Mount Vernon is preparing to spend as much as $955,000 to rewrite its zoning code, prepare new zoning maps and complete a Generic Environmental Impact Statement.
That is a major undertaking. It will help determine what can be built, where it can be built and how Mount Vernon develops for years to come.
It is also a lot of taxpayer money.
So you would expect the City to have a substantial paper trail showing how it selected the consultant receiving that money.
Instead, after a resident asked for the records behind the award, the City’s answers have raised more questions than they have answered.
Why did Mount Vernon select a consultant whose proposed fee was $135,000 higher than the second-ranked firm when only 1.9 points separated their scores?
What happened to the fourth proposal?
Who was the fifth member of the committee that was supposed to review the proposals?
When did the reviewers actually meet?
What happened during the consultant interviews?
Were prices ever negotiated?
And perhaps most importantly: Where are the records demonstrating that the City followed the required process before committing nearly $1 million in public money?
Four Proposals. Only Three Ranked.
On August 17, 2026, the City Council approved the selection of Interboro Partners LLC for the zoning-code project.
The proposed contract is not to exceed $955,000.
According to records produced by the City in response to a Freedom of Information Law request submitted by Mount Vernon resident and professional planner Vince Ferrandino, AICP, four firms responded to the City’s request for proposals.
But the evaluation records Ferrandino received showed rankings for only three.
The fourth team — identified in Ferrandino’s correspondence as the Greenwoods team — was not included in the rankings he received.
Ferrandino asked a straightforward question: Who decided to exclude that proposal, and why?
He also requested copies of all four proposals.
Those documents matter.
The proposals would allow the public to compare precisely what each consultant offered: its proposed scope of work, qualifications, staffing, references, timetable and, critically, price.
Yet as of Ferrandino’s latest correspondence, he says the City still had not provided them.
That omission becomes particularly significant when the scoring and prices of the two highest-ranked firms are compared.
1.9 Points. $135,000.
According to Ferrandino’s review of the City’s evaluation records, Interboro finished only 1.9 points ahead of second-ranked ZoneCo.
Their proposed prices were considerably farther apart.
$135,000 difference. Just 1.9 points separated their scores.
A higher-priced proposal is not necessarily a worse proposal. Professional-service contracts should not automatically go to the lowest bidder. Qualifications, experience, methodology and other factors can justify paying more.
But that makes the City’s documentation more important, not less.
If Mount Vernon concluded that Interboro’s proposal was worth an additional $135,000 despite the two firms receiving nearly identical evaluation scores, taxpayers should be able to see the record supporting that conclusion.
Ferrandino specifically asked what rationale supported choosing the more expensive firm. He also asked whether either firm was asked to revise its fee and whether any negotiations occurred before the selection.
The City’s September 25 response did not provide such records.
Instead, the City stated broadly that it had reviewed the records maintained in connection with the matter and had:
“no additional responsive records addressing the matters raised.”
For a procurement approaching $1 million, that answer raises a much larger question about what was documented while the decision was being made.
Who Was the Fifth Reviewer?
There is another unexplained discrepancy.
According to Ferrandino, the City’s RFP called for a five-person screening/advisory committee to evaluate the proposals.
The information produced to him identified only four reviewers.
He asked for the name and title of the fifth.
The email chain reviewed by MVCIP does not show that question being answered.
Ferrandino also asked for the date on which the proposal reviews occurred.
Again, the City’s September 25 response said there were no responsive records concerning that request.
Think about what that means.
A committee evaluated and scored proposals for a contract worth as much as $955,000, yet based on the City’s FOIL response, it apparently cannot produce a record establishing when that evaluation occurred.
Interviews — But Apparently No Minutes
The interview process is no clearer.
The evaluation materials reviewed by Ferrandino apparently assigned all three ranked firms a zero for interviews.
That prompted another obvious question: Were the firms actually interviewed?
There were interviews, at least according to the City’s subsequent responses.
The City told Ferrandino that a City Council-related meeting occurred on July 27, 2026, but said there were no meeting minutes.
For the Mayor, the City eventually provided one specific piece of information:
“The Mayor participated in a Zoning Ordinance interview with Interboro Partners LLC on June 29, 2026, at 3:30 p.m. in the Mayor’s Conference Room.”
But the City said there were no other responsive records and again stated that no meeting minutes were maintained.
Ferrandino had requested the dates and times of interviews, the participating Council members, rankings and ratings arising from those interviews, and records reflecting the Mayor’s preference.
The City says the minutes do not exist.
So taxpayers are left with evidence that interviews occurred, evaluation sheets apparently showing zeros for interviews, and little documentation explaining what role those interviews actually played in the selection.
Did Anyone Negotiate the Price?
This may be one of the most consequential unanswered questions.
With only 1.9 points separating Interboro and ZoneCo, but $135,000 separating their proposed fees, Ferrandino asked whether the City attempted to negotiate.
Were the firms asked to revisit their prices?
