Clarkstown Bonds
Every borrowing the Town Board has authorised, read from its own published minutes.
From the 32 meetings reviewed on Rockland Minutes.
Authorized by the Town Board · Feb 2025 – Jun 2026
$27,951,271
in new borrowing across 50 authorizations in 32 reviewed meetings. Refunding resolutions, which refinance existing debt rather than add to it, are excluded.
Counts only meetings whose bond lists an editor has reviewed and approved — a floor, not a complete census of town borrowing.
- Largest single
- $6.41M
- Energy Related Improvements to Town Buildings
- Median
- $168K
- Half are larger, half smaller
- Authorizations
- 50
- Across 32 reviewed meetings
- Per meeting
- $873K
- Average across the set
Authorized by year
A year still underway is drawn hatched, because its total is incomplete by definition.
- 2025$20.5M29 bonds
- 2026$7.45M21 bonds · in progress
What borrowing this costs
The town has not published a rate or term for these authorizations — an authorization is permission to borrow, not a completed sale. Set the assumptions yourself and the figures below follow from them.
Interest over a 15-year term
$8,944,407
Repaid in total
$36,895,678
Repaying $27,951,271.06 as a level-principal serial bond at 4.0% over 15 years. Serial bonds are the instrument these resolutions name; the rate and the term are yours.
The Clarkstown debt clock
The debt doesn’t stop when you sleep.
Estimated interest accrued so far
$1,159,680.83
…and counting.
Simple interest at 4% — the rate you set above — counted from each authorization’s own meeting date to right now. That is about $3,063 a day. An estimate for scale, not an accounting: the town has not published a rate for these, and has not reported this figure.
Since you arrived
- Time on this page
- 00:00:00
- Estimated interest added while you’ve been reading
- +$0.00
You can close this page. The clock keeps running.
It doesn’t know who is in office, or which party you support. It measures time and arithmetic. What the money bought is the part you get to judge.
What the borrowing was for
Grouped automatically from the wording of each resolution. This is a reading aid, not an official classification — select a group to see exactly which bonds are in it.
Borrowing isn’t the problem. Borrowing for the wrong things is.
A town borrows so that something expensive can be paid for across the years it is used — a road, a culvert, a roof, a building that will still be standing when the last payment on it clears. The debt and the thing outlast each other honestly, and that is what borrowing is for.
Then there is this. 5 of the 50 authorizations on this page — $407,000 in all — are for technology and software: a class of purchase most organisations budget for rather than borrow for, because it is usually replaced long before a bond raised against it is repaid.
- Time and Attendance Upgrade$120,000Apr 14, 2026
- Audio Visual Display Upgrades for the Clarkstown Police Department$120,000Jun 24, 2025
- Purchase of Software for the Parks and Recreation Department$92,000Jan 13, 2026
- Software Upgrade for the Town's Geographic Information System (GIS)$45,000May 19, 2026
- Purchase of New Multifunction Printer Copiers for the Town Clerk, Supervisor, and Mail & Copy Departments$30,000Feb 10, 2026
Grouped from the wording of each resolution — the same reading aid as above, not the town’s own classification. Each date opens the meeting the authorization came from.
Imagine financing your next laptop over 15 years.
Year 5
You replace the laptop. The payments on the first one carry on without you.
Year 10
You have replaced it again. You are still paying for the one before last.
Year 15
The final payment clears — on a machine that went out with the recycling 10 years ago.
Most households would not do that. Most businesses would not either. Whether a town should is the question this page exists to put — not to answer.
What that means for a household here
Spread across Clarkstown’s 30,663 households, that is about $900 of new borrowing per household — and roughly $1,200 once it is paid off, at 4% over 15 years.
A scale illustration, not a bill: commercial property carries a share of the levy too, so no household is charged this. Household count from Census Reporter, ACS (2024 one-year estimate); the interest is the estimate you set above.
Nobody voted on this
Serial bonds are authorized by a vote of the board, not by a public referendum. This is borrowing that gets repaid for years, approved at meetings most people never hear about — no ballot line, no mailer, no notice beyond the agenda.
That is how the law works for this kind of debt, and it is why the record is worth reading: the meeting is the only place it happens.
Did you notice
- $407,000 of it is technology and software — 5 authorizations for things that are usually replaced before the borrowing behind them is repaid.
- One authorization — Energy Related Improvements to Town Buildings — is $6,410,000 on its own: 23% of everything on this page, approved in a single evening.
- 50 separate authorizations across 32 reviewed meetings — new debt at most of the meetings on the record.
- At 4%, that borrowing runs up roughly $3,063 a day in interest, and $8,944,407 over 15 years — on top of the $27,951,271 borrowed.
Why it never looks like a tax increase
Borrowing does not appear on a tax bill the year it is approved. It appears later as debt service — a fixed line in the budget that has to be paid before anything else, for as long as the bonds run. The borrowing nobody voted on becomes the tax nobody noticed.
Moving a cost out of this year’s operating budget and into a bond does not make it smaller. It changes its address. And it has to be paid, in a future year, before whatever that year turns out to need.
If you want to do something about it
Two minutes is enough to stop being a bystander:
- Read what the Town Board approved at its last meetings — the summaries are here.
- Write to the board with one sentence: please publish our debt per household every year, and adopt a policy against borrowing for equipment and software.
- Go to one meeting, or watch it. Bond resolutions are voted in public, in minutes.
Silence reads as agreement. That is not a complaint about anyone on the board — it is simply what a room with nobody in it says.
Showing 10 matching bonds totaling $7,700,251.06 · Buildings & facilities. Clear search
Every authorization, by meeting
The record behind the figures above: all 50 bonds grouped by year and month, newest first. Each meeting date opens that meeting’s summary.
2026
2026 subtotal: $695,096.06April 2026
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Retain Tremco Roofing to Replace the Highway Department Roof at 12 Seeger Dr. Nanuet | $79,096.06 | Apr 14, 2026 |
| April subtotal | $79,096.06 |
February 2026
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Miscellaneous Minor Building Improvement Projects | $250,000 | Feb 24, 2026 |
| Traphagen Property Lead Abatement and Exterior Painting | $200,000 | Feb 24, 2026 |
| 407 Storms Road, Valley Cottage Lead Abatement and Exterior Painting | $166,000 | Feb 24, 2026 |
| February subtotal | $616,000 |
2025
2025 subtotal: $7,005,155December 2025
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Cul De Sac Building and PD Carport | $39,900 | Dec 18, 2025 |
| December subtotal | $39,900 |
July 2025
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Energy Related Improvements to Town Buildings | $6,410,000 | Jul 22, 2025 |
| July subtotal | $6,410,000 |
June 2025
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Asbestos Abatement at Town Hall Located at 10 Maple Ave, New City | $35,000 | Jun 24, 2025 |
| June subtotal | $35,000 |
May 2025
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Electrical Improvements to the Clarkstown Warehouse | $116,230 | May 6, 2025 |
| Mechanical and Plumbing Improvements to the Clarkstown Warehouse | $204,025 | May 6, 2025 |
| May subtotal | $320,255 |
February 2025
| Bond | Amount | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase of Seating and Related Upgrades for the Auditorium at Town Hall | $200,000 | Feb 25, 2025 |
| February subtotal | $200,000 |