Part 1: What Is the IDA, What Are PILOTs — and Why Should You Care?

Part 2: Why Mount Vernon is Different – and Why That Matters

Part 3: Campaign Money, Conflicts, and the Machine That Runs Mount Vernon’s IDA

Part 4: A Way Forward — Oversight, Reform, and Real Accountability

The Problem Is Systemic: The Solution Must Be Too

Over the course of this series, we have documented a system that is profitable for a few and deeply corrosive for everyone else. The Mount Vernon IDA has given away $44.4 million in tax revenue over ten years: $26.7 million from schools, $13.3 million from the city, and $4.4 million from the county.

In return, Mount Vernon received low-income housing developments that generate minimal tax revenue, create no permanent jobs, and impose long-term service costs that residents and businesses outside the PILOT agreements must absorb.

We showed that the IDA’s governance is the weakest of any comparable agency in the state (Part 2). That its portfolio has been captured by residential housing rather than the industrial and commercial development it was created to promote (Part 2). That its oversight is functionally absent (projects go unchecked, PILOT payments go uncollected, state reporting goes unfiled, Parts 1 and 2). And that the political ecosystem sustaining it (campaign contributions flowing between developers and the politicians who control the IDA) ensures that internal reform is extremely unlikely (Part 3).

The question now is simple: What can actually be done?

The answer involves three interconnected strategies: state legislation that changes the rules, a proven oversight model that can be replicated, and sustained community engagement that refuses to accept the status quo.

None of these alone is sufficient. Together, they can restore accountability.

Why Local Reform Isn’t Enough

Let’s be clear about why hoping for reform from within the Mount Vernon IDA is not a strategy. The agency’s structure creates what the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany has called a “perverse incentive.” The IDA earns administrative fees from approving deals. It does not earn fees from rejecting them. The board members are appointed by the mayor with no confirmation process, no term limits, and no mandatory qualifications. The chair is the mayor herself. The agency has every financial and political reason to say yes to developers, and no structural reason to say no.

This is not a personnel problem. It is an architectural one. You could replace every person on the board tomorrow and the outcomes would likely be the same, because the incentives haven’t changed. The board exists to approve deals. That’s what it does. That’s what it will continue to do unless the rules are changed from outside.

A decade ago, the New York State Comptroller audited the Mount Vernon IDA and issued recommendations for improvement. Those recommendations were largely ignored. The same problems the Comptroller identified (weak documentation, missing records, uncollected payments, unverified job claims) persist today.

The Mount Vernon school board, to its credit, passed a resolution in 2025 affirming that “only a duly elected school board should have the authority to abate school tax revenues.” That resolution was important. It established a principle: the people responsible for educating children should have a say in whether their funding is given away.

Melinda Person, President of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), put it simply: “Every community deserves both affordable housing and well-funded public schools, not one at the expense of the other.”

But the school board’s resolution, however principled, has no legal force. Without state law, it is a letter asking the IDA to behave differently. And the IDA has shown, repeatedly, that it is not inclined to behave differently on its own.

State Legislation That Could Change Everything

The good news is that New York’s legislature has recognized the problem. Several bills are moving through Albany that could fundamentally alter the IDA landscape, not just in Mount Vernon, but statewide.

One bill, sponsored by Sen. Shelley B. Mayer, would give county comptrollers the authority to audit IDA projects. Right now, IDAs in much of the state operate without any meaningful local audit authority looking over their shoulder. The bill has passed the state Senate unanimously twice, which signals broad recognition that IDAs need outside eyes. It now needs to move through the Assembly.

A second bill from Sen. Mayer would change the composition of IDA boards. Every IDA would have to include at least one local labor representative and either a school district superintendent or a school board representative. A version of this bill passed the Senate last year but stalled in the Assembly. It’s back this session in amended form.

If that bill becomes law, the Mount Vernon IDA’s four-member, mayor-controlled board would have to expand to include voices from labor and the school district. For the first time, the body that votes on tax giveaways affecting school revenue would include people accountable to the workers and educators most directly affected by those decisions.

A third bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Solages, would create a public, searchable database of all IDA subsidies across New York State. Right now, IDA data is scattered across individual agency websites and local records, when it’s reported at all. There is no single place where a resident, journalist, or researcher can look up how much their IDA has given away, to whom, and whether the promised benefits materialized. Transparency is the baseline. Without it, accountability is impossible.

A fourth bill, from Sen. Jeremy Cooney, would address how PILOT properties are treated under the property tax cap. The underlying problem matters for cities like Mount Vernon: PILOT-heavy portfolios constrain the city’s ability to raise revenue from non-PILOT properties. The system doesn’t just reduce revenue from subsidized properties; it limits the city’s ability to make up the difference. A prior version of this proposal was vetoed by Gov. Hochul. The current version is still working its way through committee.

An October 2025 report by Reinvent Albany and Cornell’s State Policy Advocacy Clinic argues that some IDA-backed housing projects may be constitutionally vulnerable under Article VII, Section 8 of the New York Constitution, though that question is not settled law. Mount Vernon’s IDA portfolio, dominated by residential PILOTs, would be squarely in the path of any court that ever embraced that argument.

The Orange County Precedent: A State Monitor That Works

The most powerful argument for external oversight is not hypothetical. It already exists. And it’s working.

In 2024, Senator James Skoufis secured a state-appointed monitor for the Orange County IDA through the state budget process. The appointment followed a corruption scandal that resulted in criminal charges against IDA leadership. But the monitor’s role goes beyond cleaning up past misconduct. It establishes a model for ongoing, real-time oversight of an IDA by an independent professional accountable to the state, not to local politicians.

On March 25, 2024, Brian Sanvidge was appointed as the Orange County IDA’s independent monitor. Sanvidge is a certified inspector general and certified fraud examiner with over 30 years of experience. His appointment is for a three-year term. Critically, the monitor’s reasonable expenses are paid by the IDA itself, not by taxpayers.

The monitor’s powers are substantial and concrete. He attends all IDA meetings. He reviews all tax break packages before they are approved. He can veto incentive packages that do not meet standards. He requires policy changes. He is state-appointed, independent of local officials, and accountable beyond the reach of the local political ecosystem he is overseeing. This is not a figurehead role. It is real oversight with real enforcement power.

And Sanvidge has used that power. When the Orange County IDA attempted to fast-track a $607 million Amazon warehouse project, the monitor vetoed the incentive package. The reason? The IDA had not sufficiently considered the impact on taxpayers. The analysis was inadequate. The deal wasn’t ready. The monitor said no.

The IDA’s response to the monitor proved exactly why the monitor was needed. The IDA board spent $100,000 of IDA funds on lobbyists in an attempt to eliminate the monitor’s position. One hundred thousand dollars (money that should have gone to community benefit) spent trying to remove the one person providing genuine oversight. The effort failed. The monitor remains in place.

Mount Vernon’s IDA exhibits the same patterns that justified the Orange County monitor: concentrated power in a small board controlled by a single executive, minimal oversight, chronic noncompliance with state reporting requirements, and conflicts of interest at the highest levels. The case for a state-appointed monitor in Mount Vernon is not aspiration. It is obvious.

What Accountability Could Look Like in Mount Vernon

If state legislation passes and external oversight is established, what should accountability actually look like in Mount Vernon? Here are the concrete reforms that this city needs, each one tied to a specific failure this series has documented:

• Mandatory school district consent before any PILOT that abates school taxes. The school district lost $13.85 million in five years while holding only a non-voting seat on the board it had to sue to obtain. The elected school board must have a formal veto over deals that reduce its funding.
• Independent cost-benefit analyses conducted by genuinely independent third parties, not developer-driven reports designed to justify predetermined conclusions. The 2014 Comptroller audit found no cost-benefit analyses were being conducted at all. The analyses must be public, peer-reviewable, and completed before the IDA votes.
• Board expansion to at least 7 members with City Council confirmation and mandatory seats for labor and education representatives. Mount Vernon’s four-member board is the smallest of any comparable IDA in New York State, and every member serves at the mayor’s pleasure.
• The mayor must not serve as chair. The chair should be an independent member with no direct political relationship to the appointing authority. When the person who appoints the board also runs the meetings and presides over votes, independence is impossible.
• Fixed, staggered terms instead of appointments “at the pleasure of the mayor.” Board members should serve defined terms that overlap across administrations, ensuring continuity and insulating the board from political pressure.
• Enforceable clawback provisions when projects fail to meet job creation, investment, or community benefit targets. The Comptroller found 671 promised jobs that never materialized (a 45% failure rate) with zero consequences for the developers. If a developer promises 200 jobs and delivers 50, there must be financial consequences, not just a shrug.
• Caps on total PILOT exposure so the city does not give away its fiscal future one deal at a time. The aggregate cost of all active PILOTs should be tracked, published, and subject to limits.
• Real-time public posting of all PILOT agreements, compliance reports, payment records, and financial data. The IDA failed to submit state-mandated PARIS data for two consecutive years. Transparency cannot be optional. A searchable, sortable public dashboard that any resident can access is the minimum standard.

