The official went further, suggesting that people involved in civic reform efforts, online discussion, and charter reform advocacy are effectively trying to “destroy” Mount Vernon for political purposes.

That framing deserves serious attention because it reflects a deeply troubling view of public participation and democratic accountability.

Let’s be clear about something:

Criticizing government is not the same thing as attacking a city.

In fact, in a functioning democracy, criticism of government is one of the highest forms of civic engagement. Residents attend meetings, file FOIL requests, analyze budgets, challenge planning decisions, circulate petitions, and speak publicly because they care about what happens to their community, not because they want it to fail.

People do not spend countless unpaid hours immersed in local government because they want Mount Vernon to “crumble.” They do it because they believe Mount Vernon deserves better.

That distinction matters.

Unfortunately, there has been an increasingly common tendency among some local officials and political allies to conflate criticism of leadership with hatred of the city itself. If someone questions a budget, they are “negative.” If someone criticizes a development proposal, they are “anti-progress.” If someone raises ethics concerns, they are accused of causing division. If someone supports structural reform, they are portrayed as trying to destroy Mount Vernon.

That is not democratic leadership. That is narrative control.

And the irony here is difficult to ignore.

The same officials who insist public criticism creates “chaos” often preside over the very dysfunction residents are reacting to in the first place: political infighting, opaque decision-making, procedural irregularities, performative public engagement, conflicts of interest, financial instability, and institutional dysfunction that residents can plainly observe with their own eyes.

Residents are not inventing these issues. They are responding to them.

The suggestion that public discussion itself is the real problem flips accountability upside down. Under that logic, the issue is not governmental dysfunction. It is the people noticing it.

That is a dangerous mindset for any elected official to hold.

The comment also referenced a supposed “Roger Stone” strategy and implied that criticism of city government is part of some coordinated effort to destabilize Mount Vernon in order to advance charter reform.

But notably absent from the accusation was anything concrete:

• What false information was supposedly spread?
• What specific conduct “destroyed” the city?
• What exactly constitutes “incitement” here?
• Since when is advocating for governmental reform illegitimate in a democracy?

There is a profound difference between disagreement and sabotage.

Residents advocating for charter reform, greater transparency, different planning policies, stronger financial oversight, or structural changes to city government are participating in a process explicitly authorized under New York law. People may disagree with those ideas, strongly, but disagreement does not transform civic participation into some sinister conspiracy.

Nor does criticism become illegitimate simply because it is effective.

What this rhetoric really reveals is something else entirely: discomfort with losing control of the public narrative.

For years, many residents felt shut out of major decisions affecting the future of the city. Increasingly, people are speaking up, asking questions, reviewing documents, comparing statements to public records, and organizing around issues that matter to them. That is not “chaos syndrome.” That is civic engagement.

And frankly, elected officials should welcome it.

A healthy city is not one where residents remain silent out of fear of being labeled “negative” or accused of harming the community. A healthy city is one where people are informed, engaged, skeptical when necessary, and unafraid to challenge power.

Mount Vernon does not become weaker because residents ask hard questions.

It becomes stronger.

A resolution went out with Councilmembers’ signatures attached—including at least one who says he had no idea it was happening.

Not discussed in public. Not voted on. Just done.

Council Member Andre Wallace said it plainly: “Our signatures appear on it… I didn’t know about the resolutions that were being done.”

He wasn’t part of it. He didn’t approve it. He had to call around after the fact to figure out what had already been issued with his name on it.

And the explanation wasn’t a meeting, or a conversation, or anything resembling a public process. It was a text thread. Wallace didn’t respond—and the resolution went out anyway.

That’s the part that matters.

A City Council resolution is not a casual document. It is an official act of government — meant to be introduced, discussed, and adopted in public, with each member’s position reflected transparently on the record. Names don’t appear on resolutions by accident. They represent the consent and participation of elected officials acting in their official capacity.

When a name is added without that person’s knowledge or approval, it is not a procedural shortcut. It is a false representation of agreement in a process that is supposed to be public, deliberate, and accountable.

And it undermines the integrity of the record itself.

