BY: Keith S. Shikowitz Editor/Investigative reporter
Greg Sheehan is running to unseat six-year Clarkstown Ward Two Council member Mike Graziano. He has been a resident of Clarkstown for most of his life. “I was born in the city, grew up in Orange County until 2nd grade when my grandfather subdivided his property. My family built a home in Valley Cottage right on Lake Road, near the Five Corners, and I went to Nyack Public schools, graduated, high school in 2001 just before 9/11 went to college and bounced around a little bit. I was in Louisiana for Hurricane Katrina, so I’ve had a lot of big events happen around important parts of my life that have caused, and I think a lot of people have this in their lives where they come across things that throw them for a loop.”
After a brief stint at the culinary institute which he left because they were developing the 2 year program into a 4-year program which was not what he wanted, he went to study business at LSU. Hurricane Katrina came along and messed up what he had down there, so he came back to Rockland in his early twenties and finished an accounting degree at RCC. He was studying at Ramapo when he lost my father in 2012. “I’ve had a lot of turmoil, but I’ve always seemed to come out doing well because of the people in my life, my determination and my positive attitude.”
Since losing his father in 2012, he worked for Apple, run restaurants, as an IT specialist in the grocery industry and in his early 20’s he got his boating captain’s license. “I have been an emergency responder with CO, basically AAA for boats, and, had a lot of interesting experiences up there and then joined the union. I’m an operating engineer with Local E 25, so it’s heavy equipment operations, heavy construction. I was brought in because of my captain’s license to work on the bridge for 5.5 years.”
This goes to what you said to me before about having no plans, right, so we were talking about leadership and you’re saying that you can’t tell what the Democratic Party is going to do. “I don’t think the Democratic Party necessarily will do what it’s going to do at all times, and I’m not worried about nationally. I’m running for a town council seat. I’m focused locally. There’s a reason why I didn’t get on this board and that board and make connections to work my way to running for Congress. There are 8 or 9 candidates running for New York 17th right now. It’s a zoo and while I’m part of that as chair of Clarkstown Democrats, I’ve sat down with many of them.”
He thinks there are a number of wonderful candidates, but they’re running for nearly 2 years from the first announcement to when they’re going to end up being possibly elected, and that takes an enormous amount of energy, money, time to possibly win.
“Meanwhile, a local race where you have to be re-elected every other year, just like in Congress, you can have direct effects that will come into effect much more quickly. A lot of things are going on national level now. People are very afraid of what it’s going to do to us societally which is going to take a year more just to come into effect. That’s not the case locally. You want to be able to help stabilize taxes or make sure that the government is supporting people properly those things can be decided on a month-to-month basis almost, and so for me wanting to. Be a utilitarian to come in and get things done that are the best effect for the most people possible and local government is the way to do it and I think we need good leaders in our local parties and policies.”
One of the main things people complain about in their communities is the crumbling infrastructure. What plans does Sheehan have to improve it? He agrees that we’re in decent shape. “To say that it is because of the current or you know, recent past administration, I don’t know, the biggest issue for infrastructure is money.
Most municipalities, even one as big as Clarkstown, don’t have the money to do most of the improvements that are necessary, and they have to deal with county and state jurisdictions for roads and highways and drainages and things like that and that becomes much more complicated because if you look at getting something like 303 or 59 by the mall fixed, where there’s been flooding for quite a long while. That’s a state road.”
“It also, as these developments come into place when we’re stopping using Indian Point and we’ve lost the coal plant up in Bowline, our infrastructure while functioning also now requires us to run on hydroelectric from, you know, far away to the city to help reinforce it. Meanwhile, we could be doing a lot more locally even in small pieces, it makes a difference. It makes us more sustainable. So I think looking at ways to bring that into our infrastructure to modernize certain portions of it comes a long way.” He explained.
One of the things he thinks should be done, and he soke with Jose Simoes, the town planner, a few weeks back about this is thee is a lot of developing being done in the New City area, a lot of 100 plus, housing units being put up on Main Street and off of Drummond’s there, right across from Felix Festa, and people are worried about traffic and there’s been studies done, but he was talking about town wide. The town has more stoplights in it according to him, than the rest of the town’s combined because of state roads, local roads, and the way that it’s organized, he thinks there are 53 stoplights.
