BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor/Investigative Reporter
Born in Cornwall, New York, in 1944 and graduated from Haverstraw High School in 1962, Robert Lagrow then enlisted in the Marine Corps and was there from September of 1962 to October of 1966 because the Vietnam War was really starting to kick in the gear and President Johnson at that time wanted any NCOs and above extended for six months.
“After that, I turned around and I went to work for the North Rockland School District and worked there for approximately 50 years in charge of the custodial department and the warehouse. I’m a member of the Thiells United Methodist Church as a trustee for there. I married the love of my life using that expression, and we’ve been married 59 years now. We have a son, two great grandchildren, and a wonderful daughter-in-law.
From all of that, how did Lagrow get involved with politics? “Thirty years ago, that’s when the state decided that you have to have a zoning board and a planning board. Prior to that, it was done by the boards, so they said, no, that’s not any good. Mayor Zugibe asked me if I wanted to go on the Planning Board. So, I went on the planning board, did that for a few years, and then I turned around and went on the Zoning Board where I was chairman. After that I had interviews for this position and well, here we are.”
What else can be done to improve the road infrastructure?
“Well, we’ve got to continue to maintain them That’s the infrastructure is, is old, and what we did though, just for information is once we did a road and it was done, we have an agreement with Orange and Rockland and the Water Company. If they come in and they have to do anything because they’d like to put a new road down and then come to tear it up. Well, if that happens, then they’ve got to go curb to curb. They just can’t patch it, and that’s, that’s a big plus right there. They’re not allowed to do that. As far as the infrastructure is concerned, again, we just got to keep maintaining them. That’s the key. You have got to maintain the roads, you got to use the crack field which I mentioned before, and if you do that, those roads will last a number of years.
There is a superfund project over at the old landfill site where it has been proposed to put a warehouse on that site. There have been many questions about this and what many residents have called the traffic nightmare this is going to create. Someone said that the village board had been having joint meetings with the planning board.
Well, the thing is, as I said before. These boards were formulated 30 years ago, and the idea was to have 5 members on one board, 5 members on the other board, and we (the village board) have to stay out of it. We cannot get involved in it in any way, shape, or form. We’re interested in it. We all are, but they are the ones who have to make the decision on this. We can’t do it. For obvious reasons, because I might be a good friend of so and so, and I might try applying pressure, that’s not going to happen and it doesn’t happen. We do not get involved.
Who’s going to be the lead agency on the SEQRA, (State Environmental Quality Review Act) part of this, who’s going to be the lead agency on this project?
The Planning Board is going to be the lead agency? I’ve seen many projects and the village board is usually the lead agency. Has the SEQRA been done for this project yet?
Lagrow said, “Not to my knowledge. I don’t think it’s completed. I think it’s in the process.”
Another concern that people have raised about this landfill site is that there is no way of knowing what is down there and that a number of people living around it have been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“A number of years ago, when Fran Nardi, who was a breast cancer survivor, was on the board, West Haverstraw Elementary schools had concerns about breast cancer. A couple of teachers there had it. Then we turned around and we were concerned about Kay Fries (Inactive Hazardous Wast Site in Stony Point located at 50 Holt Drive.) That’s right there. Now there were a lot of things happening. I was born and raised around there, and I know people that work there, and I know what they did. We turned around and we were interested in that, and we had these landfills that you’re talking about. That was tested.”
I know I’m focused a lot on the infrastructure, especially the proposed warehouse, you’re going to have 18 wheelers going through there and Railroad Avenue over there is not exactly, these roads are old the ground under it, the pipes and everything else, and they’re not that wide. Let’s say you have an 18-wheeler on Railroad and emergency vehicles need to get down there. You’re going to have a problem. Has the board planned for that eventuality that you’ve got these big trucks going down and you might not have the ability for buses and things to get through.
According to Peter Eckert, they’re very concerned. They are also very concerned that if a train’s going to go by and nobody’s going to move and traffic is going to back up all the way to 9W. It does now and they have the elementary school there and in the morning going to and coming from in the afternoons, they don’t have a dedicated right hand turn lane. That wouldn’t move traffic along either, so it’s, it’s just coming to a dead stop.
