I honestly never realized how fascinating small town politcs were before this!

Kiryas Joel (or Kiryas Yo'el or Kiryat Joel or KJ) (קרית יואל, Hebrew: "Town of Joel") is a village within the Town of Monroe in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 13,138 at the 2000 census. The great majority of its residents are Hasidic Jews belonging to the Satmar Hasidic dynasty, making it a significant Satmar enclave.

The village has the youngest median age (15.0) of any population center of over 5,000 residents in the United States.

The village has become a contentious issue in Orange County for several reasons, mainly related to its rapid growth.[2] Unlike most other small towns, it lacks a real downtown and much of it is given over to residential property, which has mostly taken the form of contemporary townhouse-style condominium complexes similar to those found in ski resort communities in western states. New construction is going on everywhere.

[edit] Local impact of growth

Monroe also contains two other villages, Monroe and Harriman. Kiryas Joel's boundaries also come close to the neighboring towns of Blooming Grove and Woodbury.

Residents of these communities and local and Orange County politicians view the village as encroaching on them.[3] Due to the rapid population growth occurring in Kiryas Joel, resulting almost entirely from the high birth rates of its Hasidic population, the village government has undertaken various annexation efforts to expand its acreage, to the dismay of the majority of the residents of the surrounding communities. Many of these area residents see the expansion of the high-density residential and commercial village as a threat to the quality of life in the surrounding suburban communities. They view it as a prime source of suburban sprawl (most land surrounding it is largely undeveloped). Other concerns of the surrounding communities are the impact this unchecked growth will have on the local aquifers and the projected increased volume of sewage reaching the county’s sewerage treatment plants (which are near capacity, as of 2005).

On August 11, 2006, residents of Woodbury vote by a 3-to-1 margin to incorporate much of the town as a village to constrain further annexation. Kiryas Joel has vigorously opposed such moves in court, and even some Woodbury residents are concerned about adding another layer of taxation without any improved defense against annexations.

[edit] Local politics

Further frustrating village critics is its impact on local politics. Villagers are perceived as voting in a solid bloc. While this is not always the case, the highly concentrated population often does skew strongly toward one candidate or the other in local elections, making Kiryas Joel a heavily-courted swing vote for whichever politician offers Kiryas Joel the most favorable environment for continued growth.

In the town's 2005 municipal election, a slate of anti-growth Democratic candidates for the Town Board ran against pro-growth Republicans. The Democrats carried almost every precinct in town but lost the election because the Kiryas Joel vote went for the Republicans.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryas_Joel%2C_New_York