BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor in Chief/Investigative Reporter
Infrastructure is a major issue around the country and local municipalities are left to foot the bill which many of them can’t afford. Congressman Mike Lawler was able to acquire $33 million for many of them in the 17th Congressional District to start or complete projects for their communities. He met with many of the leaders of these communities at the Clarkstown Town Hall on Monday March 9, 2026, to present them with very large sized “checks”.
Lawler introduced the event. “Good morning everyone and thank you all for being here. I want to start by thanking the local elected officials joining us today and the fact that we have representatives from municipalities across the 17th Congressional District here this morning says a lot about what this funding is really about partnership across federal and local entities. Local government is where a lot of the work that directly impacts people’s lives actually happens, whether it’s improving roads and bridges, upgrading water infrastructure, supporting public safety, or investing in community facilities.”
COMMUNITIES RECEIVED GRANTS
He gave the background for the funding he acquired. “Earlier this year, after a period of delays following the longest government shutdown in American history. I worked with my colleagues to negotiate a government funding package. The result was a slew of common-sense appropriations bills that fund critical priorities for our country and delivers targeted investment to the Hudson Valley. While there’s still work to do, including funding the Department of Homeland Security. Passing this package shows that Congress CAN and MUST come together to focus on results and provide certainty to agencies and municipalities that rely on federal support.”
Finishing the appropriations process matters. It brings stability. It gives agencies the assurances that they can operate effectively and allows us to put resources to work where they make a real difference for families, public safety, and local communities. What matters most to the people we represent is that those results, what those results mean here at home. Including improving public safety and supporting economic growth across New York’s 17th district. According to Lawler.
“Through my office, we’ve been able to secure critical projects that directly improve public safety. I’ll start with the Rockland County Sheriff’s Department, which will be getting two different grants for $4.2 million for police equipment and $2.6 million for a new training facility, ensuring that our officers both in the sheriff’s department and across Rockland County have the tools and capacity they need to keep our families safe, and I will ask Chief Babarski to come up and say a few words.
“Good morning everyone. On behalf of Sheriff Falco, who couldn’t join us this morning, we just want to thank Congressman Lawler for his partnership and all his hard work and effort in securing this important funding for Rockland County.”
It will most definitely have very positive effects on public safety, which will be moving forward and long-lasting. So once again, Congressman, thank you again for all your hard work, your partnership, and we continue to, look forward to working with you and, Sheriff Falco, thank you very much for the funding.
“We know we will make meaningful change, and I’m proud to have worked with leaders across the district to help secure this funding in a bipartisan way, and I’m grateful to all the local officials who helped make these projects possible. We will hear from each of the communities assembled here today and ask them to say a few brief words about the projects that are funded through the appropriations process. I will start with our host, the Clarkstown supervisor, George Homan, and I know they have a number of board members, here, today, Mike Graziano, John Valentino, Bob Axelrod, Don Franchino, and our town clerk, Lauren Marie Wohl.”
Hoehmann explained what this money is going to do for the Town of Clarkstown. “Well, thank you, Congressman. Good morning, everyone, and I just want to thank Congressman Lawler for coming through YET AGAIN for the residents of Rockland and in particular Clarkstown. We have long waited for, some, some movement on the Nanuet TOD, (Transit Oriented Development) and one of the issues with the Nanuet TOD in the downtown area is we really need some infrastructure improvements, and this is a significant grant of $5 million that will go a long way to help us with some of the infrastructure improvements to make the community much more walkable, that coupled with an additional grant that we recently received will really help us have sidewalks all the way from Route 59 back up into the neighborhoods beyond Grandview. I’m thrilled with the congressman’s partnership. It’s going to go a long way in helping to support the businesses and residents of Clarkstown. Thank you.”
Orangetown supervisor, Teresa Kenny, came up to speak about the sidewalk infrastructure project in Orangetown.
“I want to start by thanking Congressman Lawler. This project, it just sounds like sidewalks, but it’s much more than that to the people of the town of Orangetown. This is actually the completion of a project that started many years ago after, 3 pedestrians had been killed over a number of years, and we had, a whole study done, and we, we started the project, but unfortunately we didn’t have the funding to complete it. We finished about 70% of the project. This will be the completion of the project. This is safety for pedestrians. It also involves turn lanes, so it’s for the cars also. This is not just a sidewalks and not to be little sidewalks, but it’s much more than that to the people of the town of Orangetown. I want to thank you. It’s going to make Orangetown Middletown Road, Pearl River, much safer place for our pedestrians. Thank you, Mike.
The mayor of Pleasantville, Peter Shearer, was the next speaker.
“Thank you, Congressman, and thank you to your entire staff. You guys have been great and responsive and involved. We are favored with $2.2 million towards what is likely a 6-or-7-million-dollar project for, replacing our water tanks. I am so happy to receive. This essentially a third of the money for multiple reasons, one of which is we need to do it, and we take very seriously our infrastructure responsibility. Folks also need to realize that what this means for them is we will not have to feed that capital cost directly into their water bills. It is a win for everybody to be building good responsive infrastructure and trying to minimize the impact on ratepayers. Thank you, Congressman.”