What You Can Do Right Now

Reform doesn’t happen by itself. It happens because people insist on it. Here’s how you can make a difference:

Show up. Attend IDA public hearings. Ask questions. Demand answers. When residents fill the room, boards behave differently.

Silence is consent. Your presence is not.

Support transparency efforts. The Mount Vernon Civic Integrity Project has been filing FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests, analyzing IDA data, and publishing findings. This work takes time, persistence, and resources. Support it.

Contact your state legislators. Tell them Mount Vernon’s IDA needs real accountability. Constituent pressure matters.

Demand a state-appointed monitor. The Orange County precedent proves it works. Tell your legislators that Mount Vernon needs the same thing. The IDA has had decades to reform itself. It hasn’t. External oversight is the only path forward.

Support the school board’s resolution. The school board took a principled stand. Back them up. Tell your school board members you support their position that no outside agency should give away school tax dollars without the board’s consent.

Share this series. Send it to your neighbors. Post it on social media. Discuss it at community meetings. The IDA’s power depends on obscurity. Transparency is its antidote. When people understand what is happening to their tax dollars and their schools, silence becomes untenable.

It’s Time for Accountability

What is happening in Mount Vernon is not a series of isolated bad deals. It is a system that shifts public costs onto residents and schoolchildren while insulating politically connected developers from risk. The agency was designed without adequate oversight, transparent reporting, or genuine accountability. And the people who benefit from that design have no incentive to change it.

This series is not about opposing housing. Mount Vernon needs housing. It is not about demonizing developers. Developers respond to incentives. It is about accountability, transparency, and mathematics.

It is time to end the silence. It is time for oversight. It is time for accountability. And it is time for Mount Vernon to demand what every community deserves: a government that works for its residents, not for politically connected campaign donors.

*Some numbers and data analysis are from mountvernoncitizen.org. Chris McDonough and mountvernoncitizen.org are not affiliated with the Civic Integrity Project.

• What gets built
• Where it gets built
• And how large, dense, and viable those projects ultimately become.

Those decisions shape neighborhoods, property values, infrastructure, and quality of life.

And at the center of that system sits one person: Darryl Selsey, Chair of the Planning Board.

The Public Role

On paper, the job is straightforward. The Planning Board reviews:

• Site plans
• Subdivisions
• Special permits

Its responsibility is to apply the law, evaluate impacts, and protect the integrity of the process. It is supposed to be neutral. Independent. Focused on the public interest.

But this is Mount Vernon.

The Private Role

At the same time Darryl Selsey heads what is supposed to be a neutral, independent government body focused on the public interest, he is also the head of a real estate brokerage. By his own description he is: “an expert real estate agent . . . providing homebuyers and sellers with professional, responsive and attentive real estate services.”

That is his business. That is how he earns a living. And that business is directly tied to:

• Property values
• Development potential
• Land use decisions

The very things the Planning Board controls.

Where the Lines Blur

That overlap is not theoretical. It has already been raised—formally and publicly.

At a November 5, 2025, Planning Board meeting, two letters were read into the record alleging that the Chair had undisclosed business relationships with a developer whose project was before the Board—specifically, the subdivision application for 55 Pondfield Parkway.

Those allegations included:

• Acting as a broker on properties tied to the developer.
• Listing and marketing those properties.
• Participating in transactions while the developer’s application was under review.
• Interfering in the environmental review of the 55 Pondfield.

For more than a year, the Chair remained involved in that application before ultimately recusing himself—only after the issue was raised publicly multiple times, by multiple people—and while still maintaining that he had “no conflict.”

Before he recused, Selsey actively advocated in favor of the applicant, including efforts to limit the scope of environmental review by the Board’s retained engineering consultant, LaBella Associates.

Still, this probably wouldn’t be a story if 55 Pondfield stood in isolation. It does not. Residents point to a pattern of transactions involving the Chair, his firm, and applicants appearing before the Planning Board, most notably, Mad Real Properties, the owners of 55 Pondfield.

According to New York State records, Mad Real Properties has been actively registered in New York since 2015 and list Emilio Di Matteo as the contact for service of process. Although the records do not specify, in the LLC context, the person listed for service of process is generally an owner, managing member, or someone else with operational control.

Before 55 Pondfield, Chair Selsey had a long history with Di Matteo and Mad Real, including:

25 Stuyvesant Plaza: This property was foreclosed by the City in 2012 for nonpayment of taxes. On May 6, 2015, it was sold at auction for $390,000 via quitclaim deed to “Mad Properties LLC.” On that same day, Mad Properties conveyed the property to Denise Miranda for the same price, $390,000, via bargain and sale deed. Public voting records list both Darryl Selsey and Denise Miranda as residents of 25 Stuyvesant Plaza.

At no time during the Planning Board proceedings for 55 Pondfield did Chair Selsey disclose the 25 Stuyvesant transaction. And it was the failure to disclose this particular relationship that was the subject of the letters read into the record at the November 5, 2025, Planning Board meeting.

135 North High Street: In 2018, with Selsey serving as Planning Board Chair, an applicant obtained site plan approval for a six-story, 30-unit building after securing use and area variances from the Zoning Board. The property had previously been limited to a one- or two-family home. With those approvals, allowable density increased roughly thirtyfold, significantly enhancing the property’s value.

In mid-2023, the still-vacant property was listed for $1.2 million by Selsey’s real estate agency, with Selsey acting as the seller’s agent.

At no time during the Planning Board proceedings for 55 Pondfield did Chair Selsey disclose the 135 North High Street transaction.

55 Stuyvesant Plaza: This property was listed and sold by Selsey’s firm to Mad Properties LLC on May 29, 2025, for $625,000, while 55 Pondfield was under review by the Planning Board. Records reflect that Selsey’s firm acted as both buyer’s and seller’s agent in the transaction.

At no time during the Planning Board proceedings for 55 Pondfield did Chair Selsey disclose the 55 Stuyvesant transaction.

35 Columbia Place: This property, owned by Mad Real, was listed for sale by Selsey’s firm for $1,199,000 pursuant to an exclusive right-to-sell agreement.

The listing was placed on October 30, 2025, again, while the 55 Pondfield application was still before the Planning Board.

A February 2026 site visit reflects that the property is now “pending” sale through Selsey’s firm.

At no time during the Planning Board proceedings for 55 Pondfield did Chair Selsey disclose the 35 Columbia Place transaction.

The Ethical Through Line

Acting as a broker in a transaction involving a party with an active application before the Planning Board—while presiding over that applicant’s matter—raises serious questions about impartiality and adherence to basic ethical obligations.

Public officials are expected to avoid not only actual conflicts of interest, but also situations that create the appearance that official actions could be used for private gain. That principle is not abstract – it is foundational.

As a general rule, public officials are expected to step aside from any matter where their private financial interests intersect with their public duties—especially where their official actions may have contributed to the value at issue.

In fact, some government agencies impose absolute bans – meaning that once a financial relationship exists, the official is barred from participating in any matter involving that party.

Here, Selsey did not simply have peripheral involvement.

In at least one instance, Selsey chaired the board that approved a project that materially affected a property’s value. He then acted as broker in connection with that same property—positioning himself to benefit from the very value created through the Planning Board’s approval—while continuing to serve as Chair.

At a minimum, his involvement should have triggered review by the Law Department or Board of Ethics. But there is no indication that such guidance was sought or that any such review occurred.

