Clarkstown Town Board Adopts 2012 Budget & Local Law on Senior Housing

The Clarkstown Town Board adopted the town’s 2012 budget with a 0.4 percent increase and adopted a local law to amend zoning for Hamlet Center Senior Housing at last night's meeting.

The Clarkstown Town Board scheduled two public hearings for the issues. However, residents that hoped to speak on the budget missed their window because they thought the meeting began at 8 p.m. when it actually began at an hour earlier. Only one resident spoke on the second, in which he thanked the town on their efforts with senior housing.

Budget

Supervisor Alex Gromack said the proposed $130 million for 2012 carries a less than one percent tax increase for residents. It was a 0.8 percent increase, but at last night’s meeting, he announced that it was now 0.4 percent.

“In the last few days the comptroller has made a few additional adjustments to the budget. The supplemental budget that was accepted several months ago at .8 percent is now .4 percent,” said Gromack. “It’s been reduced and cut in half. We’ve adopted a budget that has been further reduced.”

Gromack said that the maintains all essential services residents rely on such as highway plowing, police, refuse collection, recreation programs and sewer.

“Going through I think there were some adjustments that were made,” said Gromack. “Calculations on employee benefits, the mortgage tax so we were able to save about $400,000 and that brought it down from .8 to .4.”

The proposed budget would use $1.4 million from the town tax stabilization fund. 

“Roughly our budget, every $100,000 is a tenth of a point so a $1 million is a percent. So between additional information from the state on benefits and some recalculations on mortgage tax that we’re going to accrue, we were able to bring it down even further.”

Senior Housing

The local law that amended chapter 290 (zoning) of was also adopted in respect to hamlet center senior housing. The purpose of the local law is to provide for a town board special permit process for the development of affordable senior housing within all hamlet centers.

“As you know both our 1999 comprehensive plan and our most recently adopted comprehensive plan call for the creation of more affordable housing for seniors," said Town Attorney Amy Mele. "Our current code … provides for affordable housing for senior complexes of 106 units on lots of, I believe, five acres or more in certain zones. The idea is to create a mini-version of that in our hamlet centers so we can have affordable housing for our seniors in our hamlets on a smaller scale. This would provide for the same type of housing that our … (other larger housing complexes offer, such as )… But on 1-2 acres with a similar density."

“This would further the goals of the comprehensive plan and provide a variety of housing options in the towns, plan for additional affordable housing for seniors and expand initiatives in our neighborhoods for appropriately scaled developments," said Town Planner Joe Simoes. "This is on 1-2 acres. We’ve done the GIS analysis and we know more or less where which properties would be have the potential to support this type of development. We think it’s important to have this type of development in hamlet centers because hamlet centers provide the essential goods and services, public transportation and recreational opportunities all within walking distance.”

There are three conditions that this adoption would override, said Mele.

1. "They had suggested that the proposed new section list the contact as either the senior citizen director or the town clerk. We felt it best to keep it the Town of Clarkstown generally so we could change that as we saw fit."
2. "They also suggested that we require some sort of recreation parameters for this type of housing. The reason for the override on that would be we would leave that to the planning board discretion. As you know we do have recreational amenities in many of the hamlet centers now."
3. "Another was simply a reformatting comment that doesn’t necessarily require override since it will probably be taken care of by general code when they reformat in publishing"

Other Resolutions

Also last night, the Town Board authorizing the supervisor to enter into agreements with: 

• H2M Group for engineering services concerning improvements to the Lake Nanuet Pool
 Complex drainage system.
• Mayo, Lunch & Associates in connection with the Congers Lake West Trailway.

The Town Board also passed the following: 

• Accepting roads and improvements from the Sisters of Charity subdivision.
• Authorizing Orange & Rockland Utilities to install lighting on Gladys Drive, New City.
• Authorizing installation of fire lane designation at Little Tor Plaza, 303-305 Little Tor Road.
• Authorizing installation of traffic advisory and regulatory signage on Havermill Road, Rockwood Terrace, Glenwood Road and Thornwood Drive, New City.
• Extending use of the Flexible Spending Account to all employees.