BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor/Investigative Reporter
“I was born in Washington, DC and at the age of one, my mother and I moved to the Dominican Republic, and I was there for 8 years. We returned in 1963. My father and his three brothers served in the armed forces. Three of my uncles actually fought in World War 2. My dad fought in the Korean War.”
When they returned to the United States, he went to various public schools in New York City, then he went to Holy Trinity Elementary School on the Upper West Side. When he got to 8th grade he worked in the rectory all through high school and college. He went to Saint Agnes High School in Manhattan in the in the city.
He began attending Iona College and then transferred to Saint Thomas Aquinas College (STAC). “While at Holy Trinity I built a lifelong relationship with Bishop Gerald Walsh, who passed away a month ago. There I learned the importance of serving the community that you’re in. I Coached and participated in any community event that the church held. It was always you’re part of the community you represent and then you, get back, and he was a big proponent of that.”
` After he graduated from STAC, he started working in the Department of Social Services back then 1978.
They had a family service team on Main Street across from Mardolf Bakery, on the 2nd floor and he was there for a couple of years, and they were servicing families in the North Rockland area servicing with the Department of Social Services. They assisted them getting food stamps, Medicaid, any daily needs that they had and always walking around the village basically doing a lot of home visits in Haverstraw and Stony Point. It was the North Rockland area pretty much that service team took care of.
“Then I was asked to move to Child protective services. I was hired as a bilingual case worker originally by the county, and then I was there doing investigations of child abuse and neglect and then from I got promoted to taking a test to senior caseworker and after many years I became the coordinator of child sexual abuse investigations. This is all pre-special victims’ unit. We trained a handful of case workers, detectives and different police departments. Whenever a child sexual abuse case came in, it would be a joint investigation with the police and the caseworker to minimize the amount of interviews that the children had to go through, it was all basically that way, then that led to then the DA’s office assigning two attorneys to handle those cases and then the county attorney’s office also assigned their attorney to represent us in family court cases so these cases were in both criminal and family court. While there I got my master’s in social work because I needed to expand my knowledge and my horizons.
Eckert has done a lot of work with families and protecting people in the community and coaching kids in various sports. But what brought him into politics?
How do you feel about the infrastructure, and what do you feel can be done? Let’s look at that the infrastructures and buildings and things like that. How do you feel about, how do you feel about the roads?
“We’re paving, we’re milling. We’ve done a lot of drainage work, and now hopefully by next summer, every single street in the village will have been paved. We’ve addressed sidewalks and curbing also. Now moving forward is the maintenance and the upkeep of what we’ve done so that it doesn’t go into disarray and disrepair and keeping on top of it.”
As far as the building infrastructure goes, they have a building department that’s involved in granting permits for new, proposals for building. They’ve hired an extra code enforcer to monitor what’s happening. They also handle complaints, from residents as to, illegal housing, illegal apartments, things being done without permits. They do have people that work on weekends and evenings, that’ll go out and see what’s going on as to, what’s being reported by residents, and they rely a lot on residents calling and reporting things happening in their neighborhoods because they’re there 24/7, and they tell us, oh, you guys were here, but they’re coming in. they’ll send an inspector who will go out and see what’s going on.
He explained the process of handling the complaints about illegal housing. “We also hired an attorney that will handle all those complaints in court. As we all know, the wheels of justice turn slowly because everybody has due process and it turns slowly because that’s what the process is. We put a complaint in. They say no and we go back and forth until it gets resolved. Some of these issues have taken years to resolve so it’s not that they’re being ignored. It’s that we are in court trying to resolve the, remedy the issues that are that have been brought forth with discovery hearings and this hearing that hearing, the other hearing, it takes time. People don’t understand that about the legal system. It’s not resolved overnight. It’s going to take sometimes it takes months or years.”
“I’m not even going to mention weeks, because weeks doesn’t exist in this formula. The village has responded. I think we’re moving in the right direction, I’m old to the community, but I’m new to the to the politics end of it. I’m learning as we go along and I rely on our attorneys giving us advice as to what we should be looking at what we should be doing.”
Another major infrastructure thing is the Superfund project, the warehouse that’s proposed to put in on the old dump site. I was told there were joint meetings with the planning board and the village board. That’s kind of unheard of for you guys to be meeting together about a particular project. The information I received is that the planning board and the and the village board normally don’t meet about it.
“The planning board has its independent meetings, and they make their recommendations to the board, the village board and then they go back and forth. That doesn’t happen, Basically, what happens is, as you know, any property owner can file for a permit and make an application to develop a project we cannot stop them. They’re entitled to file an application for a project. Then that application gets reviewed and it does go in front of the zoning and planning board. In our village, the zoning and planning do meet at the same day, and we see it as a plus to the residents. Other places don’t. If you have an attorney, your attorney shows up the one day in front of the zoning and planning.”
