BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor/Investigative Reporter
George Hoehmann is running for his sixth term as Clarkstown Town Supervisor this year. He will then have to run again in 2026 based on the 2023 law in New York mandating that all local elections take place in even years.
Clarkstown has been cracking down on illegal immigrants and illegal daycare centers. A couple of months ago they were able to close down one of the latter. Recently information came about, that the people who were running this were filing a suit to make it legal on a religious exemption.
“Yeah, so, so it’s, it’s not exactly that. Basically, what happened is, This, the people, the Altmans bought the property under a corporation, as a religious entity, as a, as a congregation. It does not appear that they ever opened up as a congregation. A religious organization can have daycare as a secondary use, that’s actually to the original, use, and so, they don’t appear to have ever operated. They already have a religious exemption, they bought it and we’re opening it up as a house of worship, the one building, not the other, the other building is commercial, and so basically where we stand is there, there’s a, a number of, legal actions the town took.” Hoehmann explained.
Anyone going down North Main Street in New City can’t miss the building going up pretty quickly on the north side.
“135 North Main is 47 senior housing units, and that, should be done, you know, probably by the end of the year. Yeah, they’ve been working on it. That said out front that says what it’s going to be usually you know coming soon, you know that that went through the planning department, the planning board it was approved, you know, and they started construction earlier this year. I’m not saying it wasn’t all done, yeah, I guess, people would become aware of it through the planning board.
According to Hoehmann, the builder didn’t come to the town board and there wasn’t a zone change or anything like that. It was under the current zoning where they could do senior housing on Main Street.
People were curious because usually there is a sign on the fence saying ‘Coming soon, a 47 senior unit housing complex or something along those lines’ so at least people know what’s going up, that wasn’t there. Now we know.
It was hard not to notice that a few weeks ago, the traffic light at Phillips Hill and Little Tor was missing. The reason for this was that there was a car accident that took down the light. The board approved the replacement which cost $200,000 and it was done sometime in mid-August. Hoehmann said, “We’re going to be trying to recoup as much as we can through the person’s insurance. It was a car accident where they took the pole down and they destroyed the light.”
A lot of municipalities are going to solar powered lights to try to save some money on electric bills but Clarkstown is not doing this. They are putting in a smart light which will have a modem and it will have a camera so that it can be programmable. So instead of many of these lights in some of these areas have loops in the ground, that’s old technology.
“The new technology now is a camera, with a computer system with a modem that can allow the lights to talk to each other. Now it won’t be that initially it’ll have the camera, it’ll have the modem. Eventually, we’ll work, we’re working to try and have the lights to be able to talk to themselves, through a, a computer program.
In fact, the state, the state is doing that on a bunch of the state roadways, so there’s been a number of lights that have been replaced on a number of the state roadways, recently, and that will enable the state to have the lights speak to each other so that they can make automatic adjustments through the use of a computer program and AI to improve traffic flow at different points. Synchronize the lights.” Hoehmann said.
One major issue people have in their towns is the infrastructure. They want the roads in the town to be safe to drive on, yet they complain about the inconvenience that the construction and repaving caused them. This does not deter the Clarkstown Highway Department from doing their job.
During Hoehmann’s last reelection bid two years ago, we discussed how the town had 300 miles of roads to keep paved. About half of them had been done, have they all been repaved?
Every government agency is looking to save money and not have to do things like repaving constantly. They would love to extend the time between repaving’s. I’ve heard when they’re talking about there’s a new type of surfacing that has like glass recycled glass in it that makes it a lot more durable. It doesn’t have to be taken up as often. Are you using something like that?
He explained, “So, we’re using a whole variety of processes. We’re doing everything from micro paving to full mill and fill where you where you re-crown the road and, and, you know, put down, you know, 3 inches of asphalt, various technologies, so, I think a lot of the, I’m not certain what have a straw what they’re talking about, you know, oftentimes some of the recycled materials don’t last as long as the traditional, so I would, I’d be very curious on that, but we’re using a variety of, of, of applications.”
There is more to the infrastructure in a town than just the road system. Hoehmann reviewed a number of other projects that the town is working on for the benefit of the community.
