BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor/Investigative Reporter
Mark Licker, the, sole Democrat on the Clarkstown board from Ward 1 who is vying for re-election moved to New City in 1986 with his wife who has lived in Clarkstown since 1963.
“I started my career as an attorney in a large firm in in New York City, but quickly, became a legal counsel to a developer, and that was the K. Hovnanian Companies, national developer. They were just starting a New York office. I did that for a couple of years and decided, look, I wanted to go out on my own. I established my practice in New City on Main Street, probably for longer than I want to really admit to being an attorney in New City. I think I developed a successful practice in New City.”
They have raised three children in New City who all flourished in the Clarkstown School District. What got him around to say he’s winding down his law practice, and what really got him into deciding to do this because he was never political at all. He considers himself very moderate. He says he has been told by many people; he could easily be a moderate Republican as well as a moderate Democrat. The issue that really started him on the political life was that he felt taxes were way too high and they were getting out of control.
“As I got into it more, I saw I had to try to fight the tax issue, I think we’re overdeveloping areas of the town especially in, my area of New City. What I’m seeing is because it takes me sometimes 20 minutes to go from one part of Main Street to the end of Main Street at certain hours of the day and as I look at the different projects that are coming into a New City. I don’t want to give you the exact numbers, because I’m not sure I have to add them up because different projects are in different stages of planning are over 500 units of residential units.”
A major thing people are complaining about as you were just talking about is the infrastructure and obviously you’re seeing things about the infrastructure that you don’t like. Tell the constituents about that and about what else you see in the infrastructure that needs to be improved. You’re coming from a different perspective than your other Democratic colleagues that are running to become board members, because you’ve been on the council, so you know what’s going on there and how do you feel the government’s handling it.
“Let me say I’ve learned a tremendous amount from January to now since I’ve been on the board and see how things work. I moved up here, really to for the suburban way of life and the school system I think many people did the same thing, but I see that changing. I grew up in Queens, so I’m used to that crowded type of thing. What I’m seeing is, can we handle the amount of development that’s coming into our area?
According to Licker, people need to understand that in 2021, the board changed the comprehensive plan of Clarkstown which is allowing this particular type of development, the question is can the infrastructure our roads, water and sewer systems handle it? Those are questions for our engineers and we have some good people working in the town, but when a developer has the right to build something you can’t really say no. Adding that’s part of the issue that they have to really look at, what this comprehensive plan was and perhaps put a moratorium on it and take a look at it again and say, hey enough is enough, this might be too much.
What specific infrastructure problems do you see?
“I see a huge problem with traffic. If you go down West Clarkstown Road, and you have New Hempstead going into West Clarkstown Road and you’ll have, it has not yet been approved, it has been going on for a while, but there’s going to be right near New Hempstead Road on West Clarkstown Road, there’s going to be a yeshiva built there, that’ll, be for like 400 students the amount of buses that are going there, the amount of people dropping off. On West Clarkstown Road, there’s something in right now in front of the planning board. The amount of traffic now is, is pretty bad.”
I used to go to Wesley Hills Justice Court, and at the time that you’d go sometimes it would, the judge would look at me and go, you’re late and I go, yeah, 40 minutes of traffic to get here. That’s what you hit.
“What about the condition of the roads? I’ve got to say, I give a lot of credit to our highway superintendent. I think he does a great job. I had actually the experience of, one of the people on one of the streets around said, oh, my street is in terrible condition. We took a look at it and I agreed. There were a couple of surrounding streets too that were in very bad condition. You can only do so many roads in a year.”
Clarkstown is on a 12-year paving plan to get the 300 miles of roads paved and they are about a year ahead. Licker called Bob Malone and said, to his credit, he came out himself and took a look. “He gave me a call and said Mark, I agree with you. I’m putting this on the list. That was for early spring. He delivered on his promise, in the summer, we saw all the trucks going around and they did a great job.”
He added that there are many other roads that need the same thing, and you try to get people to understand, to get your requests in early. You really kind of need to get this on a list in early spring, so yeah, late winter early spring. He does a rotation of different streets, but I think he’s done a tremendous job because when you look at our streets, compared to a lot of the other towns, they’re in a lot better shape.
There’s other infrastructure besides the streets such as housing. What does he see as far as building in Clarkstown and how’s that going to affect the overall infrastructure pushing into the quality of life?