One of the things that they’ve requested is an independent traffic study, which they are waiting, to get done. When that is completed and they see what the results are, that’s another piece that the boards will be able to look at when they make their final decision. They are concerned and they know that the road is not it’s a county road, not a village road.
Lagrow has been on the board for a long time and has seen various projects and things going through, the roads infrastructure and stuff in that respect. Call upon your sage wisdom on this and tell me what you see in regard to all of this.
“Well, as Peter mentioned, it is a county road and they’re going to put sidewalks in there too from there all the way down to even to the marina. For heaven’s sake, once it’s done, and it is a big concern that we have. Then again you have a planning and a zoning board, and they have to look at this very, very closely, taking into consideration what you mentioned because again the roads being old, we really need to know what’s underneath these roads, you don’t really know until they start digging.” Lagrow stated.
He added, “That’s when you find out what’s really underneath the roads breaking or whatever, whatever happens. We’ll continue to look at it and it’s a concern and it goes without saying. We all live around here. We drive down there daily, and if you hit it at the wrong time, you’ve got a problem. You’d better have a lot of patience. I think that at the end of the day, depending on which way this goes, again, we have no knowledge and no input. I want to stress that there is NO INPUT ON THAT and we’ll have to address it at that time. We can’t address something now that we don’t really know if it’s going to happen or if it’s not going to happen because when it does happen and being a county road, the county’s going to have to get involved and they might end up having to spend a lot of money.”
A logical solution to this problem would be to widen the road, but there is no place to widen Railroad Avenue, they can’t.
“You can’t and once you put the sidewalks in, which I don’t know exactly how this is going to happen, when they’ve got to take some property from the people on the north side of that road or what, I don’t know but even that narrows the road. Like you said, you can’t go on to the right side, the south side, because the houses are right there that almost touch them. You can’t do it. You just can’t.” Lagrow said.
The question for the everyone to ponder is, is the practicality of putting a warehouse in that location when dealing with the trucks that would have to be going through there. Forget about the cancer. Forget about the landfill sinking, this, that and the other thing.
He explained that as Peter said, though, he owns the property. “He has a right to, you know, make a presentation whether again we can’t get involved with, if the boards agree or disagree. They are the guys and girls that they don’t have to make that decision. I have my feelings. I think everybody else has their feelings. Again, we cannot get involved in it. We cannot tell them.”
There are other people who are concerned about the practicality of it, again, putting aside any of the health issues that people are talking about, regardless of what goes over there, the landfill itself is going to be a health issue for people to begin with.”
Another burr in people’s claws is taxes. You know, they say there are only two guarantees in life, death and taxes. We’ve all got to die sometime, and we’ve all got to pay taxes. We don’t like either of them, but we got to deal with them. I was told that the village was increasing taxes by 17% in the last budget. Lagrow said that was not true. Then how much was the increase then? He said it was 7%.
“But when we form a budget and people think about this also, you know, our treasurer presents it. We go over with a fine-toothed comb. Every darn item that’s in there. Items that we can control, but there’s a whole lot of items in there, we can’t control. We can’t control water, power, and retirement benefits, all those things. It’s just the nature of the beast, compensation you can’t control. There’s so many things in there, so you try to get down to the point because we’re all taxpayers too. We try to get down to, providing the services that are needed but at a reasonable cost because I don’t like to pay them any more than you like to pay them. But we have to do something.” He explained.
We’re talking about taxes. My information is that there’s supposed to be a cap of 2% on raising taxes, but after that, a special variance is needed to raise it higher than that. You’re talking 5% more than the 2% limit set by the state. How did you end up with that much more, I mean, you’re talking a 250% increase over the 2% maximum. How do you justify that? How did you end up with that big an increase?
“In reality, when you get down to it and you add up all the things that I mentioned before, you can’t very seldom stay within that 2% cap. There are things that we can’t control, don’t like it, but you can’t control it.”