Was Interboro asked whether it could reduce its $955,000 proposal?
Was ZoneCo given further consideration because of its substantially lower price?
Were the two finalists interviewed again?
The records produced so far apparently do not answer those questions.
There is an important legal distinction here.
FOIL generally requires government to provide existing records. It does not require officials to answer interrogatories or create explanations that were never reduced to a record.
But that distinction does not solve the City’s problem. It exposes it.
The issue is not whether FOIL can force City Hall to invent an explanation after the fact.
The issue is whether City Hall documented the procurement while it was happening.
Even the RFP Advertising Records Became a Problem
Ferrandino also requested records showing where and when the zoning RFP was advertised.
The initial production apparently included the wrong procurement notice — a notice for the City’s Road Safety Action Plan, rather than the zoning-code RFP.
Ferrandino flagged the error and asked for the correct notice, evidence of where it was published and the dates of publication.
It is one more seemingly routine component of a public procurement that became difficult to reconstruct through the City’s records.
Where Is the Money Coming From?
The City has provided at least some information about financing.
According to its September 17 FOIL response, $250,000 is expected to come from a New York State Pro-Housing grant.
The remaining $705,000 would be City-funded.
The City also said there had been discussion of the Mount Vernon Industrial Development Agency contributing another $50,000, which would reduce the City’s share to $655,000, but that the IDA had not yet approved that funding.
The City said it had budgeted more than $400,000 in 2026 so funding would be available if the project began sooner.
But Ferrandino also requested the underlying Pro-Housing funding application and approval records.
According to his subsequent correspondence, those records had not been produced.
Nor, as of the correspondence reviewed by MVCIP, had the City produced an executed Interboro contract.
On September 17 — exactly one month after the Council approved the selection — the City said no contract had yet been executed.
Ferrandino also noted that the original RFP contemplated the project getting underway months earlier, in June 2026.
“No Additional Responsive Records”
Some of Ferrandino’s requests asked for records. Others asked the City to answer questions — why a bidder was omitted, why one consultant was chosen over another or whether officials negotiated a lower price.
Those are not the same thing under FOIL.
But the City’s responses create a much larger problem.
For several issues, the City did not merely decline to answer Ferrandino’s questions.
It said records apparently do not exist.
- No minutes for the screening committee meetings.
- No minutes for the July 27 meeting.
- No minutes for the Mayor’s interview.
- No additional records concerning several aspects of the selection process.
And documents that unquestionably should exist — including the four proposals submitted in response to the City’s own RFP — had, according to Ferrandino’s October correspondence, still not been produced.
By October 1, Ferrandino was asking whether Planning Commissioner James Rausse had finally supplied the missing contract and procurement documents.
Days later, he was still asking.
At that point, this stopped being merely a dispute over a FOIL response.
It became a question about the procurement itself.
A Million-Dollar Contract — and No Record Showing the Rules Were Followed
This is about more than transparency.
It is about whether Mount Vernon can demonstrate that it followed its own procurement requirements before committing nearly $1 million in public money.
The City should be able to produce a procurement file showing exactly how this contract moved from solicitation to selection: where the RFP was advertised, every proposal received, who evaluated them, when they evaluated them, how each proposal was scored, what happened during the interviews, how the final selection was made and what negotiations occurred before the price was accepted.
Instead, the record produced so far has holes at nearly every critical stage.
Four proposals. Only three ranked.
Five required reviewers. Only four identified.
Consultant interviews. No minutes.
Interview scoring. Apparently zero.
$135,000 price difference. No produced record showing whether the price was negotiated.
Four proposals requested under FOIL. Still not produced.
Perhaps there are innocent explanations for every one of those discrepancies.
But explanations are not a procurement record.
And that is the problem.
The question is no longer simply whether Mount Vernon chose the best consultant.
Government does not get to spend $955,000 first and ask the public to trust that the proper process occurred somewhere off the books.
The records are supposed to establish that.
If the City followed every applicable procurement requirement, it should be able to demonstrate it.
If the fourth proposal was properly eliminated, there should be a record showing why.
If five people were required to review the proposals, the City should be able to identify all five.
If interviews were part of the evaluation, the record should show what happened and how they affected the selection.
If officials determined that Interboro’s proposal justified paying $135,000 more than ZoneCo’s, the procurement file should document the evaluation that led to that result.
Instead, after weeks of requests, the City has produced a record so incomplete that the public cannot independently determine whether those safeguards were followed.
That distinction matters.
The City has not merely failed to explain why it is spending $955,000. It has failed, so far, to produce the records necessary to demonstrate that the process used to spend it complied with the rules.
In the end, another big contract. Another questionable paper trail. And the same absence of basic policies, procedures and spending controls that has defined the Patterson-Howard administration.
For a government entrusted with nearly $1 million in taxpayer money, “trust us” is not proof of compliance.
The paper trail is.
And right now, Mount Vernon cannot produce it.