“What about the water and sewage? Well, I’m not an engineer, and the engineers in our town are very good, the additional amount of water being taken and sewer, that goes in is, going to have a burden on our systems.”
I know you’re not an engineer, but you know you from your experience on the board, are there ideas or plans to help alleviate the problems that could be created by this development?
“There’s certain things that when there’s a new development, they require, that there’s 10% less, runoff.
Some developments will require a retention pond and things like that. There are some things in place, but once again, the issue is, is there enough to alleviate those problems, especially when you start to wipe out our green space. This means there’s, less, areas to soak up the water, so, flooding issues and things like that, could come into play as well.” He explained.
As they say, there’s only two guarantees in life, death and taxes. No one likes either of them. We are all going to die at some time and we’ve all got to pay our taxes. How does the government in the current administration handle the taxes in the town?
“Well, you know, from what I’ve seen, it’s, we’re putting a lot on what I call our town credit cards. In other words, there’s a tremendous amount of money being bonded. I’ll give you an example, but this was before I came into office. We settled, a lawsuit with the Palisades Mall and the Shops in Nanuet. It was over $30 million and my understanding of it is the town knew this was coming up. Obviously you settled the case, you realize that they’re owed this money. While this case was going on for some time, money should have been put in reserves so that we can pay this off when it came…”
Like the school district did.
He added, “I’m glad you knew that the school district actually did that.”
“Some people might say well what’s a big deal? We’re paying it over time. The big deal is that you’re paying it at, especially as interest rates went up, at a higher interest rate and on that amount of money, $30 million it’s a lot of interest. But there are a lot of projects getting bonded, as opposed to just coming from our fund. What’s going to happen is eventually the bill comes due.”
His concern about this was that the people that are going to stay here are going to wind up paying that. Yes, you can bond a lot and keep your taxes stabilized, but eventually you’re going to hit it. I know because my family owns a commercial building as well, the taxes on the commercial buildings have exploded, so I might keep like the year before I was in, I think it was a 4. something on residential, but it was much higher on commercial.
Commercial is always higher because it’s a different, zoning, different breed of building, but are the taxes reasonable? Are they raising the, lowering them, keeping them stable?
Well, you know, this year, you know, we have the budget which hasn’t been voted on yet. It’s a 2% increase which is reasonable. You’d like to be zero but there’s some things that you can’t control such as premiums on healthcare costs and things like that. We have contracts with our workers and obviously they’re not going to be zero increases each year. You always have to kind of balance that because that affects our quality of life as well as having a good workforce. On the other hand, there’s some things that you can hold off spending on. You don’t have to do everything and maybe do it intermittently do one thing here, one thing the next year, rather than throwing a lot of money into bonding.”
Another thing people are complaining about along with the taxes, but nothing we can do about, is the economy. How does Licker feel businesses are dealing with the economy, and that since you since you have a commercial building and you’re more up on this than other people might be. What’s going on with business and how’s the economy going in Clarkstown?
Licker paused and thought, “Well, it’s hard to rent space. We run a law practice out of our building which is located just about the most southern part of Main Street. On the other side is a physical therapist. It’s been there probably about 50 years. I didn’t have the building built 50 years ago. This is my family, as I said, but, we have trouble renting out the different spaces because more people are at least in our business, are able to operate from home. That’s an issue probably through the country. There are a lot of people that are now remote.”
What ideas do you have to bring in new business. You’ve already got 60% of the rateables in the county, and I’ll bet probably about a little less than 2/3 of that comes from the Palisades Mall and the Shops in Nanuet.
You have a lot of businesses on Route 59. There are also areas where there’s open spaces in these some of these strip malls.
“We were successful in bringing in Chick fil A, you know, George bragged that they got that. He and Theresa Kenny (Orangetown Supervisor) had a friendly bet on that. We beat Orangetown. I look at that as a very positive thing. I know some people don’t. They say, oh, that’s a national chain. It is actually a franchise, owned by somebody that lives in the area. I think she now lives in Orangetown.”
Let’s focus on bringing in new small businesses. Forget about big things like Home Depot and Lowe’s.
What do you do to bring in new small businesses that will be more community oriented, like mom-and-pop shops?
“Well, that’s a combination of how our areas have been developed. Basically, people that have different types of ideas for new types of places like I saw in New City, a sign up there for Dumpling House. I’m interested to see what that is and it should be coming soon. I guess I’m a dumpling fan. I’m interested to see that.