“That means busy intersections, to keep those running smoothly, there is technology that can be implemented to smooth it out to make it correct itself. You would probably need someone to help manage the system because it’s not a full city-wide system, where it would be self-managing. If you, he said, you know, we need to do a study, which is $30,000 somewhere in that range, a little more on some of the areas and then install camera-based systems to track the movement of traffic for this to then give data to the personnel from the town to make the adjustments and that would help alleviate a lot of the traffic because most of our traffic is in relatively small portions of time.”
“Infrastructure is often looked at as drainage, electricity, sewer, things like that but when you’re looking at continuing to develop, which we will be doing in this area, there’s almost no way not to. There’s too much money coming in and if we want to survive economically, we have to develop but we have to do it intelligently.”
What specific things would Sheehan bring up to the board to try to implement?
“The one I was just talking about with the traffic lights, we need to start getting ahead of some of the things if members of the town and the work that we want to do is going to be immediately impeded by traffic, even construction causes traffic, trucking deliveries, things like that, right? Workers coming into the area that aren’t there normally. You know, which I, I have no basis to know of its validity was $30,000 for a study. Then $2 million or so for cameras to update the system and then a personnel in order to manage the data and get the system working properly, and that will help mitigate traffic and allow us to adjust when these new developments come into functioning, you can adjust almost real time as you see the traffic coming in in terms of the town so maybe months or so, that would be one of I think one of the first things to do.”
He also thinks the drainage systems need work. “There had been a lot of backing up in our plumbing, the drainage itself we’ve been encroaching on wetlands a lot, as we’ve continued to develop because it’s a hard place to develop, but when you start running out of lands, it starts looking more profitable, more viable but it naturally does things that we don’t do well as humans because it will continue to sustain itself. Meanwhile, we need to continue to maintain those systems, even if it is. Later down the road, so, and we don’t always understand the impact that we’re having half a mile away on something that is going to be done.”
He feels that there are a number of things that need to be done, but you also need to make sure that there’s extra buffers put in because we don’t necessarily always understand the impacts that we’re having. “We could design something to function now in this location, but because of other things that we do, they be it. There becomes a problem in that location and because it’s a low lying area, any time we do this, we need to build extra buffers for things that we can’t control, changes in weather, changes in other drainage systems and just environmental changes.”
There is a saying that money makes the world go ‘round. Government gets its money from taxes. New York is the highest tax state in the nation and that always filters down into the local communities, What does Sheehan feel about the taxes in Clarkstown and what proposals does he have to deal with them and lessen the tax burden on the citizens of Clarkstown?
“I don’t know that there’s any way to do that right now. I was just looking at a review of the budget analysis from 2020 through 2023, and there’s a lot of areas where we’re not ready to survive as a town financially. So to say that you could lessen the tax burden or freeze raising taxes right now to me is a lie. The pension, specifically the health care pension requirements, are unfunded. There’s a $230 million shortage. They’re paying year by year rather than drawing off of the savings account, which I go to my union and I can’t see the numbers, but we are usually between 95% and 105% funded in our pensions and healthcare and subsidies and all these other things because they’ve done a very good job of maintaining the money that comes in, but they also take 3% of our check and they raise that if need be at a time if there’s ever a problem.”
“Last year, the taxes had to be raised significantly, both for commercial and for residential, and I believe that was necessary, but I cannot because of my being on the outside for as long as I have tell you exactly where that is. It’s probably from almost everything we’re doing in the town. There’s too much money being poured into just about everything.”
He thinks what needs to be done is they need a supervisor, town counselors, and the town, other representatives from businesses and people who live here but maybe don’t work here, to dig in and find where they can make savings. He says that he is well below the average income for Clarkstown residents, but he makes it work because he says he has found creative ways to keep his costs down. One way he did this was to buy an electric car and solar on his home. “It works for me because of the position by all the variables that are necessary, won’t work in every circumstance. Which is why I’m saying that we need everyone on board.”
“We need more transparency in the decision making of the agendas in order to get in and find where we can cut maybe where we need to spend more money because it will save us somewhere else. Our law enforcement is tremendously expensive and hard to do. They often go about a million dollars over budget on overtime. I believe that in 2023 they spent $2 million on overtime.”
