BY: Keith S. Shikowitz Editor/Investigative Reporter
Kathleenann Cool is running to become a trustee on the West Haverstraw Village Board. She was born in the Bronx and moved up to Rockland when she was about 2 years old. She began her life in Rockland growing up in Clarkstown where she met and married her husband before moving to Haverstraw.
“We lived in the village of Haverstraw for about a year and a half and then the last 27 years we’ve been in the village of West Haverstraw where I’ve raised both of my children who are now young adults.” As of now there are no grandchildren.
She has worked at Saint Peter’s for a short time and in the archdiocese as a teacher and administrator for about 8 years. “Then I moved over to the public-school setting, probably about 26 years ago and I’ve worked there as a teacher and administrator for the last 26 years, so about 20 years total as an administrator.
Entering politics is not for the faint of heart. It can be a brutal place. So, why would Cool delve into this arena?
“I’ve been attending a lot of the board meetings the past couple of years and have always had an interest in the community. I’ve been involved at my church. I’ve been involved in coaching, with youth sports, I guess it was just like a natural progression now that my children are raised and I really love the community. When my husband and I were looking for a permanent home, we were really drawn to West Haverstraw because of the community feel that’s there and I’d really just like to make it a better place to live and I thought as I was sitting, listening through all these meetings. I would think about just different ideas, that maybe could make the community a little bit better, and I have a lot of experience with budgeting, planning projects and dealing with personnel, you know, a lot of the different things that are in alignment with some of the things that go on at the board level, so I thought that maybe I could bring some of my experience to the West Haverstraw board and maybe help make a difference in the community.”
They chose to live in West Haverstraw on the particular street they live on because everybody kind of knows everybody else, when her children walked to the bus stop, she didn’t have to worry. She always knew someone would have eyes on for her children. “It was a safe community and that’s really important for me as a parent.”
“That was something that I really wanted for my children growing up. Where I grew up, the houses were spread out a little bit more. You didn’t necessarily really know your neighbors that well, and I didn’t like that. It’s a small-town feel. That’s really drew me to West Haverstraw.
Another item that drew them to West Haverstraw was the school system. “My children were actually in parochial school when they were really young, for preschool and kindergarten. As I learned more about the public-school setting, I decided this is where I wanted my children to be and the school system really served them well and they were very well prepared for college and that was really important for us as well and the number of opportunities they had for extracurriculars. I feel like their teaching staff were amazing, as was the administration, really couldn’t have asked for more.”
Infrastructure is a major issue people complain about because it goes hand in hand with the quality-of-life issue. What issues with the infrastructure does Cool have?
“I really think it’s the traffic. Trying to get through, it used to be the obvious morning rush hour, and the afternoon rush hour. The weekends were pretty busy, but it’s grown to become more than just the rush hour times and obviously we’ve had some construction happening which is made a bigger impact even but I think part of it is due to the increase in the number of residents that we have, whether that be due to illegal housing situations or just due to situations where maybe there’s not enough housing and or the affordability of housing. People’s adult children are returning home because they can’t afford to buy a house in Rockland or in West Haverstraw.”
She added that even renting is an issue. When she was at the age her children are now she was able to own a home and feels that our children don’t necessarily have the same opportunity unless they move in with 3 or 4 other friends and they can split the rents 4 ways.
“We have to educate our children, so we have to have school taxes. We pay our town and village taxes which also go to support all of the services we have within the village. They also support other programs and different areas. I think maybe looking at some of those areas to look at where are we spending what are we spending on are we eligible for more grants.
Taxes are a part of the infrastructure issue because it’s the tax dollars that pay for all of the infrastructure projects. How does Cool feel about the physical infrastructure situation?
“The village has been getting grants over the years to replace some of the sidewalks within the village. A lot of this is happening in the lower income areas through HUD funding, so they’ve been able to work on milling the roads, adding the sidewalks and taking care of those particular areas through that funding which does free up other funding within the village to address areas that are in need that don’t come under that HUD grant.”