The Standard Is Not Complicated

This is not a gray area. If a decision-maker has a financial relationship with someone appearing before their board, the expectation is simple: Disclose it. Step aside.

And when these conflicts do arise, there should be a correction – an ethics review, an investigation, new protocols to prevent future incidents – anything to show the public that ethics matter and the city is not asleep at the wheel – or complicit.

But again, this is Mount Vernon. And in Mount Vernon, the system just moves forward . . . Nothing to see here.

The Real Question

This is not about one project, or even one person. It’s about a system—a structure—that allows, without review, oversight, or correction, a person whose livelihood depends on real estate transactions to chair the board that oversees those same outcomes.

You don’t need to be a world-renowned ethicist to see the problem.

Because even assuming good faith, the structure itself creates perverse incentives. It blurs the line between public duty and private interest in ways that invite both actual conflicts and the appearance of them. And that’s where the real damage occurs.

Because once those lines blur, public trust erodes. Decisions begin to feel pre-determined. Outcomes feel uneven. And residents are left questioning whether the process is working for the city—or just for the people inside it.

So here’s the real question: Why is the system set up in a way that allows this in the first place?

The Structure Isn’t an Accident

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens because of how Mount Vernon is set up.

The Mayor appoints the boards and, in many cases, control every aspect of them—and then we all are expected to pretend those boards are independent.

Take the IDA. Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard serves as Chair. So, the same person who appoints every board member also runs the meetings, sets the agenda, and presides over the votes. That’s not oversight. That’s control. It gets worse.

Two of the voting members—Corporation Counsel Brian Johnson and City Assessor Stephanie Vanderpool—are mayoral appointees in their primary city jobs. They don’t just serve at the Mayor’s pleasure on the IDA. They serve at her pleasure for their livelihoods.

So, when a developer’s PILOT application comes before the IDA the City’s chief legal officer is voting on the deal and the official responsible for property assessments is voting to reduce the taxes her own office would otherwise calculate. Those aren’t edge cases—those are built-in conflicts.

The other voting member is Comptroller Darren Morton, who also serves as treasurer. While he is an independently elected official, he is also a pastor who has personally received a PILOT for his own development project. So, the person responsible for overseeing the finances of the IDA has a direct financial interest in the very deals the IDA approves.

These are not simply flaws in the system – that are the system.

And at the end of the day, when appointments flow from one office, oversight is concentrated in that same office, and decision-makers are not independent of the outcomes, what you end up with is a real estate broker running the Planning Board.

Not by accident. By design.

Part 1: What Is the IDA, What Are PILOTs — and Why Should You Care?

Part 2: Why Mount Vernon is Different – and Why That Matters

Following the Money

Parts 1 and 2 of this series showed what PILOTs are, how the Mount Vernon IDA’s governance compares to its peers, and how $44.4 million in tax revenue has been lost over ten years. Now we follow the money.

The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. PILOTs flow to developers. Campaign contributions flow back to politicians. Political operatives broker the deals and collect their share. The taxpayers, the schools, and the residents pay the price.

How the Pay-to-Play Ecosystem Works

The cycle works like this: A developer wants to build in Mount Vernon. They apply to the IDA for a PILOT — a tax break that can last up to 30 years. The IDA is controlled by the mayor, who serves as Chair. The developer, their attorneys, their consultants, and their business partners contribute to the mayor’s campaign. The PILOT is approved. The development moves forward. The developer profits. The mayor’s campaign coffers are replenished for the next election. The cycle repeats.

This is not speculation. It is documented in public filings. What makes Mount Vernon’s version of this cycle particularly troubling is the role of political intermediaries — individuals who are neither developers nor elected officials, but who broker the relationships between them and profit from both sides.

The 115 MacQuesten Money Trail

The campaign contributions from parties connected to the Opal 115 development at 115 South MacQuesten Parkway to the mayor’s “Friends of Shawyn Patterson-Howard” campaign committee total $25,050, as documented in New York State Board of Elections filings.

The Paolercio family — Anthony, Michael, Michelle, and Carmen Paolercio, along with their entities Michael Anthony Holdings, Inc. and 50-55 South Mac Realty LLC — are the property owners and sellers of the parcel at 115 South MacQuesten Parkway. Their combined contributions to the mayor’s campaign: $15,000.

Harris Beach — the law firm that performs legal work for the Mount Vernon IDA itself — contributed through its Political Action Committee and individual attorney Michael Curti. Combined: $3,349. The IDA’s lawyers donating to the IDA Chair’s campaign while their firm bills the IDA for legal services should, by itself, be a scandal.

Steven Horton of Grandview Consulting (part of the development team): $2,025. Jonathan Gertman of NRP Group: $650. Kenneth Plummer of Kensworth Consulting: $500.

The math: $25,050 invested in the mayor’s campaign. Over $20M go to the developers as ‘developer fees’.

The Timeline: From Campaign Cash to Tax Break

Before the 2023 election, Mayor Patterson-Howard had signaled to the public that the era of residential PILOTs was winding down. Mount Vernon had, in her own words, “built more than our fair share of affordable housing.” Residents had been clear at public meetings that they wanted the PILOT giveaways to stop.

They had not been heard. They had been managed.

July 13, 2023: The IDA adopted an Inducement Resolution for a 315-unit low-income housing development at 115 South MacQuesten Parkway — a $223 million project led by The NRP Group in partnership with Forward Thinkers Development LLC, Kenneth Plummer’s company. The Inducement Resolution is the formal commitment by the IDA to consider granting tax breaks. It signals to developers, lenders, and political allies that a deal is on track.

November 2023: Patterson-Howard wins re-election. Plummer was her chief fundraiser and deeply involved in her campaign. Campaign finance disclosures show payments from her campaign committee to his firm Kensworth Consulting for political consulting services.

November 30, 2023: The IDA holds a public hearing on the 115 MacQuesten PILOT. A Mount Vernon resident asks the mayor to recuse herself from voting, citing the fact that the developers are among the biggest contributors to her recent campaign.

The mayor’s response: “Sue me.”

January 25, 2024: The IDA passed the Final Resolution approving the 30-year PILOT for Opal 115.

The IDA’s own consultant, Storrs Associates, valued the tax abatement package at just shy of $15.3 million. The projected net benefit to the city? A mere $662,000 — spread over 30 years of speculative assumptions.

On December 17, 2024, Governor Hochul announced the groundbreaking ceremony. Plummer stood there, side by side with the Mayor (and IDA chair) in a hard hat branded “115 Opal.” The man who raised the mayor’s campaign money was now standing beside her at the ribbon-cutting for the project his political work had helped secure.

The Man at the Center: Kenneth Plummer

Plummer is not the only political operative in Mount Vernon’s development ecosystem. But he is the most connected, the most active, and one of the most directly enriched by the IDA deals his political work supports.

Kenneth “Kenny” Plummer is the CEO of Forward Thinkers Development LLC (equity owner on Opal 115) and the president of Kensworth Consulting, a political consulting firm paid by the mayor’s campaign. He has served as a Mount Vernon Democratic District Leader. He has run political action committees. He has been the architect of campaign slates for both city council and school board.

He is also a man with a documented history of violating the rules. In 2012, the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) found that Plummer, while serving as president of DiRA Consulting, had failed to register as a lobbyist while engaging in lobbying activity. The matter resulted in a formal enforcement action by the New York State Commission on Ethics.

Plummer’s relationship with Mayor Patterson-Howard is not arm’s-length. During her 2023 re-election campaign, he served as her chief fundraiser and shadow campaign manager. He brokered donations from developers. He represented her in election-law disputes. He was the operational center of her political organization.

He didn’t just fund the campaign. He ran it. He defended it in court. And then he collected his reward through a development deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars, subsidized by the taxpayers of Mount Vernon.

The False Address

One detail about Plummer captures something essential about the nature of the influence he exercises. An investigation by Black Westchester revealed that Plummer, while serving as a Mount Vernon Democratic District Leader — a position that requires residency in the district — was registered to vote at an address where he did not actually live. He lived in White Plains. The Mount Vernon address he used was not his residence.

Formal challenges were filed with the Westchester County Board of Elections, the Westchester District Attorney’s Office, and the Mount Vernon Democratic City Committee. On July 1, 2025, Plummer resigned his District Leader position.