According to Eckert, other places have zoning one night, and they have to come back a different night for planning, which creates an expense to the residents, whoever they may be, either a business or a private homeowner that wants to do a shed and they need, either a variance from the zoning board or the planning board.
“With that, there’s a proposal that’s for this warehouse that’s to be built in, the old, landfill. That is a process that’s been years in the making now, it’ll continue. The village board, by law, cannot consult the planning board or the zoning board. We are not involved. At the end of the process the property owner makes their final presentation. The residents have been speaking at some of the meetings, and they’ll continue to speak while the public hearing is open. Both boards will listen to them and take notes. When that hearing is closed, a decision will be made by them.”
Another issue with the site for this warehouse is that I’ve heard that it’s not very stable and a heavy building could sink into there. Also, the fact that people are complaining that the possibility that a lot of people, a lot of women are getting breast cancer and the carcinogens coming out of there that would, again, I never really looked at it, but I’ve been told it was never really capped properly when it was closed. What about that, because, have you heard that, you may have carcinogens and things like that. What studies are being done on that? Who’s doing them?
Eckert said, “I haven’t heard that. I know there was issues with it.
“Nobody’s really brought what you’re mentioning it in zoning or the planning meetings. They’ve been concerned about what’s in there. They’ve drilled. They’ve taken the samples of the soil. How long ago was that? A couple of years ago that was recent. That was part of this, the DEC is on this project, so they did the monitoring and all that in there, and it’s still something that we’re in public hearings, so nothing is closed. People can bring up concerns, you know, when it’s scheduled back on. It hasn’t been in front of the board in a few months.”
He’s sure it’ll come back in front of the board. There’ll be notice given again to the community that. We have advertised the zoning and planning board meetings. There are workshops. The zoning and planning board meetings are the 2nd Wednesday of the month. The workshop is the Thursday before that Wednesday. They also have an electronic sign by Viol Park that actually has the dates of the meetings and the times. They start at 7 o’clock, The workshop on Thursday starts at 7, and on Wednesdays the planning and zoning meetings start at 7 o’clock. If they have a joint project of both agendas, they’ll take those projects first and deal with it at once. You’re not there, listening to one agenda and then having to repeat it the second time it’s, that we’ll do it together that way,
“That’s to benefit the residents and the business whoever is putting a project in front. You’re there last time, with your attorneys, and we know there’s fees that accumulate. We’ll definitely follow up and we’ll look into it and we’ll call the health department.
Let’s say the warehouse goes in, you’re going to have 18 wheelers going through there and Railroad Avenue over there is not exactly, with these other roads and all the ground under it, the pipes and everything else, and they’re not that wide. You talk about emergency vehicles. Let’s say you got an 18-wheeler going down.
Emergency vehicles have to get down there and you’re going to have a problem. What is the board’s plan? 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?
New York State law sets a cap of 2% on municipalities raising taxes, but after that, a special variance is needed to raise it higher than that. You’re raising taxes by 7% which is 5% more than the 2% limit set by the state. How did you end up, with that much more? You’re talking a 250% increase over the 2% maximum. How do you justify that and how did you end up with that big variance?
Eckert said, “I think, well, we, we have to address the, we have to address the budget. I think the school districts have the 2% cap. I think the government can wave the cap and this and in the school district there is a cap, but our taxes sometimes do go up, even if there’s a zero increase, they go up, Because of other things that affect the budget so they can present a zero budget, but your taxes will go up. I don’t do the math, but we do look at our, we do look at our budget. I mean, we have LOLSA, which is the retirement for the firefighters that, that we, you know, that the, that the residents voted on, that was a hit on us, financially, how big a hit. I don’t have the numbers of which I need question before, but I do the stuff with me.”
He claimed that it did impact on their budget. They looked at their budget and have a lot of services that they provide and says they give more than a lot of other villages do. They still collect the garbage in the village.
Their DPW is very involved in doing things. “We’ve gotten equipment for them that they’ve requested that’s gone their way both that equipment has not really impacted the taxes because we’ve been able to use grant money and state money for these things, so we do watch our expenses. It’s not carte blanche, and I pay taxes. We all pay taxes. If it goes up 7% for going up 7% for us also. I know everybody in the village, whether you’re on the board or not, you can’t avoid that.”
My question was how did you end up with a 250% increase over the 2% of the state allows for a, for the budget for an increase.
“Well, I don’t really know.”
“We’re well aware he speaks to, I guess he’s spoken to maybe Fred about what can legally be done, with the property and things like that. Getting whatever variance is needed whatever he needs. Our building department will assist as much as they can to guide him or tell them what’s legal, not legal, and that will benefit the community. We understand it’s empty and that it’s doesn’t help anybody.”