On Wednesday, March 25, at the City Council’s legislative session, this issue was raised again when council members were asked to vote on a series of similar resolutions. Wallace stated that he wasn’t going to vote for any of the resolutions because his name had been used without his knowledge or consent. Council President Derrick Thompson did not dispute that the resolution had gone out or the failure of consent. Instead, he argued something remarkable – that this is standard practice—that when an outside organization makes a request (“an ask”), the Council fulfills it, sometimes using pre-submitted signatures, and that historically even blank proclamations were signed and later completed. He further suggested that notice through text messages or general awareness of events was sufficient. Notably, Councilmembers Boxhill and Turnquest-Jones confirmed they were not aware of—and had not approved—the resolution before it was issued.

Thompson’s explanation does not fix the problem. An external “ask” is not authorization. Silence is not consent. And placing a Councilmember’s name on an official act without their knowledge is not a harmless practice—it is a misrepresentation to the public of who actually participated in and supported that action.

Nor are these decisions supposed to be made by text message. City business—especially official acts like resolutions, that become part of Mount Vernon’s official record—is required to be conducted openly, with deliberation and transparency. That is not ‘optional’ or ‘best practice’ – it is the law. A text thread is not a public process.

What’s particularly troubling about this incident is that this wasn’t about anything urgent. It wasn’t legislation or oversight. One of the resolutions at issue praised the Mayor for “transparency,” “accountability,” and “effective leadership.” A lie that didn’t need to happen, didn’t have the required approval, and was forced into “legitimacy” by one man who decided he had the right to act for others.

Just as icing on the cake, all of those resolutions were for honoring people at events that had already taken place the previous week. Retroactive approval, so to speak.

You don’t get to talk about accountability while operating like this. Moreover, if this is how routine matters are handled, it raises serious questions about how Thompson’s council will handle more serious decisions.

Every part of how this happened was wrong, deeply unethical, and raises serious legal concerns. And “this is the way we’ve always done it” is not an explanation – it’s an indictment of a system that has been allowed to operate this way for far too long. It is why people don’t trust the process.

As Council President, Derrick Thompson is now responsible for that process. If he believes this is an acceptable way for a legislative body to conduct business, if he does not see a problem with what happened here, if the best explanation he can offer is “everybody else did it, too,” then he should reexamine his capacity to lead the Council.

Maybe he should reexamine his ability to serve at all.

So, this week, the City Council is plotting to do something first.

They’re preparing to pass a resolution honoring the Mayor for:

• “transparency”
• “accountability”
• “community engagement”
• and “effective leadership”

Before the speech even happens. Before residents hear a single word about the “state” of anything.

Set the Narrative First. Ask Questions Later.

That’s what this is. It’s not actual recognition, because there is nothing to recognize her for.

It is narrative control.

If you’re about to give a State of the City with very little to point to — you don’t walk in cold.

You warm the room first.

You get your cronies to pass a resolution. You call on your sycophants to create the headline:

“Things are going well.”

Then you give the speech.

A Council Devoid of Real Independence

Want meaningless action? You’ve come to the right place!

On Monday, March 23, at the City Council work session, they did, indeed, introduce the aforementioned resolution and they are expected to vote on it tomorrow.

Let that marinate a minute. Because at the exact same time this resolution is moving forward, residents are:

• filing FOIL requests just to figure out where public money is going
• getting incomplete responses, delays, or being told no records exist
• watching spending decisions that don’t pass a basic smell test
• being told “austerity” applies — except when it doesn’t

And the response to all of that is… a ceremonial honor?

Accountability Isn’t Something You Declare

You don’t pass a resolution and suddenly become transparent.

You don’t write the word “accountability” on City letterhead and make it real.

Accountability looks like:

• answering questions the first time they’re asked
• putting complete records in front of the public
• making decisions that can withstand scrutiny

That’s not what residents are experiencing. What they’re experiencing is a government that too often deflects, delays, and then congratulates itself anyway.

This Is Why People Are Frustrated

Because the disconnect between what’s being said and what residents are actually experiencing is no longer subtle.

Residents are raising real, specific concerns:

• Why are basic financial details so hard to get?
• Why are questionable expenditures still being approved?
• Why are prime commercial spaces sitting vacant while revenue is strained?
• Why does “austerity” seem optional depending on who’s asking?

Common-sense questions that deserve clear, direct responses.

But instead of answers, residents get a resolution celebrating how well everything is going, by way of honoring a person who is, arguably, the least effective mayor in New York state.

