John Kryger Chairman Chris Nau vice Chair Gordon Wren Jr. 2'mt vice Chair Kim Weppler vice Chair Mike Kramer 4? vice Chair Justin Schwartz 5th vice Chair Jeff Cool Honorary Chair Rockland County Illegal Housing Task Force P.O. Box 16 Garnerville, NY 10923 845-709?4393 rcvfa@verizon.net June 16, 2016 Hon. Ellen C. Jaffee One Blue Hill Plaza, Suite 11 16 Pearl River, NY 10965 Dear affee: More than 20 yeshivas targeted by the New York State Education Department for overdue ?re-safety inspections turned to Ramapo and Kaser of?cials this month to get their paperwork done, sidestepping attempts by the county to send its own team into the facilities for review. Education Department spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie said in an email that 22 schools have ?led inspection reports done by either private inspections or Ramapo inspectors. The ?lings mean the schools won?t be required to be inspected by the county. The county will be challenging those inspections because they were done with an unquali?ed inspector. In addition, with regard to the building inspector of Kaiser, the state has already stated that he is un?t due to his lack of enforcement in the Village of New Square 61 Carlton Road just registered with NYSED and was just inspected by the questionable inspector. This property, during construction phase, changed site plans, does not have ample parking and has no complete sidewalks and tra?ic pattern entrances In a March 14 letter from the State Department of Education to then Ramapo ?re inspector Adam Peltz, department Facilities Planning Coordinator Carl Thurnau brings up multiple issues with inspections Peltz carried out. The state is calling into question several school building inspections carried out by the Ramapo ?re inspector. Thurnau also notes that during a March 3 conversation, Peltz said he would not cite the broken exit doors, as they were not required by code. "It is unlikely that you took the time during your inspection to conduct a detailed code analysis to determine if those doors were required by code, Thurnau wrote. "You also indicated that you have not received any training on how to perform inspections. This cannot be accurate as you were required to take approximately 120 hours of code training by the Department of State for initial code enforcement certi?cation and an additional 24 hours of training per year to maintain your certi?cation. In a March 18 letter to state Education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia, state Kenneth Zebrowski wrote that, as of March 4, 26 Rockland private schools have failed to ?le annual safety reports. Zebrowski writes that Peltz had ?led 23 inspections in the past year. "It is clear that these ?re inspections are not being conducted in a proper manner and possibly constitute a violation of law, he wrote. "Since the quality of inspections of these 23 schools is in question, I am asking that these schools be added to the list for the county ?re coordinator to inspect. Until the county ?re coordinator can verify all school are inspected properly, The Task Force asks that no tax exemption or funding be granted or allowed. Rockland County Illegal Housing Rask Force Chairman Our mission is, regardless of ownership or possession, to eliminate illegal and unsafe housing in Rockland County, by use of all legal means available.