Not only has West Haverstraw lost Stop and Shop and many other stores in the Samsondale Plaza, and the money in taxes due to those losses, they have also lost the Highbury Concrete Company that had taken over PAL Chevrolet on Route 9W.
Eckert hopes that someone may be interested the Highbury next to the car wash.
They were just going in a couple of years ago when I was coming to the meetings. I was going to be following them. They’re going out?
“They are out. Now we have a consultant looking to see who is willing to use the property, they were approved in front of the zoning and planning boards they were approved to take, to build the building and an accessory and all this. That plan is still in existence, now we have a consultant that’s trying to find, someone who might be interested in that site. Just the economy, there’s the economy, they got screwed up, they couldn’t do it, so they, they have to pay off, you can’t take it.
Well, the economy from 2021 to 2025 was a disaster. The Biden economy with the inflation and the printing of the money and everything that was going on and the shortages and the supply chain and everything else, it’s amazing, anybody survived that.
Public safety is an issue that people are really concerned with. Bob Lagrow was talking about possibly getting more police officers. Is there any other way besides the town hiring more police officers that might help to increase security for loss of a better word, in the village?
“Well, I’ll go back to a reference myself. I do make home visits. They’re not always during the day.
I do make evening visits to working parents. I feel safe in the streets. What we could explore and there’s something we can speak to the chief about is getting a neighborhood watch established that people could call in. We do have some people now that call that say this car’s been sitting here we don’t know who they are. They do those reports, and the police do respond, we also have a code enforcer that are working at night. He’s still out there. He’s not going to be able to stop anything, but he can call and report. That’s not his job to intervene in a situation.”
He spoke about that in the schools he spearheaded the kids and cops’ program. It was a program that we started about 7 years ago with the Cal Ripken Foundation. It’s teaming up police and youth in sporting events so that they can work together. There was a whole curriculum to it, so that the kids can get to know who the police officers are, that their first interaction is positive not negative.
“We started in the PAL basketball teams. We moved it with I introduced it to the Board of Ed. Now with and the Board of Ed, the North Rockland Board of Ed, let’s clarify that one approved it and we now have it in Fieldstone. The SRO (School Resource Officer) at Fieldstone runs the program. In a 9th period, once a week, he brings in police officers, different shifts, so different guys come in, and they have a topic and they’ll either play whiffle ball with the kids or, they’ll do something, they’ll follow something in the curriculum that’s beneficial that the kids learn and they get to meet those building relationships. Eckert explained.
He adds that there are going to be incidents unfortunately, yes, there will be, but we’ll be able to, they’ll be enough interaction, so we do these things to benefit the community and the police because we live in dangerous times.
Clarkstown has an auxiliary police force. Has anybody thought about bringing that up to Howard Phillips and the town board of maybe having a village auxiliary police, volunteer village auxiliary police force that could patrol areas and you know, just have like a direct line to the police. ‘I see this going on here, instead of waiting for somebody to call 911, I had to answer 25 questions before they even get to the police.
“That’s something we could, the auxiliary police is always falls, I think, under the umbrella of the police departments. That’s something we could discuss with the Chief about that and the town board.”
I think there’s like 67 or 68 officers, I think it is on the police force, Haverstraw is not that small a town and you’ve got, let’s say even only maybe like 1/3 of them on any given time, and of that third you’ve got at least 2 people in the station answering calls and stuff, that puts you down to about 20 officers, patrolling the entire area. They can’t be everywhere, any sort of help that they could get with a direct line to the police or an auxiliary police force.
“I think we’ll be, I think Bob and I would be willing to explore, that. It’s a possibility, but it would be. I think those auxiliary things fall under the umbrella of the town.”
I understand that. Let me ask you this if the town and the PD says we’re not going to get into that. Could the village say we’re going to put our own auxiliary police force together. Is that a possibility?
“I don’t see why we can’t look at that just to see how it works, maybe check with Clarkstown to see how it works, or maybe the time why you going to be doing this, it might be in their plans.”
I haven’t heard anything about that from them. I’ve brought it up to them a few times in meetings over the years, you know, about things like that.
“But we can look into it.
That’s something that might be at least help to the police. At the most it might cost the village or the town a car and maybe some uniforms and a few pads for giving out tickets.
Endorsements from important groups in a community are very important to candidates, especially when it’s the police in the community. The right endorsement could swing an election in the direction of the person they endorsed. The information I received was that the PBA recently endorsed Kathleenann Cool, for the trusteeship. How do you feel about it? How did that affect your candidacy, your re-election bid.
“I don’t know, I can’t say so. It was the Rockland County PBA. A lot of them are in Orangetown and Clarkstown. The Haverstraw PBA decided to stay neutral. We never got an invitation to meet with them, so I don’t know how, but the process is even to be interviewed by. I just know I told. So that’s, that’s our answer. I don’t know. I’ll have to call into them to see in the future, can you, can, you know, how do you, how does this process go because we don’t know what the process is.”
