Questions the City Council and Mayor Don’t Want to Answer
It seems like our City Council Members don’t want the public to know when they make a mistake.
Case in point: the Council seriously botched their attempt to radically increase the City’s allowable residential noise limits. After denying they made this mistake for almost a year, they quietly tried to fix it this past June, but flubbed it again.
And when I contacted the Council Members for an explanation, the response was – well, no response actually. We now live in a City where officials feel no obligation to respond to calls or emails from the press.
At the Yonkers Ledger, we strongly believe that public officials have a responsibility to keep the public informed, even when it might be embarrassing. Council Member Anthony Merante is the one standout exception – but, no one else from the City Council or the Mayor’s Office responded to my email requests for comment on puzzling changes to the noise ordinance.
Here is what we have previously reported:
- In October 2023, the City Council passed an amendment to the City’s noise ordinance dramatically increasing permissible noise levels during the day and at night in single family zoned neighborhoods.
- The Council Member who sponsored the legislation failed to disclose that she introduced the legislation after receiving a $1,000 campaign contribution from a constituent with a keen interest in the legislation.
- The proposed amendment was adopted by the full Council without meaningful debate or review.
- The proposed amendment was defectively written and made no sense. Apparently, no one on the Council or the Council’s staff, including several lawyers, read the draft ordinance before the Council approved it.
- Without being resubmitted to the Council for revote, the drafting mistakes were “corrected” and the changes weakening the noise restrictions were placed in the City Code.
- After concerted and sustained public outcry over the new noise standards, on June 25, 2025, the Council, again without meaningful notice or discussion, approved another amendment which adopted the language that “corrected” the faulty originally approved amendment.
- The Council is purportedly now studying the noise ordinance to determine whether additional changes are required.
These facts suggest that the Council failed to do its due diligence in taking up the defective noise ordinance amendment, and that the Mayor’s Office did not catch the mistakes thereafter. The matter has remained unresolved for almost two years.
The legislative process failed here, and none of our elected officials have stepped forward to explain what happened and how they intend to fix the problem. Their collective silence is a passive acknowledgement that mistakes were made, and suggests that they are embarrassed by the truth, and hope that the people of Yonkers are not paying attention.
The residents of Yonkers deserve better.