It’s, it’s a very hard issue. It’s, it’s a great question, and, I think, make our town amenable to open up a business here. It’s very hard to open up a business. There are businesses that have opened up in our town already. We need to work with these businesses to make it, easier for them to operate here maybe get their taxes a little bit lower, some pilot programs and things like that.”
Public safety is an issue that is a national one. You see what’s going on in Chicago and Portland, and even in New York City, but basically what they call peaceful demonstrations are actually the riots. We’ve had demonstrations here; you had no kings protest last weekend in Nanuet. Pretty peaceful according to my community editor who did a story on it. How do you see public safety in Clarkstown with basically with the police and fire department. Is it a safe place to be?
“I think we’re very lucky in Clarkstown. I think our police department does a great job. I think Chief Wanamaker has been a great chief. I think he’s fair to everybody. I think it trickles down to. His officers, the protests that have happened have been very peaceful. It’s my job as well as the other town board members to give the police the resources necessary to do their jobs and I think we’ve done that. People might say we’re spending too much on it, but I think you really can’t. It is one of the safest areas. Every place is going to have crime. I think they’ve done a great job with it.”
He comes from a police family, so he’s very supportive of that. His grandfather was the first, Jewish, police captain in New York City. He’s very proud of that. “Yeah, that’s right, it’s something that I grew up with understanding that, the police are very important to our communities. The police in Clarkstown, I’ve dealt with them, they have different issues.”
What about the fire department and the ambulance course. What is their role in public safety? How well do they do their job?
“I think they do an incredible job. The fire department is volunteer, and their response time is very good.
They’ve handled their job very well. I don’t hear complaints about that, and I’ll hear complaints when there are complaints, and I’ve heard many, but not with regard to the fire department, the police department, or the ambulance corps. Some of the ambulance corps there’s an issue now with single fly units. The whole thing about splitting them up, there are arguments both ways and I get them. I’ve heard that there’s issues with this.
The main issue is response time and that the decision to split them up was based on a police officer’s testimony about that. It wasn’t an EMT or a paramedic there. I know the police work with the EMS and stuff and but wouldn’t it have been better to have somebody who is an EMT or a paramedic to testify as to whether or not this would work. They should definitely be part of that process.”
He came in on this kind of late. It was the supervisor who, basically had these conversations, so there was a police officer not a paramedic. It’s like what the what the government did up in Albany with the bail reform there were only defense attorneys there to tell what needed to be done. Not everybody that should have been there was.
“I agree that you need input from the people who actually do that job. The input I saw was that they didn’t think it was a good idea to have the single fly units. I do see the arguments on, on both sides. The other side of it is with the single fly then you can if you had multiple things happening at the same time you can send out at least two people. If you’re going to spend money, let’s spend it on those things.”
Another big national issue is illegal immigration. Every state’s now a border state because of the 20 million that have come in illegally and have spread across the country. Clarkstown has had its share of illegal housing and probably a lot of illegal immigrants dealing with that illegal housing. How do you feel that the Clarkstown government has handled the illegal housing and anything with illegal immigrants?
“I get an email or a call probably once a week about housing being used illegally and they get them down to the building department to make the complaint. We do have code enforcement officers we probably do have more than any of the other towns. The problem becomes we need to be more vigilant with how we address it because as I spoke to one of the neighbors that was complaining, she said, well what happened when they went to court? They got fined and the families left. Then they were replaced with other families. What’s happened is, the people that have bought these properties to rent them out to multiple families use that fine and they, they make it a business decision. It’s part of their expenses. We really need to not settle those cases and when necessary, go to the higher court, to really shut them down.”
He added, “It is prevalent throughout the town, and I don’t see it, you know, unless we become more vigilant with it, I don’t see it stopping soon. These people get fined. They pay their fines, but they’ve already made hundreds of thousands of dollars even before they caught. Then they just go right back to doing it. It’s sort of a pay to play. The town be able to find a way to confiscate the property if this is becoming a pattern. Maybe after the first time, you give them the one, okay listen, you’re doing this, we caught you, stop it. If they stop it, you leave them alone.
If you keep finding out the same property owner is doing the same thing, can the government say, you know what we’re going to take your property?
“I’m going to talk to the town attorney about this because I think at some point you stop going to justice court and you go to Supreme Court where the judges there have the ability to do much more than our town judges who have done a good job of it, are doing what they can do.