“I know that the roads were opened for the CHP project and that there was money attached to that project. I wasn’t obviously part of the planning for that, but I wonder if when that proposal was coming out for that work we knew 9W was an issue, with congestion. The condition of that road was never really great to begin with. Could we have earmarked some time and money from that project to maybe widen the road a little bit more and those are commercial areas, yeah, to not impact unfortunately the village has no control over that because it’s a state road.”
She says that we would have to have the state do a study to see about widening the road and where it can be widened, if it can be widened, that’s, that’s been a question that I’ve asked a lot of people about widening roads here and there, but you look around it and there doesn’t appear to be much space to do any widening.
“9W and 202 I know are state roads there is a little bit of space on there that there is some wiggle room right around like where the Dunkin’ Donuts in that area where you could be, you would be cutting into some of the parking area. We would have to initiate that as a village. The state’s not going to say, oh why don’t we do that? That would be a request that they would have to come from the village to the state. That’s why I think forming relationships with our counterparts at the state and county levels for even our county roads like Central Highway, North Central Highway and also Railroad Avenue like those are areas and there’s a potential project.”
Widening 9W by Dunkin’ Donuts is a great idea, but the inherent problem is that in order for any widening of 9W to have any positive impact on traffic, it would have to be widened all the way through West Haverstraw from the border of Stony Point to the border with the Village of Haverstraw.
Another project that is going to have an impact on the area as far as traffic and infrastructure is the warehouse that is being proposed to be built on the old dump site by Pecks Pond According to Cool that’s going to impact 9W and Railroad Avenue as well.
These are not minor projects. That’s why she thought the CHP might have been a good time because it’s that’s a pretty heavy-duty project where there’s a lot already open. Which is the project where they are putting pipes in under 9W. “Yeah, so, I guess the project came out of it was a planned project, you know, to deal with the, Supplying energy, right, the, the power, so the, I guess the thought process was that it couldn’t go under the Hudson at that particular point in the river because of, impact to the river life, so to speak, so the plan was to move it under the roads of 9W up until they get into the Stony Point area and then it would go back out into the Hudson at that point.”
How is the CHP project affecting the traffic and infrastructure? “I know a lot of people had issues with their cars with the getting nails in their tires. So, they’ve been requesting reimbursement for that, and I believe that the villages and town have been reimbursing, residents for issues with that associated with that.”
Major infrastructure projects, especially in commercial areas, always have an impact on the people. The biggest problem comes when businesses are suffering because they are losing money due to the inability of customers to come to their facility.
“I know it’s been a huge impact to our business owners, our small business owners, because at times their entry isn’t completely blocked and there may be a detour to get in. As the consumer, you’re driving, the traffic’s already difficult on the road and now you might say I’m just going to go somewhere else because I really don’t want to deal with that right now. I think that has really caused a lot of problems for the small business owners that have their businesses a long 9W and while the construction’s been happening it has taken a financial toll and for a lot of our business owners.”
That’s their only source of income. This is creating problems like the one with the work they’re doing on the Bridge in Stony Point, how that’s having an effect on the businesses which Cool thinks it’s been a double whammy almost for them.
“It’s sad that has happened. I think that when projects are being planned those are some of the things that have to be looked at. We need to take the whole picture into account. If we’re going to be doing work, what could be the potential problems of this? If you know that then you can examine what can be put in place to try to work around it? What communication can happen beforehand to the business owners or the residents or whatever stakeholder group is going to be impacted to say, look, this is going to be happening we know this is going to be a problem so, these are some of the things we’re putting in place to try and make it less of a burden, and get feedback and ask if they have any ideas because maybe some of your ideas might work. I think the dialogue has to be there and I think it could have made a bad situation a little bit better or more palatable at least.”
Taxes are the one thing that every American, regardless of religion, race or political affiliation hate, but it is understood that they are a necessity. What are the taxes that you pay living in the Village of West Haverstraw?
As a resident of the village of West Haverstraw I pay village of West Haverstraw, town of Haverstraw and North Rockland School taxes and those are outside of the state and federal taxes.
The question every politician gets is, ‘What can you do to lower our taxes?’ What does Cool think she can do on the board to help try to bring down the taxes or at least balance them and not raise them?
