School Board

• Dr. Carleen Evans
• Dr. Lynne Middleton
• Steven Vasquez

Library Board

• Jonathan Michael Davis

School District Budget: Rejected

What happens next on the budget

Under New York law, the school board has two options after a budget defeat. It can put a revised or identical budget up for a revote in June, or it can skip the revote and adopt a contingency budget directly. A contingency budget allows no increase in the tax levy over the prior year. If the board holds a revote and voters reject the budget a second time, the district must adopt a contingency budget.

A note from the Integrity Project

The Mount Vernon Civic Integrity Project congratulates the winners.

That includes our board member Steven Vasquez, who will step down from MVCIP’s board under our bylaws, which bar elected officials from serving on it.

Running for public office is not easy, especially for unpaid volunteer positions. We thank everyone who ran and wish the winners well as they work to improve governance in Mount Vernon.

To quote the American political scientist Larry J. Sabato:

“Every election is determined by the people who show up.”

So get your tush off the couch and vote. Bring a neighbor. Bring a friend.

On the ballot:

• Three School Board seats
• The school budget (which includes a proposed 2% property tax increase)
• One Library Board seat

Why should you vote?

Because it is the right thing to do. Without people showing up, we cannot have a functioning democracy or functioning institutions. People have fought hard for your right to vote. Exercise it.

Beyond that:

• The school board oversees the school district that educates Mount Vernon’s children.
• The library board oversees the Mount Vernon Public Library, one of the few civic spaces left in our community.
• Both institutions are spending your tax dollars, whether you rent or own. The school budget alone is roughly two-thirds of your property tax bill.

Here are the candidates

Mount Vernon School Board

• John Woodbury
• Keith Chisolm
• Gwendolyn Janelle Albritton
• Warren Mitchell
• Lynne Middleton
• Carleen Evans
• Steven Vazquez

Mount Vernon Library Board

• Jonathan M. Davis
• Hope Marable
• Faith A. Walters

If you want to learn more about the candidates, there were public forums for both:

School board candidate forum

Library board candidate forum

Your vote really counts here

Voter participation in school and library board elections is historically very low. The library board election hovers around 3%, and the school board election runs about 6 to 8%.

In a race that small, your vote really counts.

MVCIP is a non-profit organization and does not support or endorse individual candidates.

Regardless of who or what you support, please take a few minutes tomorrow to vote. Encourage your neighbors, friends, and family to do the same.

Polling station: You should have received a card in the mail, usually your neighborhood school. We were told all Mount Vernon residents can also vote at City Hall.

The Mount Vernon Public Library’s bylaws say no. The State Education Department says no. Hope Marable says yes. And the library board she presides over has spent the last week trying to engineer a workaround so that her name appears on the May 19 ballot.

What the State Said

On April 21, 2026, the Office of Counsel for the New York State Education Department wrote to Terry Kirchner, Director of the Westchester Library System, of which the Mount Vernon Public Library is a member. The letter, signed by Counsel & Deputy Commissioner Daniel Morton-Bentley, runs three short paragraphs. The operative paragraph is unambiguous:

“It is the opinion of the Board of Regents and the Department that Ms. Marable served the entirety of the term in which she was removed. To hold otherwise would reward a trustee who was found to have neglected her duty and failed to carry out the educational purposes of the institution.”

The closing instruction reads: “Please apprise the board of this determination.”

This is the agency that interprets New York’s library statutes, oversees library bylaws, and removed Marable from this library board in 2023, ruling now on the question Marable has spent months trying to escape.

It counted. The State said so. In writing.

The Theory the Letter Demolished

Until April 21, Hope Marable’s defense was simple. The Board of Regents removed her in February 2023, before the end of her first term, and so, she argued, she did not “serve” that term in full. The two-consecutive-terms cap in Article IV, Section 4(b) of the Library bylaws therefore did not apply to her, and a third run was open. That theory was the basis for her present candidacy.

The April 21 letter ended it. The State Education Department ruled, in writing, that she “served the entirety of the term in which she was removed.” Resolution #035-26, the library board vote that repealed term limits, did not even try to argue that Marable’s first term was partial. By April 22 that argument was over.

The board needed a new one.

So Resolution #035-26 argued that the term-limit bylaw itself was never lawful. Its WHEREAS clauses claim that Article IV, Section 4(b) of the Library’s bylaws was “derived from” Education Law § 225, that § 225 “does not apply to this Board,” and that the bylaw was therefore “inconsistent with governing law.”

If that were true, the State Education Department’s April 21 letter, written by State Counsel about that exact bylaw, was the place to say so. It didn’t. The State Education Department treated the bylaw as binding, applied it to Marable, and confirmed she has served two full terms.

