.

Sullivan County legislator David Sager, who represents the town at the county level, said he did not agree with Vassmer-Simpson and that he planned to become personally active in determining if the voters could be successfully challenged.

Former Bethel supervisor Harold Russell, who is running against Sturm in the upcoming election, said that if people were dissatisfied with the law, they should appeal to Albany to try to have it changed. He added that many weekenders register to vote here because their votes will have more weight than they would in New York City and its suburbs.

Russell later said that a member of the Hassidic community had called him about possibly arranging a meeting, and he responded that he would be glad to do so if the Hassidic community also sought meetings with all of the other candidates running this fall. So far, he has not heard back from them.

The word from Albany

John Conklin, the director of public information at the NY Board of Elections in Albany, said there is a definition of residence in election law which is defined as “a place where a person maintains a fixed, permanent and principle home to which he, wherever temporarily located, always plans to return.”

Conklin said, “For a long time, this meant that residents voted out of what was known as their primary residence. But, in recent years, the courts have interpreted this to mean any residence a person has a significant tie to can be used as a residence for voting purposes.” And the courts consider a person’s relationship with a weekend home or a bungalow to be a significant tie.

Conklin added that a challenge to a voter’s registration based on living in the town for only six weeks per year would probably not prevail.

Dexter to resign

In a related development, Tim Dexter, the code enforcement officer who has been accused of allowing the construction of the building to go forward without the proper permits, was in the process of working out the details of a resignation agreement.

Sturm read a letter from Dexter to the board, which said that Dexter would forward a final letter of resignation once the terms of his departure had been worked out.

The board had previously held an executive session to discuss the resignation conditions, and voted four to one to accept Dexter’s contemplated resignation. Council member Robert Blais voted no.

(Source: The River Report)