Do you feel that maybe there’s some political clout being thrown around with these things with these big businesses, “For me it’s speculation, but I have had that thought, yes. Certain groups are going to support, a candidate.
Then the question is, will that candidate be okay, you’re supporting me I want to keep them, staying with me.
Yeah, that becomes a big issue. I mean it goes back to the term limits.
Let’s talk about the term limits. People who are in government can’t let business interests influence the way the government works. 11 years ago. The idea of term limits was proposed by George Hoehmann. It was voted on by the board and approved. The problem with that law that came down later on is, it was not properly voted upon by the citizens of Clarkstown. There was no referendum put on the ballot for the citizens to vote on the term limits, so it was tossed out by the New York State Court of Appeals. How do you feel about term limits? I know other candidates say we need term limits. Even Governor DeSantis and Democrats in Florida say, we need term limits for Congress. Should it be across the board, be it a councilman, board member, supervisor, whoever have term limits?
“I totally agree with that, and I agree with it on a national level again, you know, you know, try to focus on the town, but I think it’s, I think it’s something that we shouldn’t make these as lifetime careers.
When the Constitution was set up the founding fathers wanted it to be you come in; you serve a few years, you go and let somebody else come in. “Yeah, it should be like that. I mean, there’s something to be said there because it does take time for some people to learn the job once they get there, even though you have your thoughts about what should happen. What’s the best way to affect those ideas? I wouldn’t say one term of 2 years is enough. I would say something along the lines of 8 to 10 years would be plenty then let other people, start to come in and I think we’d have a much more efficient, way of doing it where special interests don’t really grab hold of people and say you want to keep your power here then you need to do this.”
“On the town level, everyone has a two-year term. I’m in the lucky position of having to run 3 years in a row. I ran last year, for the unexpired term of Mark Woods who unfortunately passed away. I’m in the position where I’m running this year because it was the end of that term. Now the state law has changed we’re switching to even years so I’m running 3 years in a row. Even the 2 years is probably small. I think a 4-year term for council and supervisor. The council should be split up and rotated. You shouldn’t have all the council up all the time.”
As they do in Haverstraw, you get 2 up for a vote each time. “Well, we’re all up, this year, so I do think it’s better if you have it, it rotated a little bit. I know like when I’ve represented condominium boards, that’s the way most of these are set up two one year two another year one another year if you have 5 so you don’t constantly have a complete turnover. I think that’s a good way to do it.”
How many terms, let’s say the two-year terms should a councilman in Clarkstown serve?
“I think 4 terms, 8 years would be fine. I would agree with 5 too. It’s not horrible, another, another 2 years.
What about the idea of you reached your term limit. You’re out. Can you run again in a few years or are you out permanently?
“That’s a good question. I really hadn’t thought of it that far along. I would think to do it the same way that we do it for the president, where that’s it, you did your amount of terms, and that’s, and that’s good, that’s it.”
The Palisades Mall was controversial when it went up. Especially with the African American cemetery, slave cemetery there. They didn’t want, that built on or moved so they sectioned that off and left that alone. Outside of the financial problems that it’s having, I’ve heard and seen, so looks like it’s sinking. It’s got cracks.
“I’ve heard that too.”
It’s got sections of the parking garage blocked off. Let’s look at the empty stores. How do you see the mall and how do you deal with revitalizing it because right now the ratables coming out of there are a lot lower than they were when the mall first opened. A lot of the big stores, like JC Penney out, Lord and Taylor is out, McDonald’s went out, TGI Friday’s went out. All these big companies that are saying, OK, we’re gone.
What do you do to bring in stores that people would want to say, you know what, I’m going to go in there.
“It is really a tough issue, and we’ve got to understand that it is a private entity that owns the mall and we’ll have to see what happens with it and if it gets redeveloped as something else.” The question comes down to what can the town do to help the owners and when probably new owners of the mall at some point soon. Right now, it’s a receivership and you’ve got an executor running everything.
“Licker said, “Let’s look at the shops at Nanuet, they’re redeveloping what they are. It’s going to be a mixed use, type of facility which is becoming very popular. It might be something that it’s a trend with, you know, years from now we go, why do we do all these mixed-use types of things. If you have residents there that can walk to the different shops, that obviously is going to bring different companies in to where they know they’ll have, people right there as well as people driving there. I’m very, very interested to see how that works and maybe a similar thing over there would work well too.”