Forward Thinkers, Forward Slate: Developer Money and the City Council

Plummer’s company is called Forward Thinkers Development. The mayor’s City Council campaign slate was called “Mount Vernon Forward.” Plummer lent the name of his own business to the political campaign that would deliver a council majority aligned with the mayor — and, by extension, with the IDA’s PILOT agenda.

The “Mount Vernon Forward” slate included Danielle Browne, Cathlin Gleason, and Ed Poteat. All three received significant funding from developers with direct interests in Mount Vernon land deals. The contributions are documented in New York State Board of Elections filings.

The single largest contributor across all three? Michael Anthony Holdings and the Paolercio family — the same 115 MacQuesten property owners who gave $15,000 to the mayor. They gave $8,450 to Browne, with additional contributions to Gleason and Poteat.

Danielle Browne has since been elected Mount Vernon City Court Judge. Comptroller Darren Morton, the IDA’s own treasurer, was also supported by Plummer’s new Political Action Committee (PAC) “Rise Up Mount Vernon.”

Rise Up Mount Vernon: Developer Money and the School Board

The IDA’s PILOT deals hurt the school district more than any other institution — as we documented in Parts 1 and 2. And the school board is the one body with the moral authority — and the institutional standing — to push back against PILOT deals that drain the district’s tax base.

That makes the 2025 school board election all the more significant.

In May 2025, “Rise Up Mount Vernon” flooded mailboxes across the city with professionally produced, large-format campaign mailers promoting three school board candidates: Sakai Brown, Erica Peterson, and Randolf Scott.

Rise Up Mount Vernon claimed to be a Political Action Committee. But it did not legally exist as a PAC until May 16, 2025 — three business days before the May 20 election. Every mailer sent and every dollar spent before that date was, technically, unauthorized expenditure by an unregistered political committee.

The Rise Up Mount Vernon Facebook page had been renamed from “Mount Vernon Forward” — the same brand as the city council slate Plummer had organized. New name. Same operator. Same playbook.

The sole reported donor to Rise Up Mount Vernon on its registration date was Rella Fogliano, owner of MacQuesten Development, who contributed $25,000.

The pattern deserves to be stated plainly. Plummer’s PILOT development at 115 MacQuesten will cost the Mount Vernon City School District millions in lost tax revenue over 30 years. And Plummer’s PAC spent developer money to influence which candidates would sit on the school board that oversees the district being drained.

The System, Not Just the Man

It would be convenient to treat this as a story about one bad actor. It is not. Kenneth Plummer is the most visible thread in a web of mutual obligation that includes developers, elected officials, political consultants, law firms, and the IDA itself. He is a symptom, not the disease.

As Good Jobs First documents, the IDA model across New York State is designed to reward those who approve deals and punish those who resist. Mount Vernon is not an outlier. It is the logical endpoint of a system that allows political players to give away public money with minimal oversight.

But Mount Vernon is worse than most. Because in Mount Vernon, the feedback loop between campaign money and IDA approvals is not theoretical. It is documented. The mayor’s chief fundraiser is an equity owner in the largest PILOT deal her IDA has approved. The lawyers for the IDA contribute to the IDA Chair’s campaign. The property sellers contribute to every politician on the slate. And, ironically, even school board candidates are funded by the very developers whose projects drain the school district.

The question is no longer whether the system is corrupt. The evidence is in the filings.

The question is whether it can be stopped.

Part 4 will examine what state legislation, external oversight, and sustained public pressure can do to break the cycle.

That framing is striking.

Because those are the very issues now being challenged in court.

The Same Plan. The Same Issues. A Different Story.

The Comprehensive Plan presented at Hofstra is currently the subject of an Article 78 proceeding in Westchester County Supreme Court, filed on March 16, 2026.

The claims go directly to process:

• whether public notice was adequate
• whether the City took the required “hard look” under SEQRA
• whether the administrative record supports what the City says it did

In other words, the exact topics presented as a “case study” are the ones now being litigated.

Who Was Presenting—and Sponsoring—Matters

The event featured Mount Vernon’s Planning Commissioner. It also featured Brad Schwartz of Zarin & Steinmetz.

And it was sponsored by Zarin & Steinmetz—the same firm and attorney serving as counsel of record for the City in the litigation challenging the Plan.

So the City, and the lawyers defending it in court, were presenting the Plan as a model—while that model is being tested before a judge.

This Isn’t About Whether They Can Speak

Of course they can.

But litigation posture matters.

When a matter is actively before a court, the usual instinct—especially for counsel—is restraint. Let the record speak. Let the court decide.

What happened here was the opposite.

The Plan was presented as a completed success, including on the very issues now under challenge—apparently without acknowledgment that those issues remain unresolved and are currently being litigated.

When the pending litigation was raised in the comments to the Planning Commissioner’s LinkedIn post, the comment was removed and comments were then disabled. While it is not known what was said at Hofstra, that response suggests the litigation was not part of the discussion.

What That Signals

At a minimum, it raises questions about judgment.

Because presenting a disputed process as settled—while that process is under review—signals a level of confidence in the outcome that the court has not yet endorsed.

And more than that, it creates a disconnect:

• One version of events is being defended in court
• Another is being promoted publicly, as if the dispute does not exist

That is not how a neutral case study works.

The Bottom Line

Mount Vernon’s Comprehensive Plan is not a finished story.

It is being litigated—on the very issues that were presented as examples of how the process works.

Until that is resolved, presenting it as a model of community outreach, public hearings, and SEQRA compliance is not just premature.

It is parallel-universe shadow theater.

Series Introduction

This is Part 1 of a four-part series examining PILOTs in Mount Vernon — what they are, how they work, and why they matter to every resident and taxpayer. Over the next four installments, we will explore the mechanics of tax breaks, the impact on schools and city services, the patterns of political influence, and what can be done. This series is written for ordinary residents, not policy experts. If you pay property taxes or care about where public money goes, this affects you directly.

We didn’t set out to write this series because the IDA is obscure. We wrote it because the IDA’s obscurity is the problem. Most Mount Vernon residents have never heard of the Industrial Development Agency. They’ve never attended one of its meetings. They’ve never been told that a board they didn’t elect has been giving away tens of millions of dollars in tax money — their tax money — to developers, for decades. This series puts those decisions in the open.

For more than 50 years, IDAs across New York have operated in the shadows of local governance. They are not mentioned in city budgets. Their meetings are rarely advertised. Their approvals are seldom explained to the public. And when residents do discover what’s happening — when they learn that a developer has been handed a decades-long tax break without public debate — they often ask the same question: How is this legal? The answer is uncomfortable: it is legal because the state legislature made it so, and because no one is watching.

What an IDA Is Supposed to Do

In 1969, New York State created Industrial Development Agencies under Article 18-A of the General Municipal Law. The concept was straightforward: communities needed help attracting business. Factories were closing. Commercial corridors were emptying. Traditional government was too slow and too bureaucratic to compete for investment. So the state created a new kind of entity — a quasi-independent public benefit corporation — that could move faster.

The cities were struggling. Factories were closing or leaving for cheaper locations. People and businesses were moving to the suburbs. Federal money that had propped up urban renewal was drying up. The usual tools, zoning changes and building permits, were too slow and too rigid to compete for investment. Cities needed to move faster, offer real incentives, and have some leverage when negotiating with developers. The IDA framework was designed to do all three.

IDAs were given real power. They could negotiate directly with developers. They could acquire property. They could issue bonds. And critically, they could offer tax exemptions — property tax breaks, sales tax exemptions, and mortgage recording tax waivers — to businesses willing to invest in their communities. The idea was that these subsidies would be temporary. A business gets a break for a defined period, gets on its feet, creates jobs, generates economic activity, and eventually pays full taxes. Everyone wins.

The model contained built-in assumptions. First, that tax breaks would be used sparingly and strategically — only for projects that would genuinely transform a community but couldn’t happen without the subsidy. Second, that the temporary nature of the break was real — meaning that at some point, five years or ten years, the subsidy would end and full taxes would resume. Third, that job creation would be verified and meaningful. And fourth, that local voters and taxpayers would have visibility into these decisions and some control over how they were made.

Today, New York State has 107 active IDAs — more than any other state in the country. Collectively, they hand out approximately $1.1 billion in annual tax subsidies. That’s not a rounding error. That is $1.1 billion every year that does not go to schools, fire departments, police, road maintenance, or any other public service. It goes, instead, to subsidize private development.