Put plainly: the legal theory the board ratified at 7 p.m. on April 22 was contradicted by the State, in writing, on letterhead, the day before.

Was the Library Board Vote Even Legal?

No.

Article XII(a) of the Library’s bylaws is explicit: “Amendments to these Bylaws may be proposed at any Board meeting and shall be voted upon at the next regularly scheduled Board meeting.” A vote on a bylaw amendment has to happen at a regular Board meeting.

April 22 was not one. The BoardDocs entry identifies it, in its own header, as a “Finance Working Session,” with the bylaw item categorized under “Policy & Governance Review Discussion.” A bylaw amendment with permanent governance consequences was placed on a working-session agenda alongside finance items, voted on by the assembled trustees, and treated as final.

The board’s only available answer is Resolution #034-26, the two-thirds suspension of Article XII(a). Read its language. It suspends the rule “which requires that proposed amendments be voted upon at the next regularly scheduled meeting, for the purpose of considering and acting upon proposed Bylaw amendments at this meeting of Wednesday, April 22, 2026.”

The board’s own resolution admits, in writing, that April 22 was not the next regularly scheduled meeting. They had to suspend the rule that says the vote has to happen at one. Otherwise, there was nothing to suspend.

That suspension does not work. Article XII(b) authorizes the temporary suspension of a rule “in connection with business at hand.” It does not authorize a board to manufacture a regular Board meeting by declaring one. It cannot be used to defeat the very public-notice purpose of the rule it suspends. The waiting period in XII(a) is the public’s protection. It is the window in which a community sees a bylaw change coming, raises objections, and shows up. Suspending the protection in order to slip an amendment past the public is not a use of XII(b). It is the abuse of XII(b) that XII(a) was written to prevent.

The April 22 vote was illegal.

The bylaw repeal it produced has no force. Article IV, Section 4(b), “No Trustee shall serve more than two (2) consecutive full terms,” is still the law of the Mount Vernon Public Library. It still applies. And the State has now confirmed that it applies to Hope Marable.

The Letter They Hid

The April 21 letter was sent to the Director of the Westchester Library System because that is the channel through which the State Education Department reaches local library boards. WLS provides shared services, technical guidance, and administrative liaison to its member libraries. “Please apprise the board” is not a courtesy phrase; it is the standard instruction the State gives the system through which a local trustee board is supposed to be informed.

The next afternoon the board scheduled the bylaw repeal as Item 6.A on a Finance Working Session agenda, used a two-thirds suspension to compress a proposal and a vote into one sitting, and approved the repeal. The agenda item exists because the letter exists. The vote was the response to the letter.

They did not disclose it. New York Public Officers Law § 103(e) requires public bodies to make records “scheduled to be the subject of discussion” at an open meeting available to the public, to the extent practicable, prior to or at the meeting. The provision was added in 2012 specifically to prevent boards from voting on matters with documents the public never sees. A written State opinion, addressed to the parent library system, on the precise bylaw question being voted that night, fits the description in every respect.

The April 22 BoardDocs entry posted the suspension resolution and the repeal resolution. It did not post, mention, or describe the letter.

That is not an oversight. It is the entire point. A board that disclosed the letter could not credibly hold the vote. So the board held the vote and did not disclose the letter.

Trustee Loretta Thomas

Trustee Loretta Thomas was the only member to vote no on Resolution #035-26. Hers was the right vote on the merits.

Residents are entitled to ask Trustee Thomas a single question: did you have the April 21 letter, or know of its contents, before the April 22 vote? Either answer is informative. If she did, the question becomes why the board’s lone dissenter felt she could not put the letter on the record. If she did not, the question becomes why the rest of the board apparently did, and she alone was kept out of the loop while the workaround was prepared.

Trustee Thomas is in a position to tell the public what she knew and when. She should.

The Sister Problem

The Mount Vernon City School District administers the library trustee election. The District Clerk receives nominating petitions. The Board of Education places candidates on the ballot.

The President of that Board of Education is Dr. Donna Marable, Hope Marable’s sister.

Before April 21, a school district sympathetic to Hope Marable could plausibly call the term-limit question contested. After April 21, that posture collapses.

With a State Education Department opinion in hand stating that the candidate has served two consecutive full terms, there is no honest path for the school district to place Hope Marable on the May 19 ballot.

What Comes Next

A resident has already written to the Mount Vernon City School District Clerk and to the Board of Regents asking that Marable’s nominating petition be rejected.

Two things should happen now.

First, the Mount Vernon City School District should not place Hope Marable on the May 19 ballot. The legal question has been answered.