Why does Clarkstown have so much money being spent on overtime for the police? Sheehan says that’s a very good question and something that isn’t necessarily known without going to speak with the chiefs of the police, and he’s going to do that. I’m going to try to sit down with Chief Wanamaker and start asking those questions rather than thinking he’s going to walk in with a sledgehammer and fix everything. He added that there are a lot of questions and answers, true understandings necessary to start making cuts, reinforcements in budgets, shifts of things to make sure that we’re handling things properly.
“I think we spend a lot on personnel that could probably be redirected to be more effective if not cut, but once again I don’t have all those answers, but I do have is the background of my education of accounting, my natural ability to find effective ways to save. Now that being said, when we start getting on the right track, we can get rid of some of these bonds that are weighing us down. We’re playing a significant amount in interest on bonds and it continues to go up because we are in budget deficits at the moment, so. There’s a lot of work to do.
Every person and municipality in the country is facing economic problems that were created from the economy we were living under for four years since January 2021. What does he see as the major economic problems in Clarkstown and some of the major economic benefits?
“I think there’s a lot of potential. One of the big problems that we’re having in Clarkstown is the thing that you’re seeing in the nation and I think even worldwide, which is a major shift in the American way, especially of doing business where you had malls all over the place, large malls like we have in West Nyack, where they’re not functioning the way they were because of all of the internet shopping and deliveries that you can do, which is an efficient way to do it. So I think that there needs to be now that we have these large buildings, these large areas, the shops at Nanuet, which were done not that long ago. I moved with the Apple store from the Palisades Mall to Nanuet and now the shops are getting gutted because they can’t be sustained.” Sheehan stated.
He thinks that leadership in the towns and counties could have a major effect in making a shift to give people a place to locally spend their money to make their lives easier or more enjoyable, right? You can have entertainment. “I’ve had this idea, which is, I know, kind of bonkers. I just think it would be fun because I like it. Take one of these, Lord and Taylor, that shut down. You have 3 or 4 stories of a major box where that’s largely empty. Get it doing something. You could, since it’s large and empty, turn it into like an indoor paintball arena. It would cost almost nothing to change it. There’s bathrooms in there already. You just throw some obstacles in there, a little shop for selling stuff, and here’s equipment, and then it brings people to the mall. But you need to start doing small quick things.”
According to Sheeehan, pop-ups are very popular in areas where you have business, commercial real estate that isn’t being utilized. You just want to get something in there quick. They were doing it in Nyack with them opening stores and other places around. He feels you need to get something quick in there while you’re developing your long term plan. “I was speaking with one of the leaders from the Rockland Business Association, and they’re talking, they, they want to do something with that mall property. There’s a lot of people interested, but it’s a huge project.
His idea is to do mixed residential and commercial. He thinks everybody understands that you have an easy way to handle a massive amount of traffic. “One of the biggest problems is updating the infrastructure to handle the amount of bathroom usage and things like that for continued commercial but adding and residential, which has slightly different uses than most than most commercial areas, but you build parking structures, housing some more, maybe outlying buildings for different types of businesses that you want separate medical outside of the malls things like that but it would be a major job to do that. I think it would be great for the economy to build it than to have a place for people to have relatively easy transportation.”
One major problem for people in Rockland County who have to commute to NYC is that there is no single ride directly to Manhattan. Sheehan’s plan would still not be a single seat ride, but it will still be a quick hop on a bus from those outlying malls across to Tarrytown, to get on the train and you’re in the city.
“When you mix the residential and if it’s properly put together and with our housing shortage, you’re going to get the bodies there. You’re going to be able to bring people in. I think the important thing is to make sure you have a good mix of the types of housing from smaller affordable apartments like studios for younger people all the way up to multiple bedroom, you know, for larger families maybe that are in a transitional state trying to move, things like that and I think you’ll see a lot of benefit out of it. We have that, that’s a bigger situation. Then there’s the Shops at Nanuet, which should be doing a similar thing in the next few years.”
Sheehan says that we need a base that can support those businesses right there plus other people coming in and out which allows you to have a lot of stability in an area so when you do the investment like building a giant structure you should over long term be able to rely on its steady functioning which we didn’t have at the mall, right?
He also said that we owe them millions of dollars in back taxes because we were overestimating what they owed and didn’t make any adjustments and they won their lawsuits and now we owe them that money.
