Clarkstown Bonds

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.
• 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.

If you want to do something about it

Two minutes is enough to stop being a bystander:

1. Read what the Town Board approved at its last meetings — the summaries are here.
2. 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.
3. 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.