The next official Lawler introduced was the Town Supervisor for the Town of North Salem, Warren Lucas.
“Thank you very much, myself and the Deputy Supervisor Pete Kastein. I want to thank you and your staff. You know, as was mentioned a couple of times, the availability of your people, the openness of your staff is, is better than I’ve seen, I don’t know how many congressmen that is, but it’s been a long, it’s been a long time.
“This project Falls Sewer District, we’ve been working on this literally since 2019 with the planning and stuff.
We have agreements now with the Town of Somers to hook to their plant, and all we have to do is build the pump stations, the collection systems, and the mains and stuff. We were literally $1.2 million short, and you guys came up with $1.25 million which is the perfect number. I want to thank you for everything you do for us on a regular basis and very much appreciate this. Croton Falls has a lot of affordable housing, FAH affordable housing, and to put all of this up, the capital costs on them would have been a little bit too much. We’ve been waiting for this money to start and again, greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much.
“Thank you, Warren. Next up, the town of Yorktown supervisor Ed Lacherman.
“I of course, want to thank the Congressman and the staff, This this is as Supervisor Lucas said, this helps our taxpayers, so we don’t have to throw all of the weight into them, and Mike, you’ve just been a champion of the taxpayers for everything you’ve done, and you talk about accessibility. My goddaughter recognizes you and she’s 12, and she doesn’t like elected officials. But she recognized you because you’re in the area, you’re in the community, you live it, you experience it, and it’s, it helps so much to have someone who cares about where you are and taking care of, our, our local people. Thank you so much. Keep up the great work. Thank you.”
“Next up, the supervisor of the town of Ossining, Liz Feldman.” Lawler said.
“Thank you, our communities really couldn’t handle the cost of the infrastructure if we didn’t get help from these Congressional funding. Pieces with the stronger storms, the colder winters, our project is a water main on our main business district. It services a gym, a memory care facility, the SPCA where all the lost dogs and cats live until they get a home and 1 mile of water main is $5 million. So, without this funding, it would be almost impossible to maintain all the infrastructure in town. So we’re very thankful for the funding. Thank you.”
On behalf of the Village of Sleepy Hollow, I want to ask trustee Jim Hustleby to come up and say a few words.
“On behalf of the Village, the residents of the Village of Sleepy Hollow, I just want to thank you, Congressman, for your ongoing partnership, with us. Something that we’ve been working on for many years is the downtown Water Main project, so this is, this is going a long ways to making sure we can complete that and help all the residents. I would also, so our Village, as you may know, is in a period of, great transition, and I invite everyone to come out and see our beautiful new waterfront, our, our great, open spaces and our new development. So, thank you very much and thanks again.
Lawler added, “I don’t believe anybody from the Town of Carmel was able to make it today, but I know this is a critical project for them, that they are continuing to, to invest in heavily to rehabilitate a 60-year-old water plant, so that is obviously, I’m sure welcome, welcome funding for them, in the town. And I don’t believe that somebody from the Hudson Valley, Shakespeare Festival was able to join, but, certainly that is, critical funding to help, promote and, you know, invest in tourism in the region. So, we were happy to, to be able to help get that across the finish line.”
“In conclusion, you know, this is, you know, this is something that, we have worked tirelessly on to bring back critical funding to our district, to our communities, across the district, and, you know, as you can see assembled here, this is not Republican or Democrat, this is across the board, helping communities in need and to invest in critical infrastructure and public safety projects, and we will continue to do that. The new round of funding requests has opened, and we will be submitting them in short order, and working to bring back tens of millions of dollars more, to the district, to support our communities, and we’ll continue to fight day in and day out to make sure that everybody has the resources they need. I do want to thank my staff, my district director Donna Cerrino, my deputy chief of staff Rafi Silverberg, our comms director Scott Waters, our digital director, Kenzie O’Brien, director of Security, Sean Horan, everybody on my team works tirelessly, to support our community really does, a great job, both when it comes to the intergovernmental, relationships, but also, the constituent services. I want to thank everybody for their hard work. With that, we will take any, any questions.”
Yes, Keith. “The projects, how do you choose what projects to fund?”
“Yeah, so this is a very open process. We let the municipalities tell us what it is that they need funding for. There are strict guidelines from the Appropriations Committee as to what qualifies, what doesn’t qualify, and we have really left it up to the municipalities to tell us what it is that they need. In previous appropriation cycles, we have been limited in the house to only submitting 15 projects. We have to choose, often times between really, good projects, and could only submit 15. However, Senators Gillibrand and Schumer can submit unlimited on the Senate side, and so we’ve tried to work collaboratively to try and make sure that we get as much funding to the district as possible. As I’ve said, I mean, I’m proud of the fact that we’ve been able to bring back over $70 million in 3 years, to the district, on these community project funding requests, and we’ll continue to do that as we move forward this year, as we enter into fiscal year 27 appropriations requests, we’re allowed to submit 20 projects, so we’re going to be submitting these, probably next week, and, you know, we’ll have more information on, on that in the future.” Lawler responded.
“Where do the government, the local government submit their request to you?”
“Through my staff. We have a, we have a portal that they submit the request to.” Other questions? All right, very good, thank you, everyone.”