The Optics Aren’t Just Bad — They’re Revealing

At a time when:

• the City’s own Comptroller warns about bankruptcy in two years “if things don’t change.”
• residents are openly questioning priorities and spending.
• confidence in local government is basically non-existent.

The City Council’s priority is to formally honor the Mayor for “effective leadership.”

That’s not just out of touch.

It tells you exactly how disconnected leadership has become from the people they’re supposed to serve.

Self-Congratulation Disguised as Leadership

Real leadership doesn’t need to be declared.

It shows up in results, transparency, and how a government responds when residents start asking hard questions.

That’s not what’s happening here. That’s never what happens here.

Instead, they waste our money on press conferences, meaningless ceremonies, and self-aggrandizement – all laughably undeserved.

The Bottom Line

The sheer amount of time our elected officials spend celebrating each other, largely on the taxpayers’ dime, is exhausting to watch.

It is self-serving, performative, and the opposite of what good government should look like.

And it stings especially hard in Mount Vernon, where generations of elected leaders have driven this community to the edge of bankruptcy while falling over each other to declare what a great job they’re doing.

If everything were working the way this resolution claims—you wouldn’t need the resolution.

This is not about politics, personalities, or one anomalous budget year.

Mount Vernon is in a structural fiscal emergency, and pretending otherwise is no longer just dishonest – it’s dangerous.

For more than a decade, the City has stumbled from crisis to crisis, relying on tax hikes, expensive short-term borrowing, and accounting improvisation to paper over deeper failures. The result is a government that costs more every year, delivers less, and has lost the basic ability to manage its own finances.

At this point, the question is no longer whether Mount Vernon has a problem.

The question is: Why the State is still allowing it to continue?

Financial Distress – In Real Life, In Real Time

Let’s start with the basics.

Large budget-to-actual variances are a classic warning sign of weak financial controls. When projections routinely miss reality by millions of dollars, budgeting stops being planning and becomes theater.

Mount Vernon’s 2024 Budget vs. Actuals reveal that revenues and expenses missed their targets across multiple major categories — not at the margins, but at levels significant enough to reshape the City’s fiscal picture.

The Collapse of the Fund Balance

Mount Vernon’s fund balance — the municipal equivalent of a rainy-day savings account — fell from a healthy surplus in the early 2010s to a deeply negative position by 2019–2020.

A negative fund balance means the City spent money it did not have — not as the product of a single bad year, a recession, or the pandemic — but as the predictable result of years of unrealistic budgets and weak controls in which the budgeting process ceased to function as a real planning tool.

Long-Term Liabilities vs. Net Position

As cash reserves disappeared, long-term obligations moved in the opposite direction.

Mount Vernon’s bonded debt, accrued benefits, and other long-term liabilities rose sharply over the same period that its net position flipped from positive to deeply negative — a clear signal of structural insolvency, not a temporary cash crunch.

In plain terms: Mount Vernon owes far more than it owns, with no credible plan to close the gap.

Taxes Keep Rising, the System Keeps Failing, and the Numbers Don’t Add Up

Years of outsized property tax increases have not stabilized Mount Vernon’s finances. They have concealed deeper failures while shifting more of the burden onto residents.

Since 2012, the City has routinely overridden the state tax cap, exceeding it by a cumulative 34.73%.

Over just the last five years, residents have absorbed more than 40% in cumulative tax increases, including add-on sewer and garbage fees.

Since 2001, Mount Vernon property taxes have risen 44% faster than inflation.

That is not a revenue problem. It is a governance problem.

Missing Bond Rating, Missing Discipline

Despite ever-higher taxes:

• Mount Vernon still has no bond rating
• It holds no meaningful reserves
• Audits after 2020 remain incomplete
• The City continues to rely on tax anticipation notes — essentially high-interest payday loans — just to operate

Higher taxes are not stabilizing the system. They are feeding a cycle of dysfunction.

The Economy Is Sending a Warning

The most overlooked red flag—and one of the clearest—is sales tax.

Over two years, Mount Vernon’s sales tax collections fell by 7%, even as neighboring cities continued to grow. That is not normal volatility — it signals economic stress and declining commercial activity.

This makes Mount Vernon an outlier – and not in a good way.