The Mount Vernon IDA is one of those 107 agencies. It was created by the state legislature specifically to serve the City of Mount Vernon. Its board is appointed by the mayor. Its meetings are technically public, though few residents attend. And over the past two decades, it has quietly reshaped the city’s tax base in ways most residents have never been shown and never consented to. Those decisions may happen out of sight – but residents live with the consequences every day.

What a PILOT Really Is

PILOT stands for “Payment In Lieu Of Taxes.” Strip away the jargon and here is what it means: it is a tax break, a developer pays less in taxes than they would otherwise owe. The difference doesn’t vanish. It becomes a bill that everyone else in the city pays.

Here’s the normal process: A developer builds a new building. Once it’s complete, the property gets assessed at its new value. The owner pays property taxes on that assessed value — taxes that flow to the city, the school district, and the county. Those taxes fund police, fire, sanitation, roads, parks, and most importantly, public schools. That’s the basic deal of property ownership: you build, you pay, everyone benefits.

A PILOT changes that deal. Instead of paying full property taxes, the developer negotiates a reduced payment — sometimes as low as 10% or 25% of what they’d normally owe. These reduced payments are locked in for a fixed period. In Mount Vernon, that period is often 30 years. Thirty years of paying a fraction of full taxes. Thirty years during which the city, the school district, and the county receive less revenue than the property would normally generate.

And here’s the part that rarely gets said clearly enough: the services still have to be provided. When a new building goes up, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Residents call 911. Garbage gets collected. Roads wear out. And if the building is residential — as most Mount Vernon PILOT projects are — children enroll in schools. Special education services are needed. Buses run. Buildings need heat. Teachers need salaries. All of this costs money. In a normal development, those costs are paid for by new property tax revenue. A PILOT breaks that link.

Consider a concrete example. Suppose a developer builds a 300-unit residential building in Mount Vernon. The property is assessed at $50 million. Normally, that owner would pay approximately $1.2 million per year in property taxes: roughly 60 percent ($720,000) to the school district, 20 percent ($240,000) to the city, and 20 percent ($240,000) to the county. Over 30 years, that would total $36 million in revenue.

Now suppose the IDA gives the developer a PILOT that requires only 25 percent of normal taxes ($300,000 per year). Over 30 years, the school district loses $21.6 million, the city loses $7.2 million, and the county loses $7.2 million. And at the same time, those 300 new units generate enrollment in Mount Vernon schools — children who need teachers, special education services, counselors, and transportation.

Here’s what that looks like in practice: Between 2016 and 2025, Mount Vernon’s IDA gave out over $60.4 million in tax exemptions to 21 entities. In return, they collected only $15.9 million in PILOT payments. That’s a net tax loss of $44.4 million in ten years. The school district alone lost $26.7 million. The city lost $13.3 million. The county lost $4.4 million.

These are not theoretical numbers. These are dollars that did not reach classrooms, did not fund police patrols, did not fix roads. They went, instead, to reduce the tax burden on developers — many of whom are building projects financed almost entirely with public debt, including federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. The developers bear minimal financial risk. The taxpayers bear all of it.

The “But-For” Test — and How It Gets Gamed

In theory, there is a safeguard built into the system. Every PILOT is supposed to pass what’s called the “but-for” test. The question is simple: Would this project happen “but for” the tax subsidy? If the answer is yes — if the developer would build the project anyway, even without the tax break — then the PILOT isn’t justified. The city would be giving away revenue for nothing.

In practice, the but-for test is a rubber stamp. Here’s how it works: A developer submits an application to the IDA. They include financial projections — often prepared by their own consultants — showing that the project “needs” the tax break to be financially viable. The IDA board reviews the application. And seems to approve them every single time.

No one independently verifies whether the developer’s projections are realistic. No one asks whether the developer would have built anyway at a slightly lower profit margin. No one examines whether the “need” for the subsidy is genuine or manufactured. The IDA has no staff economists. It usually just adopts the developer’s own numbers — and then approves based on those numbers.

The but-for test is meant to answer a crucial question: Does the subsidy actually change behavior, or is it just a gift? A project that would have been built anyway is a gift — pure and simple. The developer keeps the full value of the tax break as profit. The public gets nothing it wouldn’t have gotten anyway. But when you ask a developer whether a subsidy is necessary, the answer is nearly always yes. Why would a developer say no? There is no downside to claiming necessity. The costs of lying are zero.

This isn’t a Mount Vernon problem. It’s a statewide problem. State Senator James Skoufis, who chaired a major investigation into IDAs in 2023, found that across New York, IDAs routinely approve subsidies for projects that would have been built regardless. The investigation documented case after case where the “but-for test” was treated as a formality — a box to check, not a genuine inquiry.

But in Mount Vernon, the problem is compounded by something else: the IDA’s own record-keeping is abysmal.

When the New York State Comptroller audited the Mount Vernon IDA in 2014, the findings were devastating:

• No consistent standards for approving projects
• Missing or incomplete records for approved PILOTs
• Board members who didn’t even know their own agency’s Uniform Tax Exemption Policy existed
• $415,483 in unpaid PILOT payments that the IDA had failed to collect
• A shortfall of 671 jobs — the IDA promised 1,471 jobs from its projects and delivered only 800
• Job verification was based on “informal phone calls” to developers, not documented monitoring

That audit was over a decade ago. As we’ll show in Parts 2 and 3, nothing has fundamentally changed. The IDA still lacks independent capacity. The but-for test is still a formality. And the records are still abysmal.

Who Actually Pays

PILOTs don’t create money. They don’t generate revenue. They don’t produce wealth. They redistribute burden. When a developer pays less, someone else pays more. And in Mount Vernon, the someone else is you.

The school district takes the hardest hit. From 2020 to 2024, developers in Mount Vernon would have owed $19.675 million in school property taxes. Instead, through PILOT agreements, they paid only $5.822 million. That’s a loss of $13.85 million in school revenue in just five years. The city lost an additional $6.762 million in foregone taxes over the same period.

Think about what $13.85 million means for a school district like Mount Vernon’s. That’s teachers. That’s aides. That’s special education services for children who need them. That’s building maintenance for aging schools. That’s after-school programs. Mount Vernon is not a district with money to burn; it is the most fiscally distressed district in New York State.

The fiscal consequence is not subtle. When PILOTs suppress $13.85 million in revenue over five years, that’s roughly $2.77 million per year that does not arrive in the school district’s budget. For context, $2.77 million per year would fund roughly 17–20 teacher positions, including benefits, or about 30–40 special education aides, or approximately 15–20 school counselors in a district like Mount Vernon.

This is not a small accounting adjustment. This is legal corruption — a wealth transfer from public services to private developers, blessed by law and rubber-stamped by local officials. A Reinvent Albany and Cornell Policy Crossroads report documented how these harms fall unevenly — with districts serving higher proportions of students of color among those losing the most revenue per student.

Mount Vernon fits that pattern precisely. The IDA has directed significant subsidies toward residential development that brings students into schools already straining under budget constraints. The students are there. The costs are real. The services are needed. But the revenue to support them has been given away.

Why This Should Make You Angry

The numbers alone should be enough. But there is a deeper problem: the structure of the IDA itself invites exactly the kind of self-dealing, concentrated power, and political favoritism that turns a public agency into a private tool.

If PILOTs are meant for industrial development and job creation, why is Mount Vernon’s IDA handing out 30-year tax breaks to low-income housing developers who already receive substantial federal subsidies? If the board is supposed to provide oversight, why is it the smallest in the state, chaired by the mayor, and staffed by people whose livelihoods depend on remaining in the mayor’s good graces? And if the but-for test is supposed to protect taxpayers, why is it a rubber stamp?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They have answers — answers that involve governance failures, campaign money, structural conflicts of interest, and a political machine that has learned how to use a public agency for private benefit.

The IDA structure itself creates perverse incentives. A mayor appoints the board. Developers who get breaks contribute to the mayor’s reelection. The board then approves more breaks. The contributions increase. The mayor’s power grows. This is not necessarily illegal. It is not necessarily a crime. But it is unethical and represents a system designed to concentrate power and distribute public wealth to private actors. It is a form of legal corruption — the kind that happens not in shadows, but in plain sight, blessed by statute, and defended by those who benefit from it.

