Illegal shortcut defies Clarkstown barricades
By Hema Easley • LoHud.com
Clarkstown's Highway Department is learning that whatever it does to stop an illegal shortcut that connects New Square and Addison Boyce Drive in the hamlet, people will find a way around it.
Over the years, the town has built cable guide rails, steel guide rails, concrete barriers and other obstacles to prevent entry into the dead-end street from a patch of woods that backs into the Ahavas Chaverim Gemilas Cheseda yeshiva in New Square. But each of the barriers was either destroyed or moved.
Highway Department officials have seen tire marks coming from a woodland road in onto Addison Boyce Drive. They think the guide rails flanked by concrete posts were removed by heavy machinery.
Joel Epstein, the town's code enforcement officer, is angered by the actions.
"They are performing a criminal act. They are tampering with a traffic device," Epstein said.
The problem is that Clarkstown authorities don't know who "they" are.
Some residents of Addison Boyce Drive, a sparsely populated, woodsy neighborhood with just a half-dozen houses and Hillcrest Elementary School on the street, said they've seen men in traditional black Hasidic dress drive around the barriers. They say they think someone from New Square removed the barriers.
"Who else would make a pathway to go through that?" said Coy Perkins, who has lived on the street for nine years.
Israel "Izzy" Spitzer, deputy mayor and spokesman for the New Square administration, did not return two telephone calls for comment.
On Wednesday afternoon, two men who said they worked at the New Square yeshiva said they knew nothing about the illegal shortcut or who might be using it.
Two women walking on an adjoining street in New Square said they also were unaware of the problem.
No one would give his or her name.
If people are using the illegal shortcut, it's easy to understand why.
While Addison Boyce Drive is just a few hundred feet from the Hasidic village, an alternative route between the two is circuitous and several miles long, forcing people to drive to Route 45 in Ramapo.
But the illegal shortcut isn't the only problem.
The 2.7-acre lot in the woods at the end of Addison Boyce Drive, which falls within Clarkstown, has become a dumping ground for construction debris and other trash. The owner of the property is the yeshiva, which pays $157 in taxes to the town annually.
Plastic bottles, broken trash cans and a broken toilet, baby bottles, milk crates, pieces of blacktop, cinder blocks, old carpeting, an awning and construction debris could be seen during a walk through the area Wednesday. A fire had been lit in the area, evident from several scorched trees.
A log compiled by the Clarkstown Highway Department indicates the problem of the illegal shortcut came to the town's attention about a year and a half ago, following reports of trucks driving down Addison Boyce Drive.
The town replaced the existing barricade with a guardrail, only to find out last summer that it had been removed.
It replaced two sections of the guide rail and, as an added measure, installed two concrete blocks on the side.
In August, a postal carrier reported that the blocks had been removed and dragged down the street.
The problem resumed in April, when Clarkstown police found broken guardrails and fresh tire tracks. This month, the Highway Department installed three large concrete blocks at the end of the dead-end street.
People wishing to legally connect the yeshiva or the village to the Clarkstown street must request a road-opening permit to be issued by the Highway Department.No application for such a permit has been filed with the town, said Nancy Willen, assistant to Highway Superintendent Wayne Ballard.
[Hat Tip: HaNavon.]