“I feel like I have a good relationship with the mayor already. I’ve been involved in the community. I’ve lived here for a long time. With the rest of the board, I don’t think that would be like a combative situation. I think my experience has always been, they’ve always been very open to hearing whatever I’ve had to ask or share so I imagine that would continue going forward if I were to win. I think that where I work, we have a very tight and small budget and having worked in the archdiocese for so many years as an administrator and teacher, there’s not a lot of like here’s the money in the pot and that’s all you have and you have to figure it out how to work with it. I think looking at creative uses of what we call FTE (full time employees) and asking, are they being used? What should they be doing? What should they not be doing. Look at titles and matching their classifications appropriately with that.”
“I think alignment with the full time employees and what their job descriptions are, and that may exist already but it’s just an idea that’s one place where we’ve I’ve been successful with saving money in the past I think creating systems that are put in place that are regular for looking at the facilities so we’re on a schedule that let’s say every 6 months we’re assessing this particular area of the village. It’s almost like splitting the village up into quadrants so that there’s always eyes on whether it’s 3 months, 6 months, so creating almost like a maintenance schedule that would be a constant rotation so because the higher cost for repairs usually happen when things are overlooked and then it becomes a massive problem.”
An example she gave was the one little leak that you might have had on the roof of your house, and you didn’t really pay that close attention to it. Then 6 months later it rains really bad again and now that leak is not this big [ ] it’s now this big [ ]. Had we gotten rid of it at this level, [ ] it’s a lot cheaper than this level [ ]. “I think a rotating basis of looking at facilities and just Infrastructure, parks, all of those particular areas, is another way that in the past I’ve found successful with helping to save money in my prior experience, looking at supplies.”
“Are we sending out newsletters? How much does that cost? Are there other ways we can cut costs on that? Do we need to send out a paper newsletter? Is that something that people can opt into or out of? We live in a digital age, and I know a lot of people really like to get their information in their email rather than having the mailer on the table when they come home, but some people still prefer paper. If we ask residents, do you prefer paper or electronic, we could probably save some money with that because I’m sure there’s a cost associated with the mailing, obviously the printing, and it might save some time for the office staff as well. I think how are we using our time and how are we using the money? Where exactly is it going?
Public safety is a national issue, but it comes right back down to local communities as we’re seeing around in Portland and Chicago and other places, even in New York City, people getting beat up in DC, it’s become a, a major problem and publicly has always been an issue, but you already have crime and things like that. These days it’s become a super problem in places.
How do you feel about West Haverstraw as far as safety goes, what you feel about what if anything you can do to improve it.
“Safety is one of the reasons we chose West Haverstraw to live, it’s a place where my children could walk up the block, and I knew that there were eyes on them from my neighbors. I knew my neighbors, my neighbors knew them. My kids knew if something ever happened while they were walking home they could run to the neighbor’s house.
I think as the rental increase is happening and people are renting out homes, or companies are renting out homes. I think as that happens, we don’t know our neighbors as much. I think that’s been a change for some of the communities within West Haverstraw. With some of the illegal housing that happens, you don’t know who they’re renting to. It may be just a room we don’t know who’s in the in the homes. We don’t know how much checking goes on to who’s living there so I do feel like we had a situation in our neighborhood where there was an illegal housing situation that.
She says that those are some major problems that are associated with that as well as the comings and goings alone. “Now you have all these cars parked not just on the driveways. Sometimes it’s parked on the front lawn and they’re double parked in the street. You have little ones running out into the street to chase their ball.
With the cars double parked on the road nobody, the driver is not going to see them. Our roads are only so wide in West Haverstraw. I think it just creates a very unsafe situation for the children.”
Cool complimented the police department on its responsiveness to calls. She has never had any issues with response time and feels very fortunate knowing that the police can only be in so many places at one time.
“I don’t know If there’s things that we could be putting in place to help them and also help the community at the same time. I think those are things that we have to look at. Whether it’s creating like a little neighborhood watch, which some neighborhoods are already doing on their own. If we can coordinate that and make it something that’s a little bit more systemic. That would be having to be something that’s worked on in conjunction obviously with the police department, or liaison from there as well.”