Second, the Board of Regents should make public, in its own voice, what its Counsel said in writing on April 21. The public is entitled to hear directly from the body whose authority is being defied.

What You Can Do

The petition filing deadline is Wednesday, April 29. The window for the school district to do the right thing closes that day.

Before then, contact the Board of Education. Ask them, on the record, whether Hope Marable will appear on the May 19 ballot, and whether Dr. Donna Marable has recused herself from that decision. Their answers, or their refusal to answer, belong on the public record.

Contact the Library Board. Ask the trustees who voted on April 22 whether they had been told of the State’s April 21 letter before they voted, and why the letter was not posted to BoardDocs alongside the resolutions.

Attend the scheduled ‘Library Town Hall’ on May 4 at 6.30pm. Public comment is on the agenda. Use it.

Talk to your neighbors. The library budget is on the May 19 ballot. So is the trustee election. So are the people who voted on April 22.

Mount Vernon residents deserve public officials who act ethically, follow the law, and represent their interests. The way to get them is to pay attention. Now is the time.

A lot of people have real, valid questions about how elections work, and how the different elections are connected (or not).

Some people we spoke with didn’t know about the upcoming school and library board elections, which will decide whether our taxes go up, AGAIN.

None of this is unusual. The system isn’t always explained clearly. Sometimes by design.

So, here’s a simple breakdown.

There Isn’t Just One Election

In Mount Vernon, elections usually happen at three different times:

• May → School Board & Library Board Elections
• June → Primary Elections
• November → General Election

Each one is different.

School Board & Library Board Elections (May)

This year, the School and Library Board Elections are May 19, 2026. These are often the least talked about, but they matter, a lot.

These elections decide:

• School Board members
• Library Board members
• School and library budgets

Key things to know:

• These elections are nonpartisan (no party labels like Democrat or Republican)
• Anyone eligible to vote may vote
• Turnout is usually low, so a small number of votes can make a big difference

Reality Check:

If you’ve never voted in one of these, you’re not alone, but if you’re still planning on sitting this one out, here’s what you should know:

• This year’s proposed school budget includes a 2% tax increase
• School taxes are typically the largest single component of property tax payments
• In Mount Vernon, school taxes represent well over 50% of our property tax bill

Only 2,538 people voted in the 2025 School Board election, an election that gave us three new board members and increased our taxes by 3.3%.

So, when you sit out these elections, you are forfeiting your right to have a say in the largest portion of your tax levy.

Primary Elections (June)

This year, the Primary Election is June 23, 2026. Primaries are where political parties choose their candidates. Democrats pick their candidates, Republicans pick theirs.

Key things to know:

• Primaries are party-specific
• In New York state, party primaries are closed
  • That means you must be registered with a party to vote in that party’s primary
• For many local offices, the primary is the election that matters

Reality Check:

If you’ve never voted in a primary, you’re not alone, but here’s what you should know:

• In Mount Vernon, local races are effectively decided in the Democratic primary
• Those who win the Democratic primary usually go unopposed in the November general election
• There hasn’t been a Republican candidate or a Republican primary for Mount Vernon local offices in decades
• According to the Westchester County Board of Elections, there are 41,058 active voters in Mount Vernon:
  • 29,108 Democrats
  • 8,120 Non-Affiliated
  • 2,619 Republicans
  • 1,211 Other

That means that nearly 12,000 voters are shut out of the election that determines who holds local office.

• Less than 5,000 people voted in the 2025 Democratic primary

General Election (November)

This year, the General Election is November 3, 2026. This is the election that is most familiar to people and so, the one most people pay attention to.

• This is where:
  • The winners from the primaries face off
  • All voters get to choose among them

Key things to know:

• Everyone who is registered can vote
• Party affiliation does not matter, voters can choose whichever candidate most appeals to them
• The election includes:
  • City, State, and Federal offices
  • Any ballot proposals, initiatives, and reforms

This is the final decision-making election.

Reality Check:

In Mount Vernon, for local offices, the General Election is merely a certification of the Democratic primary results.

• Democratic primary winners generally run unopposed
• Most primary winners don’t even bother campaigning once the primary is finished

Wrap Up and Final Thought

There are three different elections that happen at different times, have different rules and involve different kinds of positions. So, it’s completely normal for people to ask, “Can I vote in this one?” “Is this the real election?” “Why didn’t I hear about this?”

Those are all fair questions, and we hope that we have answered them.

These systems weren’t designed to be simple, but participating in them shouldn’t feel confusing or out of reach.

But you can’t play if you’re not in the game, so the most important thing you can do right now is REGISTER TO VOTE.

The more people understand how it works, the more power stays where it belongs: with the voters.