In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, things get “curiouser and curiouser.” The same could be said for the misadventures of the Yonkers City Council in its effort to “fix” the city’s noise ordinance, especially because no such fix was ever needed. Instead of improving the existing ordinance, in November of 2023, the Council passed a law that ended up dramatically increasing the permissible decibels allowed in single-family zones to what are considered dangerously unhealthy levels.
To make matters worse, the law that is currently on the books was never actually voted on by the Council. The ordinance that was approved in 2023 was poorly drafted and made no sense, but was then somehow corrected after the fact without resubmission to the Council for a corrective vote.
After an energetic campaign of concerned citizens, the Democratic majority on the Council appeared ready to fix the problem. But on June 22, 2025, instead of simply repealing the current ill-advised ordinance and reinstating the decibel limits that were in the city code before 2023, the Council hastily voted to keep the defective statute in place pending further review.
How It Happened
Thanks mainly to the dogged work of the Quieter Yonkers Coalition, a consortium of community groups dedicated to undoing the noisy cacophony that the City Council facilitated, and the Quieteryonkers.org blog, we at the Yonkers Ledger can provide a detailed chronology of the curious facts that led to Yonkers having one of the most permissive noise ordinances in New York State:
- October 2023: Council Member Tasha Diaz, chair of the Council’s environmental committee, introduces legislation to amend the city’s longstanding noise ordinance. No meaningful public hearings were held. The legislation is never reviewed by noise or health experts. Very few residents are even aware that the change was being proposed.
- Diaz asserted the change was necessary because people were being subjected to excessive or unfair noise complaints arising from reasonable social activity. Diaz did not, however, reveal that she sponsored the legislation upon receiving a $1,000 campaign contribution from a single Yonkers resident who had been the subject of a neighbor’s noise complaints. See NYS campaign filings here.
- November 14, 2023: The Council voted 5–2 to approve the new ordinance. Republican Council Members Anthony Merante and Mike Breen voted “no.” What no one seemed to know was that the ordinance they approved was so flawed as to be unenforceable. The ordinance made no change to residential neighbor-to-neighbor noise limits, which was Diaz’s stated goal. Instead, the ordinance sets two conflicting limits for commercially-generated noise that impacts residential areas, an issue that has never been discussed in public.
- After the vote, the ordinance makes its way into the city code with the drafting errors cleaned up and focused on single-family homes. The new code raised permissible noise levels in single-family residential zones from 55 dBA to 85 dBA during the day, and from 50 dBA to 65 dBA at night—levels far exceeding what health experts consider safe for residential living. (“dBA” is an abbreviation for a sound measurement of decibels adjusted for human hearing.)
- For example, under the new relaxed daytime provisions, noise reaching 85 dBA, which can include gas leaf blowers and loud stereos, is now permissible. At night, the World Health Organization recommends no more than 40 dBA to prevent sleep disturbance, but the new ordinance allows for up to 65 dBA. (The new ordinance doesn’t apply to apartment buildings.)
- December 2023 – January 2024: Concerned residents discover the inconsistency between what was voted on and what was put in the city code..
- February – May 2024: Community concerns intensify. The Quieter Yonkers Coalition is formed, launching an educational campaign and petition drive. Hundreds of residents sign on to demand repeal of the ordinance and restoration of the previous noise protections. Advocates cite health data and urge the Council to take corrective action.
- June 2025: During the primary campaign for City Council President, Council President Lakisha Collin-Bellamy indicates that there was a problem with the noise ordinance and commits to revisiting the issue. She alleges that Council Member Diaz misled the Council when the legislation was originally approved in November of 2023. Council Member Corazon Pineda also commits to changing her 2023 vote.
- The Yonkers Board of Ethics holds a hearing on whether Council Member Diaz’s sponsorship of the legislation and the subsequent correction of the defectively drafted ordinance without a re-vote of the Council violated applicable ethics provisions. The matter is presently pending.
- On June 22, 2025, with no public notice, the Council holds a hastily organized vote to fix the noise ordinance mess. Instead of repealing the defective ordinance and the unexplained mistake in the city’s code, the Council votes to keep the defective noise law in place. Majority Leader John Rubbo assured Council Members puzzled by this sudden move that the city will initiate a study of noise policy – no details provided – that would allow for yet another consideration of the noise ordinance. The vote passes 4–2. Both Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy and Council Member Pineda-Isaac acknowledge the ordinance is problematic but decline to repeal it at that time.
- As of June 29, 2025, 814 residents of Yonkers have signed the Change.org petition demanding that the new noise ordinance be repealed and the old provision reinstated.
Growing Concerns
The Ledger reached out to all Council Members for their comments. We specifically wanted to know if Council Member Diaz was forthcoming with her colleagues when she initially sponsored the legislation back in 2023. We also wanted to know why the Council voted on a clearly defective draft ordinance, and then who edited the defective ordinance without resubmitting it to the Council for re-voting. Finally, we wanted to know why on June 22, 2025, the Council didn’t simply repeal the defective legislation and reinstate the old ordinance, and what their intentions are with respect to fixing the problem they created. [We are currently waiting to hear back from the Council Members.]
There are lessons to be learned here. Yonkers residents can wield significant power if they engage in the political process. Hats off to the Coalition for a Quieter Yonkers. Without the public pressure of the Coalition, the facts of this matter would most likely never have come to light. Moreover, this fiasco raises serious questions regarding the City Council’s and administration’s process for vetting proposed legislation and ensuring they act in the best interests of the residents. Not only was human error involved in the passage of the defective legislation, but there was also a failure of due diligence. The Council rushed to approve the proposed changes to the noise ordinance without understanding its impact, and there is even doubt as to whether any Council Member or the staff read the originally proposed legislation before it was adopted. Moreover, the administration may have compounded the problem by placing a “corrected” version of the ordinance into the city code without a Council revote.
If the City Council wants to rescue itself from its curious trip to Wonderland, it needs to come clean and candidly explain to the citizens of Yonkers what happened. Then, at the very least, the City Council President should apologize for the Council’s apparent failure to appropriately vet the defective and misguided legislation before it was approved.
Disclosure: Peter Cohn is one of the organizers of Quieter Yonkers. He is also a contributor to The Ledger.