“So, obviously downtown West Nyack, it’s a major project it’s, all in about $11 million. We’ve got several million dollars in grants that will be finished up by the end of the year. That’s a complete overhaul of the downtown streetscape, that includes, all new drainage, raising the road, brand new culverts, will help to eliminate the residual flooding on Phillips Lane, which is behind the, the business district, as well as some of the flooding that takes place on West Road.”
He said that they were going to have all new, decorative streetlights as well. “We buried a lot of the utilities down there at no cost to the town, through an O and R resiliency project. So that’s a major infrastructure project, and that will be done, you know, as I said, by the end of the year.”
Many places around the country where severe weather and other factors create power problems are replacing aboveground wires with underground wires for safety reasons. Is there any possibility that Clarkstown will be doing that? Hoehmann explained what they are doing about that. “Yeah, but that wouldn’t be us, so for example, down in downtown West Nyack, O&R was doing a resiliency project, the 705 line where they were putting an underground link between two substations. As part of that project, we had a conversation with them.
We’d like you to bury the lines in that area so they did that at no cost to themselves. It’s quite costly to bury the lines.”
The thing about doing anything with the power lines it that the town doesn’t own them or the poles. Those are owned by the utilities. They asked O&R and the other utilities in certain areas and they have listened, to bury them.
An example, of why this is important, as Hoehmann said is, “We had constant power outages at the causeway, and that was a real success of my administration. We pushed Orange and Rockland we had I think we had, 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 3 consecutive years where we had, major power outages, thousands of people out for days as the lines going across the causeway were taken down by wind, you know, they were basically sails, you know, heavy winds coming across the causeway.”
He added, “During major storms, so O & R listened to us, they cost them over a million dollars to do that because it was over 1 mile, and they buried the lines at no cost to the town, so we’ve asked O&R we’ve given them areas where we’ve had historic power outages, and we’ve asked them to look at as part of their resiliency programming to bury the lines when possible. So we got it down in West Nyack in the Main Street area, we got it over the causeway and there’s other areas, but that’s entirely up to OR, Verizon, and, the other utilities, and there are multiple utilities that operate within the town.”
The one thing that every person in the country can agree on is that they hate taxes. When Hoehmann was reelected two years ago, he said he was going to try to maintain the tax levels at the current levels. “So we’re, we’re in our budget process now, so, you know, obviously we’re, we told all of our department heads that, to employ a zero-based budgeting, mentality, which means that, no increase at the department level. Obviously, things cost money and I can tell you that I’m very proud of my record on taxes as Town Supervisor in Clarkstown, we’ve had multiple tax cuts, tax freezes throughout my 10 years, and we’ve had some increases.”
He added, “We’ve trended far below the other towns and villages within the area and you know, we won’t know until we’re done with our budget process in late September what our budget will look like for next year, but, we’re being as aggressive as possible. I will tell you that I’m very encouraged by the reinvestment in the town. With new rateables coming in that’s an encouraging thing. People are investing in the town. We do have 62% of the commercial rateables of Rockland County and Clarkstown. hat’s a sizable amount of money, but it also costs a lot of money for us to sustain that.”
Over the four years of the Biden administration, the economy of the country was a disaster of 9% inflation, up to like 16%. Now back down to I think 2.4% inflation or 2.1%, hundreds of billions of dollars coming in from the tariffs and things like that. How does everything that’s happening nationally and statewide it’s going to affect the economy here in Clarkstown?
Hoehmann responded, “I think, you would like to see interest rates come down because I think that we’re slowing maybe some of the reinvestment and redevelopment across the country. I think we’re doing well in terms of the local economy again because we do have 62% of the commercial rateables. There’s also been literally houses go on the market and they sell almost immediately a lot of new people moving in and that shows positive signs of the local economy.”