It’s one of the other reasons why our taxes are going up because it wasn’t handled properly over time.
Supervisor Hoehmann, when asked, said that this is a false statement. “We don’t owe the mall anything.”
The Palisades Mall gives Clarkstown and the county a lot of tax revenue. If it fails, that would definitely put a strain on the people. There needs to be a way to bring businesses into the ,all for the long term.
Sheehan was talking about how to stimulate business for them all. “In the end, I don’t think there’s anything that can be done for the mall on its entire scale, with its current construction. It’s just If you have realty space available across North Jersey, Rockland, everywhere else, why would you come to Rockland where the taxes are high, where, where businesses aren’t doing as well, where we don’t even have the population density to keep people from having to drive from Westchester or North Jersey or other places to do that. They’ll go to Woodbury Commons where they can get out prices and things like that. There is no way to save it right now.”
He feels that there’s ways to maybe help to keep it on its feet while the purchase and redevelopment is being done but doesn’t see any other way to do it. “Am I willing to try? Am I happy to start to talk to business owners, RBA, things like that? Yes, I think maybe, turning some of it into more medical space would be helpful because anything that brings bodies into the mall will hopefully get them to utilize other things, other parts of it, food, entertainment, things like that. I think entertainment is something that we could utilize a lot more often, which is why he had gone to that fun little paintball thing, but, right, it’s and you could have different age ranges, you can do all different kinds of fun things, or I have a tip.”
He has other ideas for entertainment venues. One is having an Airsoft downstairs because it is something that’s been very popular because it’s less messy. Adding that you have to think of how things can get off the ground and talk to people with investment money when you’re running the town and you have organizations like organizations like the RBA.
“There’s enough money in the area to at least help, but I think in the end nothing’s going to save it but reorganizing what the space is going to be, and we need to make sure that happens as fluidly as possible, but in an intelligent manner.”
Throughout the nation there are governments and people calling for the defunding of the police. Sheehan is not calling for that, but he does have a problem with all of the overtime the Clarkstown Police is using. This policy creates an issue with public safety in these communities and around the nation.
“One of the things that I have heard is that they’re having trouble hiring cops, which is surprising to me seeing as how we pay so well in this area, and it’s a safe area. The police officers here coming from the city, say, where you get a lot of cops who will after their initial stints of doing a beat will want to get out into the suburbs if they can, it’s difficult to find and fill the positions is what I’ve heard, but if you don’t have enough cops, then you have to fill in with people who are already on and then you have to pay them overtime, which of course then you could have how many more police officers instead of time and half and whatever they are.”
He agrees that the town can’t be blamed for having to utilize overtime if people are not coming to work there. The question he has is why can’t you get police officers then to fill the hours and the needs of the of the department causing you to have to pay overtime? “That’s something that with how much we spend and put into our police force to make us one of the safest towns in the country, flat, most of our statistics say that people say, oh, they don’t report everything.”
He asked, “Do you feel unsafe in our town? I very rarely have. That being said, the police force is doing a fantastic job. I’ve been through a number of the events in the area where they’re putting in overtime, whether it’s, the fireworks department or when you have 3000 people protesting along 59, they’re not going to get run over, so they put out barriers and everything has gone on without a hitch, because our police force does such a good job, I feel like they’re doing a good job.”
In spite of his compliments about the police force, he still thinks there is a portion that needs to be scrutinized to see what they need to do their job efficiently on an economic and cost factor and to maintain the level of security that we all have so that comes with communication and continual looking at the problem. “If the problem is over time, figure out the solutions, but in terms of how safe we are and even on the national level, everything else. They’re doing everything they can.”
When people complain about government paying a lot of overtime to the public employees and say that the government needs to hire more people to avoid the overtime costs which in Clarkstown comes to about $2.5 million a year. What needs to be looked at is, does hiring more police officers and the benefits, health benefits and stuff that they would get, which, which way does the scale balance to cost less?
Since 2021, the issue of illegal immigration has been a hotbed one across the nation. Every state and local community have been affected. Sheehan thinks one thing that they could stand to do is to address some of the national issues locally and that there’s a lot of people who are worried about what is going on with immigration, right? He added, “So they, they could speak to the public more openly about how those outside forces are affecting what we have here that’s running pretty well.”