In Part 2, we’ll explore what makes Mount Vernon’s IDA different from every other comparable IDA in the state — and why that matters.

*Numbers and data analysis are from mountvernoncitizen.org. Chris McDonough and mountvernoncitizen.org are not affiliated with the Civic Integrity Project.

The Chair of the Planning Board had an undisclosed business relationship with a developer whose project was sitting before him.

And he had not recused himself.

That allegation — made by former Planning Commissioner and professional planner Vince Ferrandino — wasn’t about speculation or politics.

It was about specific real estate transactions, involving specific properties, tied directly to a developer actively seeking approvals from the Board.

What Was Alleged — In Plain Terms

According to the materials submitted into the record, Planning Board Chair Darryl Selsey had ongoing real estate dealings with developer Emilio DeMatteo, whose company (MAD Real Properties LLC) had an application pending before the Board.

Those dealings allegedly included:

• Acting as a real estate broker on properties tied to the developer
• Listing and marketing properties on the developer’s behalf
• Participating in transactions during the time the application was under review

None of those relationships were disclosed to the public.

And for over a year, the Chair continued to sit on — and participate in — the application.

This Is Where It Becomes a Problem

This isn’t complicated.

If a public official has a financial relationship with someone appearing before their board, the obligation is clear – or at least is should be:

• Disclose it
• Step aside

That didn’t happen here — at least not at the outset.

Instead, the Chair remained involved in the process until the issue was raised publicly and formally.

The Properties That Raise the Questions

The record points to multiple overlapping transactions between the Chair, his firm, and the developer:

• A property sold to the developer while the application was under review, with Selsey’s firm involved
• A property listed for sale by Selsey’s firm on behalf of the developer during the same period
• Additional transactions suggesting a broader business relationship between the two

Individually, each of these would warrant disclosure.

Together, they raise a more serious question:

Whether the Chair was in a position to personally benefit from a party appearing before his Board.

Recusal — But Only After It Was Raised

After the issue was brought into the record and raised by neighbors, the Chair did eventually recuse himself from the application.

But that came:

• More than a year after the application began
• After participation in the review process
• After public pressure

Even then, he stated on the record that he was “not conflicted.”

He did not resign. And neither the City, generally, nor the Planning Board, specifically, took further action.

Why This Matters Beyond One Project

This isn’t really about the project that triggered the issue.

It’s about the integrity of the process. Because when a decision-maker:

• Has undisclosed ties to an applicant
• Participates in the review anyway
• And steps aside only after being called out

It raises a fundamental question: can the public trust the outcome of that process?

The Missing Piece: A Letter the Public Can’t See

There’s another layer.

A separate letter from neighbors outlining these conflicts was:

• Delivered to the City
• Referenced in connection with the application
• Requested through FOIL
• And withheld

This is consistent with a broader pattern of noncompliance with FOIL requests in Mount Vernon, where residents are often left without practical recourse to challenge improper denials.

In this instance, the City’s position was that the letter was “personal and confidential” — despite relating directly to a public official’s role in a public proceeding during which the letter was relied upon.

What Didn’t Happen

At multiple points, there were opportunities to address this:

• When the relationships existed
• When the application was filed
• When the conflict was raised publicly

But:

• No formal ethics review was announced
• No investigation was disclosed
• No corrective action was taken beyond a late recusal

Leadership Sets the Tone

That pattern – that failure to act, that total disregard of what is right and ethical – doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

When residents have raised conflict concerns at the highest level, they have been met not with caution — but dismissal.

In one instance, when asked to recuse herself due to a conflict, the Mayor’s reported response to residents was simple:

“Sue me.”

That posture matters.

Because when leadership signals that ethics concerns are optional — or irrelevant — it sets the standard for everyone else in the system.

The Bottom Line

Residents did what they are supposed to do:

They paid attention. They documented the facts. They put it on the record.

And still:

• The Chair stayed
• The Board did nothing
• And the system moved forward

So, the question isn’t just whether there was a conflict.

It’s whether, in Mount Vernon, conflicts matter at all.

And it doesn’t stop there.

How many other properties was Mr. Selsey involved with while matters were pending before the Planning Board?

How many decisions did he influence that may have benefitted his own firm?

Those questions go to the integrity of the process itself.

MVCIP will continue examining these issues — including across other City boards and commissions.

That includes the Board of Ethics. On paper, the Board is supposed to serve as an independent body charged with interpreting and enforcing the City’s Code of Ethics, promoting transparency, and ensuring accountability.

In practice, it has not functioned that way. And its inaction underscores the deeper problem: a system that relies on compromised and ethically conflicted actors to enforce its own rules is not a system designed to hold anyone accountable.

Mount Vernon’s Comprehensive Plan is now in court — with residents alleging the City Council cut corners, skipped required review, and pushed the plan through anyway.

A lawsuit filed in Westchester County Supreme Court seeks to void the Plan in its entirety, arguing it was adopted in violation of state law.

The petition was filed by Mount Vernon residents Kareen Bell, Vince Ferrandino, John Gasior, and Steven Vazquez. Ferrandino is a professional planner with more than 40 years of experience in comprehensive planning, land use, and SEQRA, and a former Mount Vernon Planning Commissioner.

The Core Claim: No “Hard Look”

Before adopting a plan that reshapes zoning, density, and development across an entire city, the law requires a basic step:

Evaluate the environmental impact.

According to the lawsuit, Mount Vernon didn’t.

• The City classified the Plan as a Type I action — the category most likely to have significant environmental impacts
• Then issued a Negative Declaration anyway
• Without conducting traffic studies, infrastructure analysis, build-out modeling, or environmental review

The petition’s conclusion is direct: The required “hard look” was never taken.

Not a “Vision” — A Binding Framework

City officials described the Plan as a “roadmap.”

The lawsuit says otherwise.

Under New York law, zoning must conform to the comprehensive plan. And the Plan itself includes:

• Increased residential density
• Height allowances up to 21 stories
• Reduced parking requirements
• Rezoning directives across multiple neighborhoods

These are not aspirational goals. They are binding land use directives — adopted, according to the petition, without analyzing their real-world impacts.

And we are already seeing it play out.

At a February 2026 City Council session, counsel for Grace Baptist Church explicitly cited the newly adopted Comprehensive Plan to justify a proposed development — stating the project had been revised to conform with the Plan’s density, height, bulk, and parking parameters and required rezoning to implement them.

In other words, the Plan is already being used exactly as the law intends: not as some fanciful vision — but as a governing framework for development.

Public Process — Without Transparency

The lawsuit also challenges how the Plan was presented to the public.

Residents were asked to comment on a hundreds-page document while:

• Key materials were not made available in advance, despite repeated requests
• The Mayor publicly disavowed portions of the Plan as vague and inconsistent with her intent
• Then, less than a month later, reversed course and urged its adoption, dismissing concerns as uninformed
• Advisory committee input was not meaningfully reflected, prompting at least one resignation in protest

That is not meaningful participation.

It is the same chaotic substitute this City too often offers in place of competence, functionality, and transparency.

Adopt First, Analyze Later

The City’s approach followed a familiar pattern: adopt first, analyze later.

That’s not how SEQRA works.

Environmental review must consider the full scope of impacts before adoption — not defer them to future zoning or project-level approvals.

The lawsuit alleges the City improperly avoided review of:

• Increased density
• Infrastructure capacity
• Traffic and parking impacts

The petition asks the court to:

• Void the Comprehensive Plan
• Invalidate the SEQRA Negative Declaration
• Require a full environmental review, including a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS)
• Prohibit the City from relying on the Plan until it complies with the law

The Bigger Issue

This case is about more than one plan — it is about a pattern:

• Call binding policy “aspirational”
• Skip required analysis
• Limit public access to key information
• Move forward anyway

And only address the consequences if challenged. That big “if” is a gamble the city is always willing to take — because it knows that most residents don’t have the time or resources to “fight City Hall.”

The Bottom Line

If you are going to reshape zoning, density, and development citywide, you don’t get to skip the analysis. Especially not in a City with Mount Vernon’s issues — where flooding ruins basements and backyards with each heavy rainfall, fecal matter is in our storm water system, buildings are rotting and falling to pieces in real time, bridges have been closed for years, and the city erects walls in the middle of the night to address parking disputes.