Hoehmann attributes having so much of the rateables in the county to smart growth, smart planning, you know, the town has had a down zone throughout the years. “We are the heart of Rockland. We are the central portion of Rockland County. You have the state, highways that come through, the thruway the parkway that comes through, so over time we’ve, we’ve really developed as the hub. We are the county seat, West Nyack with the mall, Nanuet with the Nanuet town center and all the commerce there. So, it’s just been a factor of development that has been appropriate throughout the years, but I think the other piece is we’re the only town with an economic development staff person, Jeff Gillies, we have a real focus on it, like for example.”
The first Chick Fil A opened on Route 59 recently, and Hoehmann said that he had a friendly competition between himself and Supervisor Teresa Kenny, for, that first Chick Fil A in the county, and we won, and we won the competition and how did they do it? Gillies had made inquiries. Hoehmann had also made inquiries we worked hard, and then when Chick Fil A wanted to come on in, so they sped them, through the appropriate process talking to the county and the economic development folks, and then, worked with them, through the planning process so they were able to open up in August. “I’m glad I’ve been waiting for Chick fil A. We’re targeting a lot of different, businesses and we are seeing real reinvestment within the town and that help, that will help with the residential tax base as well.”
Throughout the nation, public safety is a concern. President Trump deployed the national guard to deal with this issue in Washington D.C. Many cities are experiencing record levels of crime and the threats to public safety it brings. Hoehmann said, “Clarkstown is one of the safest communities in in the entire country, certainly in the state in the northeast, and you know, frankly we have 87,000 residents so obvious and we have a lot of commercial property, so obviously you’re going to have typical white collar crime, And we’re the suburbs you’ll have, you know, minor vandalism and things of that nature but we are a very safe community we’ve got an exceptional police department, very well trained.”
Illegal immigration is a major national problem. ICE has been removing criminal illegal immigrants across the country. How has that affected Clarkstown? Have a lot of illegals, been caught by ICE being here?
“So we have, we’ve had I come in a couple of times, you know, we’ve been told anecdotally, most recently there was a situation where there were illegal immigrants that were living in a house and there was a dispute amongst them and some of the illegals called on the other illegals in the house and ICE can, ICE will not will sometimes notify the police that they’re coming into the town.” He stated.
“How has it really affected us? Well, you’ve seen it in the past. You’ve covered some of the things like the house on New Hempstead Road, those were likely all illegals you know, that came on in, so we’ll continue to, we’ll continue to crack down on it. I do believe that with the border essentially being shut that you’re seeing less new people coming in, obviously, and so we’re not seeing the numbers that we saw in the past 4 years where we had, you know, literally hundreds of people that were coming up from the city, you know, here, and they were getting into houses that were illegally. So I think overall, you know, we’re seeing a obviously a downturn in that, and again we’re, we’re aggressively enforcing our codes, to make sure that people, you know, comply with their buildings on the codes.”
Anyone who shops in the Palisades Mall has seen the constant comings and goings of stores and restaurants. TGIFridays is one of the latest major chain restaurants to leave the property. What may not be known to a multitude of people is that the mall has been having major financial issues. They’re in debt in the neighborhood of 413 million dollars. It is also a major contributor to the taxes of Clarkstown and the county.
“So, the mall is a going concern, and we know that from the tax, the, the tax certiorari case from a couple of years ago. We had access to their books. They were mismanaged by Pyramid in particular, and you’ve seen all of the Pyramid malls are all in foreclosure. I’m encouraged by it because since they are in the foreclosure process, they’ve actually had a, 600% increase in capital maintenance on the mall. If you go through there, you’ll see it’s looking better. They’re actually investing in the building.” Hoehmann explained.
“According to the revenues, they’re a going concern. I do believe that, eventually there probably will be a new mall operator, and, you know, we’ve had some conversations with the current management company, and the potential for reinvestment that they’re looking at within the facility. So I’m, I’m heartened by what’s taking place there. I do think that, you know, that there’ll be an opportunity for some reinvestment, going forward in the future at the moment.”
Will the town be in involved in the reinvestment or improvements in the mall? “No, we’re not at that level. It’s a very valuable commercial asset, and you know it’s not going to shut its doors, you know there’s too much of an investment. People are going to look to make money off of the investment and how are they going to make money? They’re probably going to look for new types of applications to come on in. I know Pyramid had been looking for a residential component. Many of the malls in the area have done that, where they’ve reinvented themselves, where they’ve kept some commercial, and they’ve brought in some residential, and other uses. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll take a look at that going forward.”