The effect of illegal immigration in Rockland County was minimized because of people like Ed Day and Teresa Kenny stopping NYC Mayor Adams from sending many of them from New York City up to here into the hotels. What’s the effect of illegal immigration in Clarkstown and what does Sheehan have in mind to help get these people that are here illegally, safely, picked up to remove them from where they don’t belong?
“I think the question or the answer comes to whether they do or do not belong, right? If someone is here legally going through the process of becoming a nationalized citizen, paying taxes and working and everything else and not breaking laws along the way, they should be able to stay. My family, I would not exist without that. Just flat out. I’m half Dominican. My father came here by means, which I don’t know the full aspects of, but it’s very likely that him or his family would not have come here without people seeking asylum or going through the immigration process, but that’s through the process.”
The issue is about the people who came here without going through the legal processes. Sheehan responded, “So those who haven’t gone through the process, which the ones being bussed in weren’t, those people should be sought for, but it’s very difficult to do. We’re a nation of 330 million people. There are any number of corners. It comes down to really communities and municipalities keeping good track of the people in and around their spaces. I think the way that, the national government and how they would interact with us here in Clarkston, right could be done better to alleviate a lot of the fear and be more effective because if they know that you could be coming, they’re not going to be there.”
“You end up having to go get people who you know are in a specific place who are trying to use the system properly and it’s just creating havoc, right? So I think the best thing to do is to increase the ability to handle things in a legal manner, right so you can control the border as best you can. We’re ingenious human beings when we want to do something, we find a way, but once they’re here, if you make it so that they can come into the system to then either successfully join our society or be returned where they should be coming from. You’ll end up with a better benefit with a more reasonable way to do it because right now you have people with masks walking around scaring everyone, not just people who should be detained, investigated about their situation.”
Being a police officer or any form of law enforcement is a dangerous job under normal circumstances. But when you have Democrats out there doxing ICE agents and other federal law enforcement and scaring and doxing their families, putting them in danger, which they should not, but that’s why they’re wearing the masks. They have to protect themselves and their families, and they’re not wearing the masks just to be a terrorist group. They wear them for their own protection and the protection of their families.
“I think it could be handled better on both sides assuredly. I would be worried seeing somebody without a uniform, proper ID things like that, walking, because if I’m not very close to you, I can’t see your ID, but I can see that you belong with this organization. It’s tough.”
Sheehan talked about ICE disrupting communities and people’s normal life. The one thing that certain people don’t talk about is the disruption to families of people who have been killed by illegal immigrants like the three people in Florida who dies due to the actions of the illegal who had made the illegal U Turn.
“You’re not going to be able to stop that just immigration, but you’ve got people who are disrupting our lives.”
As we have seen on news programs, about how many people nationally we’ve seen killed, raped, beaten, by illegals that should never have been allowed in here to begin with. You’ve got people like the Boston Mayor, Newsom, Pritzker, Murphy, all that protecting these. People who should not have been here to begin with, that are killing American citizens, robbing American businesses, and, and they’re creating havoc and disruption to the lives of people who are American citizens.
“I think what ends up happening is you end up having two different narratives talking about two different things. One is what you’re talking about the safety of our people and one that’s talking about humanitarian care. When you’re talking about two different things, you’re going to argue because you’re not actually talking about the same thing when you’re talking about national safety, you’re right. Those people should never have been here, and we should have a way with which to stop them. When you’re talking about all of the people who don’t fall into that category who are breaking laws, whether they’re here legally or not, but are looking for a way to join our society in a reasonable way, you then fall into the point where they’re not criminals that should be set up or not killing or doing anything else they are here working, paying taxes and not gaining many of the benefits in the long run.”
He says that those people need to be protected and that’s what the Democrats should be focusing very specifically on what they’re talking about and they don’t. “Both sides, I think are right on their individual topics.
Now, how to solve those two problems are vastly different things. When you’re talking about law and order and safety, we need to expand the ability to handle the immigrants trying to get here so we can take advantage and I will say take advantage of those who want to come for the American dream and will be American law, right, become part of our society and uplift it because that’s what we’re built upon, right, and be able to identify those who maybe come through the process but don’t actually live that don’t become part of the society and don’t uphold the laws.”
