Compromise needed on yeshiva issue
By: Robert J. Clark
The Roosevelt Borough Council has driven, or soon will drive, Yeshiva Me’on Hatorah into the courts to vindicate its rights under state and federal constitutional, statutory and case law. The recent Planning Board proceedings were just warm ups. Despite at least two good faith overtures by the Yeshiva to negotiate with the Council acceptable limitations on religious uses of the three lots belonging to Congregation Anshei, the Council, perhaps with one or two dissenting voices, has adopted a no-compromise attitude.
At her first Council meeting as Mayor, Beth Battel, stated, "I wish to assure all members of this community, regardless of who they are or how long they have been here, that their concerns will always be listened to with understanding and be addressed fairly." Shortly thereafter, Mayor Battel, the Borough Engineer and I met with Yeshiva representatives to discuss whether a dormitory could be located somewhere other than the Synagogue lots. The meeting satisfied Mayor Battel’s promise in a perfectly legitimate way. It was not set up or conducted in secret (several people who were pro and anti-Yeshiva knew about it); similar meetings routinely were held to inform other would-be land users what issues they would have to resolve; no commitments were made to the Yeshiva representatives; and Mayor Battel and I reported to the Council what occurred at the meeting. Nonetheless, Mayor Battel ran into a firestorm of chastisement led by the Roosevelt Preservation Association.
More recently, the Yeshiva’s attorney, acting in good faith, shared a plan with the Borough Attorney "in confidence," for limited distribution to Council members and other officials, "as a basis for commencing discussions." Instead of saying they would not look at the plan because they had no intention of negotiating zoning changes (ones that might have satisfied everyone’s concerns), someone on the Council, with the apparent approval of other Council members, published the plan around town on posters and flyers. Unleashing the half-truths that are a frequent modus operandi of the Roosevelt Preservation Association’s leaders, the distributors of the plan blocked out the words "FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY" that had been written across it. Using the plan as a propaganda piece, they dishonorably implied that information submitted with the plan constituted the Yeshiva’s final position and left out proposals that would have made the Yeshiva seem more benign, such as a willingness to leave untouched the forested lot between the Synagogue and the immediate neighbor’s house.
Such conduct belies the claim that anti-Yeshiva activists are solely interested in proper land use. Although at least one has publicly acknowledged that she is anti-Semitic, most probably are not. Many, however, are roundly intolerant of Orthodox Jews. Their extreme insistence on retaining the Synagogue as a stagnant religious institution and providing no place for any significant religious activity in Roosevelt shows their true colors. Their intransigency, spiced with crocodile tears about the boys’ safety and patronizing rants about women who don’t shake hands and boys who don’t play basketball with girls, have attracted profane bigots like a water-filled tire attracts mosquito eggs. Some Council members smugly tell us, "Just don’t look at the Bulletin Board; we don’t."
One can get away with exercising prejudice in a secret voting booth, as a decent former mayor of Roosevelt found out. We all know the siren, which now torments residents near the North Valley Triangle, was not why he was removed from office by the voters. Other, non-Yeshiva issues also were inconsequential.
Meanness in the voting booth may not be remediable, but impermissible stifling of religion to accommodate overzealous land use concerns will not fly in court. The Council and the Roosevelt Preservation Association cannot keep judges from scrutinizing Roosevelt’s zoning ordinances against the constitutional and statutory requirements which protect a freedom that it took centuries to achieve. If judges consider Roosevelt’s interesting, but comparatively brief, history at all, it will be to puzzle why anyone would claim that a town founded by Jews, with a Synagogue as its only house of worship, would argue that they should approve turning the town into a virtual secular enclave to the detriment of devout Jews.
Judges also will not want to hear about how large the Yeshiva naively thought it could be (150) if officials and residents had embraced and nurtured it, or as a starting point in settlement negotiations (120). The figure now most often cited in serious talks is 60. Judges will not want to hear about how a town without sidewalks in most places disapproves of more walkers (I thought we liked as many walkers as possible). They will not want to hear about sewer constraints in a town with excess sewer plant capacity. The town may or may not need a new water tower regardless of the Yeshiva’s activities. If it does, judges will want to know only how much the Yeshiva would owe as its proportionate share.
Judges first will encourage the parties to come to some agreement. The Yeshiva’s attorney has written to ask for this already, seeking zoning that would permit a "modest facility" and expressing a willingness to afford "surrounding neighbors with reasonable protections from undesired intrusions upon their residential uses." If there is no agreement providing the Borough with "the opportunity to have meaningful input into the final configuration of the religious institution’s project," judges will not want to hear about how some Rooseveltians would feel "threatened" should the Yeshiva resort to courts to vindicate its perceived rights.
If, after a long and expensive legal process, the Borough loses in court, it likely would have to pay for any damages, legal fees and costs incurred by the Yeshiva, as well as its own legal fees. That is one reason why it is so important to the Roosevelt Preservation Association that there be no agreement between the Yeshiva and the municipality. If the Council and the Yeshiva were to agree on reasonable limits for the Yeshiva’s operations, the Roosevelt Preservation Association would have to pay to challenge the agreement in court. The municipality and the Yeshiva would then have a common interest in defending the agreement, and if they were successful by relying on the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the Preservation Association likely would have to pay the Borough’s and the Yeshiva’s expenses, as well as its own. The Association’s attorney notified the Planning Board in writing that Council members Peggy Malkin and Jeff Ellentuck were members of the Association. The Yeshiva’s attorney has asked that they be disqualified from participating in Council deliberations and decisions regarding the Yeshiva because of their obvious divided loyalties as to whether to preserve the Association’s funds or the municipality’s (taxpayers’) funds.
Roosevelt has high-density senior housing next to a neighborhood of single-family houses. It has given preliminary approval for a huge commercial horse farm across from single-family houses in the residential/agricultural zone. It solicited a group home for developmentally disabled residents to be located close behind the Synagogue between the Factory and a house. Diamond Machine Co., Inc. was granted a large addition, so long as it agreed to construct a modern bioretention basin, plant buffering vegetation, etc. Apparently we are willing to be creative when we want to satisfy our affordable housing obligation. We also respect the state Right to Farm Law enough to agree to accommodate it with zoning changes. In addition, we find creative ways to lessen the restrictions on light industrial rateables. It seems all these were deemed worthy, although the neighbors were not always pleased. They were all secular, don’t you know.
Robert J. Clark is the former borough administrator of Roosevelt.