Sales tax declines mean fewer transactions, fewer customers, and fewer businesses succeeding locally. It’s what happens when a city is unpredictable, poorly managed, and hostile to investment.

You cannot tax your way out of that.

Unpaid Taxes and Selective Enforcement Are Breaking The System

While residents are asked to pay more, the City is sitting on over $60 million in unpaid property taxes.

Repeated tax amnesties have failed. Standard enforcement tools — including foreclosure — have been applied inconsistently or avoided altogether.

The predictable result is a system in which compliant taxpayers subsidize chronic nonpayment, while leadership sidesteps politically difficult decisions.

The administration wants you to cloak its poor choices in the language of compassion; in truth, those decisions amount to fiscal malpractice.

A Missed ARPA Opportunity

The American Rescue Plan Act delivered $41 million to Mount Vernon — a once-in-a-generation chance to stabilize finances and rebuild trust after COVID.

Instead, Mount Vernon’s ARPA spending revealed the same patterns:

• • Weak documentation
  • Emergency-style decision making
  • Minimal transparency
  • Little connection between spending and measurable outcomes

Taken together, these patterns show a system that does not function the way a responsible government should.

That is why the debate cannot be limited to whether particular purchases were technically “allowed.” The real problem is that the City still lacked basic institutional financial controls when they were needed most.

MVCIP’s ARPA series explores how Mount Vernon squandered this opportunity.

Why a State Financial Monitor Is Necessary

Local self-correction is no longer credible.

A state financial monitor is not punishment — it is damage control.

Effective oversight would:

• Enforce timely audits and reporting
• Require a realistic multi-year financial plan
• Review risky borrowing and major contracts
• Mandate a serious tax enforcement strategy
• Restore credibility with residents, vendors, and markets

Oversight should be temporary, enforceable, and benchmark-driven — with clear exit conditions once the City proves it can govern responsibly.

The Time for “Wait and See” Is Over

Mount Vernon’s current trajectory is unsustainable — last-minute budgets, blown tax caps, and manufactured emergencies are not “governance.”

The State must act now: impose oversight, restore basic controls, and protect residents before a preventable crisis becomes irreversible.

*Figures shown are publicly available at mountvernoncitizen.org. Chris McDonough and mountvernoncitizen.org are not affiliated with the Civic Integrity Project.

If you’ve ever sat through a Mount Vernon City Council meeting, you already know the rhythm.

An item is introduced. There is little to no discussion. “On the question: none. Response: none.” A roll-call vote is taken. Everyone votes yes. Next item. Repeat.

If you’ve felt like the whole thing is theater – that the decisions have already been made before anyone walks into the chamber – we now have the numbers to prove it.

MVCIP analyzed every single roll-call vote recorded in the official 2025 City Council meeting minutes. All 33 meetings. All 497 votes. Every “aye,” every “nay,” every abstention, every absence.

What we found is a legislative body that approves virtually everything put in front of it.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Let’s start with the headline: 98% of everything the Mount Vernon City Council voted on in 2025 was approved. Out of 497 recorded roll-call votes, 487 passed. Only 2 items were defeated the entire year – both at the same meeting (August 13), when only 3 of 5 members showed up and 2 were absent.

One was TMP-1474, a street closure permit for the “Wakanda Complete” event, which all three present members voted to deny. The other was a retroactive travel reimbursement for a First Responders Summit, which Gleason voted down citing her objection to approving expenses after the fact.

That’s it. Those are the only two “no” outcomes the council produced in an entire calendar year of legislating – and both involved a reduced quorum on a single night.

When four or more council members were present, not a single piece of legislation was voted down in all of 2025.

Every contract, every appointment, every budget amendment, every zoning change, every resolution the administration put before this council sailed through. For the entire year.

But the passage rate alone doesn’t capture how uniform the agreement was. Dig one layer deeper and the picture gets worse:

• 93% of all votes were fully unanimous – not a single member dissented, not a single member abstained.
• Only 35 votes out of 497 had any “nay” or abstention at all – and even those still passed.

That means in the rare instances when someone did break ranks, it made no difference. The item passed anyway. Every single time.

A Council That Never Breaks Ranks

The individual voting records are just as striking.

Read that again.

Poteat cast zero “no” votes all year. Not one. Out of 358 votes cast, he voted yes 356 times and abstained twice. That is a 99.4% agreement rate with whatever was put in front of him.