“Now the actual statistics of who breaks the law and causes that crime and fear that everybody has of immigrant populations is actually much lower than the standard American. I’ve heard as much as half the state because many of them come here fear police in a way from their home countries that you don’t have to in many cases here in the United States, and they fear doing anything wrong or they would then jeopardize your ability to join the illegally is not the problem, but the people here illegally is a much smaller proportion than a lot of people talk about. Now, as you say, the people who are here illegally, those that they already committed a crime by coming in here illegally.”
The argument on the right side of the political spectrum is that the people that came across the border illegally under the Biden administration is that they committed a crime by crossing the border which is a violation of American law. That’s a crime. Additionally on the news you’ve seen many times, pedophile arrested.
A guy who had that had child porn in his computers, trafficking children. You say, you’re thinking about finding an easy way to get these people out. How about stopping these sanctuary policies, and if they’re in, you got them in a prison, turn them over to ice that are having to go back out you’re worried about people being scared in the community. You have already arrested this guy for a crime that he committed. He’s in jail. The Democrats complain about the disruption to the community by ICE coming in looking for these people. Just give them to ICE from the jail that ICE doesn’t have to go back out of the community now to find him.”
“That and, and that comes to a national level thing. I do not have a good understanding of how they’re handling that.” He said.
You even have one judge in Milwaukee who helped a guy out the back to avoid ICE. Sheehan asked if he was guilty of a crime. He was. He then asked, “How do we know that?” ICE had the arrest warrant and they had a deportation order on them. “But that’s not proof of crime.” He stated.
ICE was there a deportation order because he had been found to be deportable, and the court said, you’re out, but you’ve got them in jails where ICE can go and take him out safely. But you’re scared about people in the community being scared. You got the guy in jail, you let him back out and he’s committing more crimes. If he’s in jail you do not have to go into the neighborhoods to get him. This would minimize any fear of the residents and you won’t get collateral people picked up with the criminal whose only crime was to come in illegally, even though they’re going after the bad guys.
“It’s become a same thing with American citizens in terms of our bail reform laws that have been put through that needs to be wiped and redone right. Whatever the case may be with that, but it’s, it’s not much different. We need to make sure that we aren’t infringing upon the rights of those who have done nothing wrong to protect us from a very small percentage of the population that does do something wrong because when they start doing that, all you need is someone to say that something that you do is wrong and that you need to be the next thing and it’s, it’s what causes the society to be affected over a long period of time it’s protecting from.
Marginalizing people’s time and time again because then you end up where everyone’s been marginalized, so. Everything you’re saying is absolutely right. Those are things that should be handled efficiently.”
He stated, “Instead of finding a legal recourse, trying to help the person some other way, they’ll do things to obfuscate justice, as it’s being carried out, You’ll hear a lot of people that will hate anything that Trump is doing or other members of his cabinet just because they’re doing it, not try to find any of the positive benefit that can happen, not try to come to the issue with the solution.” He admits that too many people just want to argue about this is what we’re doing, this is wrong, they just want to point fingers and not do the work to fix things and that they become more part of the problem than the solution.
I mean, you know, look at what Trump has done in the 200 or 210 days he’s been in office, a lot more than I think any other president in American history in that time frame, and all the opposition, the Democrats can do is find is attack, attack, attack, attack. “Oh absolutely.” Was his response.
After covering a plethora of topics, the only question remaining was that he is facing incumbent Mike Graziano who has been there for a number of years. He’s got a good following and he keeps getting re-elected, no matter who goes up against him. What does Sheehan have to offer to the residents of Ward 2 for them to vote for him over Graziano?
Sheehan has never met Graziano and has never seen him speak anywhere until he went to town council meetings and started becoming more involved directly in the political aspect. “I think being a civil servant you need to be more available outside of that and, and I would plan on taking it to another level of integration. I’m looking at scaling back my outside work with the union and things like that to be as full time of a councilman as I can with other smaller outside financial gains so that I can meet with more people, make more decisions, be more involved with the supervisors running of the town to just help. I don’t want to take over. I don’t want to change anything. I wan to have conversations and then hopefully if they’re the right solutions that come forth, have those things come through, and I don’t see Mike doing that. Nobody sees Mike doing that because he’s not doing it.”