An insular Hasidic Jewish community in upstate New York officially formed their own town when the calendar rolled over to 2019, becoming the state’s first new town in nearly 40 years, reports said.
The former Village of Kiryas Joel in Orange County officially split from Monroe, NY on New Year’s Day, becoming the Town of Palm Tree, according to The Times Herald-Record.
Palm Tree — named for the English translation of Kiryas Joel founder Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum’s last name — springs forth from a 2017 referendum in which more than 80 percent of Monroe voters opted to branch off into their own town, the paper reported.
Palm Tree — all 220 acres and roughly 20,000 residents of it — becomes New York’s first new town since East Rochester was formed in 1981.
But life in the new town is already off to a rocky start: The town has no elected justices to hear municipal court cases, including traffic tickets, because no one bothered to run for the position, The Times Herald-Record reported.
Several people received write-in votes, but the Orange County Board of Elections refused to certify the top two as winners because multiple people in the new town shared those names, the report said.