You don’t get to call it a “vision” and avoid accountability.

And you don’t get to run a public process the public cannot fully see.

Now the question is no longer political. It’s legal.

Did the City follow the law — or not?

A proposal before the Mount Vernon Board of Estimate and Contract would authorize $85,546.99 in taxpayer funds, without public bidding, for traffic signalization improvements tied to the 42 West Broad Street development.

The work is being labeled an “emergency.”

It isn’t.

Two Statements — One Problem

In correspondence to City officials, Vincent J. Ferrandino, the City Council’s former review consultant for the project (and Mount Vernon resident), states that escrow funds exist for 42 West Broad intended to cover these improvements.

Separately, a previously reported $500,000 “42 Broad community benefit” appears to have been removed or reclassified in City financials, with similar funds now listed under “custodial accounts” — without any 42 Broad designation.

So:

• If funds were set aside, why are they no longer clearly accounted for?
• Why are they absent from the current proposal?
• If they exist, why are taxpayers being charged instead?
• If they don’t, where did they go?

Where’s the money?

The Resolution — and the Omission That Matters

The resolution referred from the City Council:

• Authorizes $85,546.99 in taxpayer funds
• Proceeds without competitive bidding
• Labels the work an “emergency”
• Makes no reference to escrow, community benefit, or project-specific funds

That omission is not technical — it is the issue.

Where’s the money?

The “Emergency” That Took a Decade

Traffic impacts from 42 West Broad were identified years ago during Planning Board approval. As standard, those impacts were to be addressed through developer-funded improvements, typically secured through escrow.

Now, nearly a decade later, the City calls it an “emergency.”

It wasn’t addressed in February.
It wasn’t addressed last year.
It wasn’t addressed at any point in the intervening decade.

This is not an emergency. It is delayed accountability.

And, as seen before — including the use of our ARPA funds to demolish the family home of now First Deputy Comptroller Condell Hamilton — the “emergency” label is again being used to bypass financial safeguards designed to protect taxpayer dollars.

Missing Accountability

The Building and Planning Departments — responsible for enforcing site plan conditions — are notably absent from this discussion.

Before any vote, the resolution must be amended to:

• Identify available escrow funds
• Require their use first
• Prevent shifting developer obligations onto taxpayers

Anything less is a failure of basic oversight.

The Real Question

This is not about one $85,546.99 expenditure.

It is about whether funds collected for a specific purpose are:

• Tracked
• Preserved
• Used as intended

Or quietly redirected while taxpayers are billed again. This is also something we’ve seen before. When money meant to pay our first responders was quietly moved into a contingency line and later used to fund 40-50% raises for elected and appointed officials.

Same people. Same pattern. Same questions.

Where’s our money?

The Bottom Line

Before any vote, the City must answer a simple question:

Where is the escrow money tied to 42 West Broad — and why isn’t it being used?

Until then, Mount Vernon residents are left asking what they’ve had to ask far too often:

Where did our money go?!

It is an exclusive “recreational and social” club whose name, branding, and mailing address suggest it belongs to toney Bronxville. For years, and continuing today, the Club has used a Bronxville post office designation, sparing its members the presumably uncomfortable reality that the Bronxville Field Club sits entirely within the City of Mount Vernon.

Physically, legally, and environmentally, it is our neighbor. In practice, however, it has rarely acted like one.

Over the years, the Club has been at the center of repeated controversies: stormwater pushed downhill into Mount Vernon neighborhoods, unpermitted infrastructure, land-use disputes, and litigation triggered whenever regulators or residents pushed back.

Again and again, the pattern has been the same: expand first, deal with the consequences later.

So, when residents raised concerns about yet another expansion, and the Planning Board denied the application after reviewing evidence and public testimony, something unusual happened.

For a brief moment, accountability won.

When Pressure Works, and Money Doesn’t

Rather than accept the decision, the Bronxville Field Club responded the way powerful institutions often do when they encounter resistance: it sued.

What followed were months of closed-door negotiations between the City and the Club – negotiations that deliberately excluded the people most affected by the outcome: Mount Vernon residents living adjacent to the Club’s property and downstream from its impacts.

The proposed solution was a quiet global settlement. Multiple lawsuits would vanish. The Club would receive a fast-tracked path forward. And the City would accept a one-time payment of $450,000 in exchange for ending enforcement and abandoning its litigation posture.

All of this happened without public notice, without public hearings, and without resident participation.

Sunlight Changes the Equation

Once the settlement terms became public, the response was immediate.

MVCIP published the agreement in full. Residents mobilized. Emails flooded inboxes. Phones rang. Planning Board members heard directly from the people who live with flooding, runoff, and infrastructure failures – not from lawyers or lobbyists, but from their neighbors.

And something rare happened in Mount Vernon government.

The Planning Board listened. They pulled the item from the agenda, marking in red that it would not be placed on a future agenda.

This didn’t happen because officials suddenly gained new legal insight. It happened because public pressure made it impossible to pretend this was business as usual.

Transparency changed the outcome.

What This Episode Reveals

After the Planning Board removed discussion of the settlement from its agenda, the Club sent the following message to its membership.

It is telling that, while the Bronxville Field Club was reportedly informing its own stakeholders about the settlement, City Hall was working overtime to keep residents in the dark.

It is also telling that once the deal was exposed to public scrutiny, it could not survive even basic questioning.

Open Meetings Law exists for a reason. Planning Board statutes exist for a reason. They are meant to ensure that decisions affecting neighborhoods, infrastructure, and public trust are made openly, with public participation, not stitched together privately and presented as a fait accompli.

This was not a near miss. It was a case study in how governance fails when officials assume no one is watching.

What MVCIP Sought to Prevent

MVCIP agreed to intervene because this settlement was never about protecting Hunt’s Woods.

It was about shielding City Hall from conflict and shielding the Bronxville Field Club from accountability.

By insisting on transparency, publishing the agreement in full, and centering the voices of downstream neighbors who were deliberately excluded, MVCIP sought to disrupt a backroom deal that traded away public power, narrowed environmental review, and normalized recurring flooding in exchange for a token payment.

The goal was not simply to expose what was being negotiated. It was to reclaim a basic principle: land-use decisions must be driven by evidence, equity, and the lived reality of affected residents, not convenience for officials or certainty for a private club.

Once residents were informed, the response was unified. The deal collapsed under the weight of public scrutiny.

The Real Cost of the Deal Wasn’t $450,000

The true cost of this episode was not the $450,000 payoff. It was the price Mount Vernon paid in squandered resources, lost time, and damaged public trust. The unanswered questions remain.

Public money was spent not to fix flooding or protect neighborhoods, but to negotiate a private retreat – lawyers billing to craft a deal that weakened the City’s own authority. Staff time was diverted from solving real infrastructure problems to managing secrecy, coordinating talking points, and preparing an “executive summary” meant to obscure more than it revealed.

Most damaging of all was the cost to democratic governance. Residents were excluded from decisions that directly affect their homes, safety, and property values, and only learned what was happening because someone inside the process leaked the agreement. That is not how accountable government is supposed to work.

When neighbors have to act as watchdogs, whistleblowers, and de facto investigators just to prevent a backroom surrender of public power, something is fundamentally broken. That reality says far more about Mount Vernon’s governance than any dollar figure ever could.

This Is What Civic Power Looks Like

We often end our communications with the phrase: Power to the People. This out outcome is what we mean by that, and it deserves to be named plainly.

A proposed settlement backed by money, lawyers, and institutional inertia did not collapse on its own. You stopped it.

Residents who paid attention, shared information, asked hard questions, and refused to accept a deal negotiated without them and against their interests. That is what civic power looks like – practiced in real life, in real time, forcing decisions that affect the public to be justified in public.

The settlement was pulled because people showed up. That’s worth remembering the next time someone says residents don’t have a voice in Mount Vernon.

We do, when we use it.

Flooded yards. Damaged homes. Unsafe conditions. Money out of residents’ pockets—again and again – wash, rinse, repeat.

This is not a mystery. It’s not climate change in the abstract. And it’s not just bad luck.

Everyone in Hunt’s Woods knows exactly why this keeps happening.