Adding, “We don’t know. We were never invited. I’ve never received anything at home saying, are you interested, we’re doing this, this date if you’re interviewing people or whatever, and that didn’t happen.”
Another part of public safety is the fire department. Eckert said, “We support the fire department, they’re crucial to our community. They’re our lifeline. Without them we’d be in deep trouble because we can’t afford to pay have paid fire departments. These guys put in hundreds of hours of training. It’s their own time. They take away from their families. If it’s a Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner, or a birthday party and the alarm goes off. They’re off. SW Johnson does the Friday night fish fries. Butch Babcock always tells me this is really good. I’m there. I’ve been to all of them. It’s a nice time to just be with people and just enjoy the company.
“I’ve gone to Vol Hose when they do their fundraisers and their stuff. I think it’s important to support them that way also because it’s just part of what you know it’s there they raise funds for themselves, for them things that they need that maybe it’s not in our budget or something that they’re going to be able to use that so it’s very important to just be there for them and say here we we’re here to support you and we’ll go to your fundraisers so that you guys can see the community gives back to you.”
Eckert is involved with a volleyball program that does things for charity. It’s called Volley for a Cause. Here’s what Eckert explained about the charity giving event.
You are the incumbent, and as the incumbent it is incumbent upon you to convince the voters they should leave you there. Why should the people vote for you? Only two of the four of you running will win election as trustee. It could be you and Bob, it could be you and Kathleenann, it could be you and Elaine or any combination therein. Why should people vote for you over everybody else?
“They’re going to vote for me because I have a record in the community prior to politics of being active available and caring. I was very visible at all events, prior to politics. This is nothing new. I’m not going to change either. I’m going to, like you said I could win. I could lose. I’m still going to be visible. I’m still going to be active in the community and still planning for law enforcement day. I’ll still be working with the kids and cops, to make sure that continues in the school district. I am still involved with PAL. I was one of the founding members back in 1999. The holiday, our forty-fifth holiday party that we’re planning for already for December will take place and will continue to take place hopefully years after I’m long gone. We do collect, you know, we do get donations, we, this is a party strictly for needy families and children.”
He added, “If You’ve been involved around in in the village or town and, also in the Village of Haverstraw, they would have seen me. I’m, there I’m available to them. I’m here to serve, and that’s been that was ingrained like I said at the beginning with Bishop Walsh if you’re in the community you’re part of the community you’re here to help the community and better that community and that’s what I, that’s my pretty much my platform.”
Another thing that Eckert thinks is a reason people should vote for him is a No Idling bill he introduced.
It’s quality of life stuff. To improve our quality of life. All the members agreed it was to improve our quality of life and reduce our carbon footprint in the world, from vehicles not in motion, have to turn off their engine after 3 minutes. They understand it’s very difficult to enforce. But if one of our code officers observes it. They can address it.
“We use that also as when we put in for grants because that’s one of the things a lot of the grants request asking is what are you doing to better your quality of life.
It’s law in the village. Now, you’ve got Railroad Avenue with this major amount of traffic. Say we get those trucks coming through. You get hit by a train coming by that just starts getting there. Those cargo trains will be 2 to 3 miles long. You’re sitting there for 5, 10 minutes or more. How do you enforce that law in a situation like that? If it’s in the winter, you have to turn into the car and freeze your tail off.
“We’re talking more and I think. You’re right, but that’s you’re in traffic. A lot of the new cars actually turn themselves off and restart. There are cars in places where people just park and keep the car running for hours outside in private streets, that’s what you don’t want to go. That’s, that’s what you want to address. We understand if you’re in traffic and that train comes, that 18-wheeler can’t shut down. Regular cars would be sitting there running.”
Does your law cover that particular incident because technically if an officer wanted to, depending on how the law is written, they could give everybody in that line a ticket who’s been there for 3 minutes idling, regardless of the reason.
“It’s a law that if they’re observing. If you’re waiting for a light, like you’re waiting for a train, you’re not going to shut down your car. You know, it’s you have to have common sense also.”
If you get some overzealous officers or whatever, they’ll start giving out tickets, you know, all I’m saying is that there could be a loophole in that.
“Yeah, it might need to be modified, just to have it, that you’re in a situation where you’re complaining. I waited for the train’s office to give me a ticket for idling for too long. I’ve seen the signs in New York City and they’re in front of hotels and apartment buildings that say, after 5 minutes shut your car, you know, shut your engine. They have the no idling thing there also. I see, and I see people respect it. Even in the winter, if I go down, my daughter lives in the city. I’m there, I turn the car off. I get cold, I’ll turn it on, heat it up, turn it back off again.