She thinks a program like that is very important and agrees that in order to make this work, a walkie talkie system that gives a direct line to the police might help. Another component she feels is really important for this is educating people on what are things the police can deal with and what things other government agencies have to deal with. This would enable the police to be freer to handle criminal and other imminent safety matters.
“An illegal housing situation, we shouldn’t call the police for that we should call code enforcement. Educating the citizens on who to contact for a particular situation. I think if there’s a point of contact within the neighborhood that some of that can flow through it would make things easier. Obviously, that’s not like in an emergency situation you definitely call the police department directly. That’s why I think the education piece is so important. Again, it comes back to communication. Creating the education component, communicating it and working in conjunction with the community partners who would be directly affected.”
One thing she could do as a trustee to implement this is talk to the police or to somebody that would know, you know, that could set up a village meeting here’s a list of problems people make calls about and here’s who you need to call to get the problem resolved and when to do it.
“I think that’s something we would have to partner with the Town of Haverstraw because the police are overseen by the supervisor. One of the nice things about being in a village is that you have so many opportunities for partnership. I would love to do that, you know, as educators we’re all about collaboration.”
The police department already does collaborate a lot within the community. They run the youth police academy with the school district, and both of her children ran through that program. “It’s an amazing program so there’s a lot that can really come out of those collaborations and they’re very involved in educating kids right now through programs like that and DARE and some of the other school programs that they have, so I’m sure that this would be something that could probably come to fruition pretty easily.”
The economy is something that affects everybody from the oldest senior citizen to the youngest eight-year-old who wants to go buy a piece of candy. We’re starting to see the prices start coming down now that we’re getting into deeper into the Trump economy even with the government shutdown, and there’s going to be more, reductions with the taxes and when once the oil starts flowing and all of a sudden, it’ll bring everything down.
Tell me how you feel about the economy, and then what do you see as some solutions to help the village to improve the economy.
“I do feel the economy is getting a little bit better. I do feel like it’s a little bit better in the grocery store.
It’s not great, but it’s a little better. The price of eggs is definitely better, and the availability of things, I think the Village of West Haverstraw physically is a small area you’re talking about maybe 3.5 square miles. There’s a lot of small businesses that exist in the village, but maybe bringing in some bigger businesses would help. We just lost Stop and Shop a few months ago there were a lot of local people employed there so when things like stores like Stop and Shop close, it has a direct impact to our community. It’s not just the inconvenience of not being able to run to Stop and Shop to get what you want, but also obviously with offering jobs for people who live here.”
“There’s a couple of other empty stores within that complex. Can we pair up or work with some of the people who own those complexes and ask them if they are having trouble finding renters for your area or your particular store looking at undeveloped area of land within the community. There’s a couple of little pieces of land that people are looking at and we have to question if we need to put another storage facility up or could we be putting another store like I’m going back, but CH Martins used to be where you could run in there and grab whatever you need. Today we have dollar stores where we can do that.
Cool wants to unseat the incumbents who’ve been there for a long time which is not an easy thing to do under the best of circumstances, The question comes down to why should people vote for Cool over the incumbents?
“I think the people who have been there have done a great job. I can’t say anything bad about the people who currently sit in those seats, and I don’t deny that if they were to win that they would continue to do a great job. I offer something different. I bring a different perspective having worked in a lot of different areas. I have a background in business and broadcast journalism and education administration. I think my experience is very varied. I look at things from a different lens.”
Planning is something Cool thinks is huge. Her work in engineering facilities as a facilities clerk in facilities and engineering situations where it’s all about planning. The right planning for physical space planning for a problem will help her to do the job as trustee.
“My critical thinking, my determination, my planning, my ability to listen and communicate at the job that I do every single day, those are the important things that make me stand out and make me a good candidate for the job.”
In conclusion she said, “We’re all given the freedom and the right to vote to protect ourselves and to advance us as a community and a society. I think it’s important to get out and vote and use the right that you have, and whether you’re frustrated and want things to change or you’re really happy and don’t want change, but either way you have to make your voice heard, and I hope that you’ll vote for me. I’m very invested in the community. I’ve lived here 27 years, raised my children here, I would like to see my grandchildren raised here, so I hope that you think of me on November 4th or if you vote earlier on October 25th.