Thompson voted yes 492 times out of 494 votes cast. His single “no” was part of a unanimous denial – meaning even his one act of dissent was in lockstep with everyone else.

Councilperson Gleason, cast the most “nay” votes ( nine in total) – and even she voted yes 97% of the time. Her dissent never changed a single outcome.

Where the Deliberation Should Be

New York State’s Open Meetings Law exists for a reason. Its legislative declaration could not be more clear:

“It is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that the public business be performed in an open and public manner and that the citizens of this state be fully aware of and able to observe the performance of public officials and attend and listen to the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.”

The key word is deliberations. The law does not merely require that the public be allowed to watch votes happen. It envisions that the public will witness how decisions are reached – the questioning, the pushback, the weighing of alternatives, the negotiation.

In Mount Vernon, that process is functionally invisible. The minutes are filled with “On the question: none. Response: none.” Item after item passes without a word of public discussion from the members who are supposed to be scrutinizing it on behalf of over 72,000 residents.

This is not deliberation. It is ratification.

The Slate System: Built to Produce This Result

None of this happens by accident.

In Mount Vernon, city council candidates frequently run on the same electoral ticket as the mayor. They share donors. They share Political Action Committees backing them. They use the same campaign staff, the same lawyers, the same mailers.

They are elected together, funded together, and once in office, they vote together.

Mount Vernon operates under a “strong mayor” form of government. The mayor is the chief executive. She appoints every commissioner. She controls the day-to-day operations of the city. The City Council – the legislative branch, the body that holds the power of the purse – is supposed to serve as a check and balance on that executive power.

A 98% passage rate is not a check. It is a rubber stamp.

This is not a Mount Vernon problem alone. Political scientists have studied this dynamic extensively. The University of Illinois at Chicago has tracked Chicago’s City Council for decades, documenting how mayors from Richard M. Daley to Rahm Emanuel maintained near-unanimous support through political discipline and patronage – what researchers called the “rubber stamp city council.” It took a major political realignment to bring that unanimity rate down and push the council toward functioning as an independent legislative body.

Mount Vernon’s 2025 numbers are worse than what Chicago had under Daley.

What This Costs You

So what? Everyone agrees. What’s harm?

The harm is that you have no functioning legislative oversight of the executive branch of your city government.

Every contract the mayor’s office proposes gets approved. Every appointment goes through. Every budget line item is ratified. The council asks no hard questions – at least not on the record – and no legislation is sent back for revision based on dissent.

When the body that controls the purse strings never says no, there is no accountability. There is no mechanism to catch bad deals, no institutional pressure to negotiate better terms, no public record of anyone asking “is this really the best we can do?”

And Mount Vernon residents are living with the results. The infrastructure failures. The flooding. The broken sewers. The opaque contracts. The settlements negotiated behind closed doors. The tax increases approved in minutes.

These are the outcomes the current system produces.

The council’s job is not to agree with the mayor. The council’s job is to represent you – to ask the questions you would ask if you were in the room, to demand the answers you deserve, and to vote no when the answer isn’t good enough.

That is not happening.

The Predetermined Vote Problem

Here is what may be the most telling pattern in the data. When a council member does occasionally vote no or abstain, the outcome never changes. The remaining members always have enough votes to pass the item anyway.

This raises a serious question: Are the rare dissenting votes genuine acts of independence, or are they permitted precisely because the outcome is already assured?

In political science, this is known as “managed dissent” – allowing individual members to cast a symbolic “no” vote to maintain the appearance of independence, while the group ensures that the item passes regardless. It gives a council member something to point to at election time (“I voted against that!”) without ever threatening the administration’s agenda.

If the votes are truly independent, you would expect to see at least occasional close calls – items that pass 3-2, amendments that get proposed, legislation that gets sent back to committee. None of that happened in 2025.

What Can Be Done

Here is what residents can do:

Call it Out. Acknowledging and calling out the problem is the first step.

Show up. Empty council chambers send a message that no one is watching. Fill the seats. Bring your neighbors. When officials see an engaged public, it changes the calculus.

Demand recorded deliberation. Ask council members, on the record, to explain their votes – especially on contracts, appointments, and budget items. If they cannot articulate why they voted yes, call them out.

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