Going over a little bit, Bob, is one thing, you know, 0.5%, even, I’ll even say even 1% over the cap that the state said, but you’re talking 5% over which as I said at 250% over the 2% limit. It just seems like. Some people might say, this is not me, it’s other people who might say that there’s got to be some waste or something going on. Expenses that don’t need to be made that are being made to warrant that much of an increase in taxes.
Lagrow said, “Once you go over your budget and you look at it, there’s a lot of, again, I got to repeat myself, a lot of things in there we can’t control. Don’t like it, but the state turns around like a retirement system.
Now, if the controller turns around and says, well, I’m going to lessen the dollar amount that we’re going to send, but I wanted an increase by 5%. Who knows? You can’t control it.”
The economy that goes hand in hand with taxes. What’s the economy like in the Village of West Haverstraw business wise. Getting new businesses in. How are your rateables? How much money is coming into the village through business taxes.
“We are fortunately we don’t want to do the problem a lot of people run into. We have a stable business district on Route 9W. It has impacted them but not to the degree of Stony Point or even Clarkstown now, not that, map the construction going on, it’s a mess, but we’re doing pretty darn good, I think, we maintain things and we’re good and the businesses are what they are. We have people out there that we hired to look for new businesses to come into our community and as we find out what they are, we pursue them and hopefully we can get them to come in.”
Public safety is a major issue across the country. We see riots happening all over the place, attacks on police, attacks on people and all sorts of journalists. I mean, everybody’s being attacked. How does Lagrow feel about the public safety in the Village of West Haverstraw and is there anything that can be done that can improve it or aid in keeping it as it is?
“Right now, you know we supply police protection by the time they have a store, and they have a limited number of great people. Hopefully in time they’ll be able to increase the number of people so they can turn around and have maybe walking men (He was talking about the old beat cops that used to walk up and down the streets on their “beat”) going down Railroad Avenue, Main Street, or whatever. I think that’s about the only way to do it is to increase the police presence and this should help, hopefully.”
Is it safe? I’ve heard of some stabbings and stuff and crime along with some violent crime in the area. I mean, how safe is it for somebody to go out in the middle of the night and walk down the street?
“I’d say it’s pretty darn safe. We haven’t had that many, we’ve had incidents, we can’t deny that, but we haven’t had that much to make people scared to walk down the street. We’ve got people there. We’ve got patrols going through constantly. They’re doing a good job. They really are doing the best job they can with the manpower that they got, which should hopefully be increased. But as a resident, I wouldn’t feel scared about walking down Railroad Avenue or wherever.”
The fire and ambulance departments are another integral part of the public safety in any community. How does Lagrow feel they are helping maintain the safety of the community?
The main question people have is, why vote for you?
“Because I think I haven’t had the opportunity to work with Mayor Zugibe, Mayor Ramundo, and now Mayor D’Amelio. I’ve been on these boards for many years, and I think being on that board, we’ve done a lot for the community. We’ve kept it going. We’ve tried to make it as livable as possible. We tried to keep the taxes, go back to what you mentioned before, taxes, trying to keep these taxes down and provide the services, and I think we’ve done a pretty darn good job. I say we because these decisions are made by the board, not by one person, but they’re made by the five of us on the board. I think taking that into consideration, yeah, I think I deserve another shot at it.”
What is it that sets Lagrow apart from Kathleenann and Helaine and even Peter that people would say, hey, you know what, let’s give him another shot.
“I having served on those boards for many years is what sets me apart from Peter, unfortunately, and the rest of them. I’ve been here a long time and seen a lot of things happen within the village. I worked with a lot of people, businessmen, lay leaders, church people. I’ve worked with all of them. I would like to continue to do that because I think we’ve done a pretty darn good job to your plethora of experience, excuse me, I’m sorry, your plethora of experience, you know, you know, I’m 82 years old. You can listen to people, talk to people, understand them, and having dealt with a lot of people over the years I think I can. We’ve done a pretty darn good job.