Because the ultra-wealthy “Bronxville” Field Club—located entirely within Mount Vernon, in the middle of a residential neighborhood—decided long ago that Mount Vernon doesn’t count. And for decades, they’ve acted accordingly.

They built what they wanted.
They expanded when they felt like it.
They treated stormwater as someone else’s problem.

Because it is. When the Club alters land, adds structures, or ignores drainage impacts, the consequences don’t land in Bronxville. They land here. In Hunt’s Woods. In basements. In yards. In streets that turn into rivers.

The Club throws late-night parties that spill noise and traffic into the neighborhood. Guests clog residential streets. Access is blocked. Quiet enjoyment disappears. Homes that now directly abut the Club—because of its relentless expansions—pay the price in ways that never show up on the Club’s balance sheet.

But worse than that is this: when there are problems at the “Bronxville” Field Club, they aren’t felt in Bronxville. No – when this happens at the “Bronxville” Field Club…

This is the result in Hunt’s Woods.

The neighbors have known for years. And they’ve complained for years. But, as invitations to play tennis, campaign donations, and other “perks” were handed out, those complaints fell on deaf ears.

Fast-forward to the Patterson-Howard administration, and things have gotten exponentially worse. In fact, as part of its terrible Comprehensive Plan, this administration attempted to bestow landmark status on the Club. Mount Vernon landmark status for a club that won’t even admit it is in Mount Vernon.

These are the people Mount Vernon residents are supposed to trust to protect our properties, lives, and interests.

We now have even more evidence that any such trust would be grossly misplaced.

How Mount Vernon Traded Its Residents for a Cheap Exit

Mount Vernon is on the verge of quietly surrendering in multiple lawsuits involving the Club’s draining of contaminated stormwater downhill into Mount Vernon neighborhoods. See the settlement document here.

After years of complaints, residents were finally heard by the City’s Planning Board, which denied the Club’s site plan application seeking to build even more structures on the property after reviewing evidence that included resident documentation, engineering analysis, and findings that unapproved stormwater structures on the Club’s property were affecting downstream areas.

So the Bronxville Field Club did what wealthy institutions do when they don’t like accountability.

They sued.

What followed was not one clean case, but a tangle of litigation:

• an Article 78 challenging the Planning Board’s denial,
• related appeals,
• and broader disputes over stormwater controls, land-use enforcement, and regulatory authority.

Instead of defending its own Planning Board—or litigating these issues in public—the City chose cowardice.

It negotiated a global, behind-closed-doors settlement that would:

• wipe out all pending cases at once,
• reverse the City’s enforcement posture,
• and bind future boards and officials to terms negotiated in private.

Residents who live with the flooding were not invited. They were not notified. They were not protected.

Which brings us to the deal itself.

What This Settlement is Really Doing

Strip away the legal varnish and this agreement is simple:

Unconditional surrender.

A three-case capitulation wherein the City walks away from:

• its own Planning Board’s denial,
• its litigation posture,
• any chance at judicial clarity,
• and meaningful public accountability for stormwater / land use enforcement.

The Bronxville Field Club gets:

• a pre-cleared path to approvals,
• binding limits on what the City and Planning Board may ever require,
• insulation from future enforcement or political change,
• and finality across multiple proceedings.

All for the low, low price of $450,000.

Money earmarked for stormwater work the City likely should have funded anyway. Money that does not explain why Mount Vernon is sitting on over $150 million in sewer and climate-resilience funding while claiming it needs Bronxville Field Club’s spare change to protect residents.

$450,000: A Number Without Meaning

Let’s talk more about the number at the heart of the City’s proposed settlement with Bronxville Field Club – $450,000.

That is how cheaply Mount Vernon can be bought. It cannot be remediation money – it doesn’t come close to being enough. It’s not restoration money. It’s not even “make-us-whole” money.

It’s chump change. And the City of Mount Vernon is the chump.

For perspective: Bronxville Field Club paid its “Director of Racquets” $465,022 in 2024—more than the amount Mount Vernon is willing to accept to kneecap itself and absorb downstream risk forever.

So where did $450,000 come from?

Nowhere serious.

There is:

• no cost analysis,
• no engineering estimate tied to downstream damage,
• no accounting of prior flooding losses,
• no valuation of future disruption,
• no assessment of public-safety risk.

The number simply appears in the settlement—fully formed—like a ransom note with better formatting.

And Hunt’s Woods neighbors? You’re the hostages.

This “settlement” isn’t mitigation calculated to solve a problem. It’s a price negotiated to make the problem go away.

Negotiated by people with no concept of real money, led by a mayor who imagines herself worth seven figures in private practice while needing a backdoor 40% raise to break $200,000 in public service.

Bronxville understands money.

Mount Vernon is just sliding Mr. Monopoly’s top hat across the board, hoping nobody notices that their money is pink.

What $450,000 Actually Buys

Read the document closely. This money doesn’t just “fund stormwater improvements.” It buys something far more valuable:

• the City agrees to cap impervious surface calculations;
• the City agrees not to require certain drainage disconnections;
• the City agrees that a wide range of reasonable Planning Board conditions will be treated as a “constructive denial”;
• the City agrees that if approvals don’t go through just so, the developer gets to resurrect litigation—while the public loses its administrative record.

That’s not environmental protection. That’s institutional surrender.

It is also not how a Planning Board is supposed to function. Boards exist to respond to evidence, to adjust conditions when facts change, and to protect downstream communities.

This agreement instead tells the Board: Stay inside the lines we drew, or we sue again.

SEQRA Rendered Moot

SEQRA—the State Environmental Quality Review Act—is New York’s core environmental safeguard. Its purpose is simple: to force government decision-makers to study environmental impacts before locking in outcomes, to consider alternatives, and to involve the public before harm is approved rather than after it occurs.

The settlement repeatedly claims nothing is predetermined.

That claim is a lie.

The mitigation ceiling is fixed.

The scope of review is capped.

The consequences of scrutiny are spelled out.

If approvals issue in lockstep with this agreement—and they almost certainly will—SEQRA becomes an after-the-fact fig leaf for decisions already made.

Courts don’t like that.

Residents shouldn’t tolerate it.

The Risk Locked In—For Mount Vernon Residents

Downstream residents—whose basements already flood, whose properties already suffer, whose quality of life is already degraded—are not parties to this settlement.

They don’t get notice. They don’t get a seat at the table. They don’t get compensation. They just get more risk, locked in by contract. And if the “mitigation” doesn’t work? If flooding continues? If conditions worsen? Too damned bad.

This settlement ensures the City will have already bargained away much of its ability to respond.

Cowardice Dressed Up As Pragmatism

This settlement reads like a government desperate to avoid the discomfort of doing its job.

Instead of defending its Planning Board, enforcing its own stormwater standards, and standing behind documented violations, the City chose the easier path: payoff, retreat, and silence.

And to add insult to injury, it did so for an amount that wouldn’t cover a serious drainage redesign, a multi-year monitoring program, or the cumulative damage already inflicted on surrounding neighborhoods. So, once again, Mount Vernon is sacrificing its residents at the altar of risk aversion, so City Hall can declare a “resolution” while the shit continues to flow downhill.

Literally.

Hunt’s Woods neighbors – ask yourselves:

• How was $450,000 calculated?
• What damage has already occurred that isn’t accounted for?
• What happens when the next storm hits?
• And why were the residents most affected excluded from negotiations entirely?

This document makes one thing abundantly clear: the settlement was never about the Hunt’s Woods community—the people who bear all the risk and receive none of the protection. And it was only possible because those people were kept out of the room.

Side note: None of this was unforeseeable.

Hunt’s Woods resident Gabriel Thompson saw exactly where this was headed and moved to intervene in the case on August 5, 2025. That motion should have been decided promptly—precisely to prevent what followed.

Instead, Bronxville Field Club, aided by City Hall and indulged by Judge Maurice Dean Williams, allowed the motion to languish for nearly six months. Not because it was complex. Not because it required discovery. But because delay served the parties already at the table.

That delay had consequences. It created the breathing room necessary to negotiate—entirely behind closed doors—the trainwreck of a settlement now being presented, while the residents most affected were kept sidelined and silenced.

This outcome wasn’t accidental. It was manufactured.