He brought up the transportation question. “Actually it’s not a bad area to have that because you have a fair amount of different possibilities for transportation from there. It’s right near, near roads that can handle it and buses that could take people into Tarrytown and stuff.
You’re saying that maybe a mixed use for the mall.
“I think that might fit well there. Again, the developers that come in do extensive studies on what will work. That’s just a thought. Rather than, putting another mall up, but obviously it’s not attracting, a lot of people and it’s not doing well, so, I would think some other type of development would be better.”
On your palm card You talk about a number of things and we talked about another thing that everybody cries about that you have mentioned there is transparency in government. Do you feel that the current administration is transparent? If not, why? Do you feel the government has the ability to be accountable to the people?
“Well, one of the first things when I joined the board, I realized I get the, the agenda, on a Friday before our Tuesday night meeting I proposed to George (Hoehmann) and the other council people, why don’t we do workshops before our board meetings the week before and that way the public is invited to those because we’re all sitting there, and every other town has workshops for their boards, every other town has it.”
“I think you know if you do the workshops, maybe the apathy will be less because I think a lot of people feel well we really can’t do anything we’re going there to comment right before they vote. If you have a workshop you’ll have a better idea of what your constituents want to see happen. I think that would be very helpful to adding to the transparency of government. We’re giving you the opportunity to be there and to comment.”
Do you feel that people don’t participate because they’re like they’re frustrated that their voices aren’t being heard?
“They make complaints about stuff and the government says, we’ll take care of it. It’s on the list, but nothing is taken care of. Why bother sticking my neck out and then complaining if I’m not going to get anywhere? One of the things is people live very busy lives and unless there’s one particular issue that they’re passionate about, they usually do not they go once it happens. Why do we do this, but I think there is a fairly apathetic, public, and that’s why I think it would help to get people more involved. Maybe the workshop, idea would help.”
Now it’s sent out very close to when the meeting’s going to be, a couple of days ahead of time, should the upcoming agenda be sent out sooner. I’ve also been told that when the information is sent out, its language is very difficult to understand.
“It should it be simplified so people understand it and be more explicit as to why these things are being proposed, I think, because you have the agenda and then there’s something called the agenda packet which, sometimes gives you a little more information about why things are. It should be simplified. I’m a lawyer and sometimes I look in and go, what did that say? A lot of times I’ve had to go, for instance, to the town planner or to the engineer and say, why are we doing this? They’ve been very good at explaining to me. Sometimes the town planner might get a little annoyed because they come back like 3 times, again, tell me again. They may be, they’re all very nice. I do think even for the council people, and the public, we should be getting those, well before, the legal 2 days before and simple English would be good.”
For about an hour and a half we discussed a lot of issues, had a little bit of fun in the process, but again, like I have said to every other candidate, the bottom line to this whole thing is with all the issues and everything else, why vote for you? Why in your case, let you stay in office. Instead of Valentino being voted in on your into your spot.
“Well, I’d say primarily at least the way I am now I am at least a guard rail for what’s going on in the town and what I mean by that, being the one Democrat on a 5-person board is, I question everything we’re doing. Why are we doing it, and have I had a great impact at this point? Probably not because I’m 1 out of 5, but I know I’ve contacted George on a on a few different things and said, look, I can’t vote on this for this reason, and he did, take a number of those things off the agenda. I don’t know if it was for a political reason he took it off or because we really don’t need this. I would say that is a very good reason to keep me in office, and I truly believe I’m not going to be a career politician at my age. I became a politician I guess and never had a thought of going into it, but I firmly believe we need to stabilize the taxes, everybody says it, but I do truly believe in that. I have core values, and I always go back to my core values.”
“Overdevelopment is a real issue, and I think it’s related to trying to keep our taxes stabilized. You can’t change the character of our community to stabilize the taxes you have to find some other way to do it. The illegal housing and legal businesses that are coming into the area, you know, need to be strictly enforced.”
He concluded, “We don’t want to become like other communities have become. Clarkstown has been a great place. It has a lot of things to offer, but you need to kind of strictly enforce those things. I’m your man. Once again, I have core values, and I will always stick with those core values. I’ve stuck with those for the year that I’ve been there. I care about our taxes being stabilized with probably one of the highest taxed areas in the country. I want to keep our suburban way of life. I think most of us move there for that and why would we want to change that.