According to Hoehmann, right now there’s no proposals that are out there but he does expect that there probably will be somewhere in the future when the whole ownership issue was is resolved, but he says that they are a going concern. They know that from their all their financial filings because they’re in court are now an open book and they’re making money. “What was happening was the prior mall operators were taking the money from the mall and putting it into their other locations. Now that it’s having to be treated as a standalone, you know, they have to stand on their own in terms of the financing here. They’re, they’re, they’re making money and that’s good.
One idea in revitalizing the mall is to add a residential component. Will there have to be a rezoning done to accommodate this? “Yeah, they would they would they’re under our code, under a comprehensive plan, that’s a use that that is contemplated, but it would require a zone change based on what they would be looking for. Our code allows for hotels and, you know, those types of things already at the mall. That was one of the things the pyramid was looking at. It doesn’t allow for housing like permanent housing, but it does allow for, temporary stays, hotels, suites, that type of thing.
Will this be like people moving in and living there as a like, like Co-Op City type of place? “No. I wouldn’t say Co-Op City. You’d want to take a look at what happened down at Tyson Farms in New Jersey. Take a look at, Ridge Hill over in Yonkers. So literally you, you keep the commercial and then you add a residential component, a couple 100 units, that’s always been something that I think has been contemplated and it would require a zone change.”
Hoehmann is up for reelection again. Why should people vote to keep him in office?
“Oh, certainly, thank you so much for the opportunity. Look, I have a record of accomplishment here in the Town of Clarkstown and keeping taxes in check, investing in our infrastructure, and bringing rateables and, also maintaining the quality of life. Since I’ve been town supervisor, we’ve created new parks, you know, continuing to do that, the West Nyack, playground and park. Firefighter Memorial Park that’s new. We added the Bear Swamp Nature Preserve, next to the county park. We’ve, redone, all the pickleball courts at Zucker, the Mark Woods, playground, walking trails around Zucker, you know, we did the pickleball courts over in Conger’s.”
Being an elected official has a lot of challenges. What does Hoehmann see as his biggest challenge should he get reelected?
“I think it’s economy, economy but that’s for everybody that would be for me, that would be for President Trump, that would be for Governor Hochul, Congressman Lawler, you name it, at every level of government, continuing to figure out how you can track rateables and continuing, you know, just deal with the struggles of what’s happening economically. Families’ budgets are, are stretched, and we need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to continue to, to deal with that situation.
He says that a lot of that is beyond the control of the town, adding that some of these issues, as you mentioned are international issues that affect the economy and some of them are federal issues. “So I think that’s the big challenge. It’s always going to be economic for everybody. I think we’re well equipped for it because we have a record of maintaining costs, at a low base here within the town, and we’ll continue to do that.
With all of the challenges, there are always going to be easy issues to deal with. Hoehmann responded, “I don’t think that there’s anything that’s ever easy in, in, in from a government perspective. You work. I think what we’ll continue to do is be accessible. We are the most accessible local government that’s out there. I do tele Town Hall calls. We broadcast our meetings. We’re one of the few municipalities that in live time. The meetings are up, people can see them on TV, and we’re always accessible, so we will continue to do that, and, I’ll continue to have coffees with the supervisor and our tele-town hall meetings. We’re the only municipality doing that.”
“I’m the only supervisor doing that for the last 10 years. We’ve been averaging 8 or 9 a year of the Tele town Hall calls I love doing it. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s something we’ve made look easy.
If a resident of Clarkstown wants to participate in these Tele – Town Halls, you can call 845 639 2150. “When we have them, we announce them. We send out a voice notification to, anybody that signed up for our list. We encourage people to sign up for them and as I said, I’m the only supervisor that’s doing this.
You can sign up through the Supervisor’s office or online, so you can just contact the supervisor’s office. You can go to supervisor at Clarkstown.gov. Supervisor Clarkstown.gov and say you want to be on the list.