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

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

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

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

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

Financial Distress – In Real Life, In Real Time

Let’s start with the basics.

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

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

The Collapse of the Fund Balance

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

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

Long-Term Liabilities vs. Net Position

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missing Bond Rating, Missing Discipline

Despite ever-higher taxes:

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

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

The Economy Is Sending a Warning

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

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

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

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

You cannot tax your way out of that.

Unpaid Taxes and Selective Enforcement Are Breaking The System

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

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

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

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

A Missed ARPA Opportunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why a State Financial Monitor Is Necessary

Local self-correction is no longer credible.

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

Effective oversight would:

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

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

The Time for “Wait and See” Is Over

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

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

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

Here is what just happened.

A Resident Asked a Simple Question. The City’s Answer Was a Lie.

In November, a Mount Vernon resident filed a lawful FOIL request with the City. FOIL — the Freedom of Information Law — is a New York State law that gives every resident the right to access government records. It’s one of the most basic tools of democratic accountability: you ask your government for public records, and they are legally required to hand them over.

The request asked for Records of Activities (ROAs) — essentially, the timesheets that elected officials are required to file with the State to document their work and qualify for their taxpayer-funded pensions. The request also asked for related worksheets and any emails showing those records had been sent to NYSLRS, the New York State and Local Retirement System — the agency that manages public pensions in Albany.

After months of delay, the City responded in writing on January 27, 2026:

“No responsive records were located.”

Full stop. Categorical. Unqualified.

Separately, in an earlier email about a different part of the request, the City told the requester that resolutions are publicly available on the City’s website and directed her to the Agenda Center. That part is true — resolutions are public.

But that is not what the FOIL request was about.

Resolutions are only the end product — the final vote. They do not show how officials actually documented their time, what they submitted, or whether anything was ever transmitted to the State. The request sought the underlying records: the ROA logs, worksheets, templates, and emails to NYSLRS — the very records that should exist if officials had been filing them as required.

Those records were not produced.

Thirteen Days Later, the Records Magically Appeared

On February 9, the City Council suddenly placed a resolution on its agenda listing detailed ROA figures for the Mayor, Comptroller, and six Council Members covering multi-year terms.

Think about that. The City told a resident on January 27 that no records exist. Thirteen days later, detailed figures appear on the Council agenda. If no records existed on January 27, those figures could only have been assembled after the FOIL request — not from records kept in the ordinary course, as the law requires.

In plain terms: it looks like the City got caught, and then scrambled to create records that should have existed all along.

The February 10 Council Meeting Made It Even Clearer

City Clerk Nicole Bonilla told the Council that NYSLRS had notified her that the State had no ROAs on file for the Mayor, the Comptroller, or any of the five sitting Council Members. She said she “does not have access” to her predecessor’s files, could not locate prior records, and was therefore re-collecting and resubmitting ROAs retroactively based on what officials sent her only recently.

Council Member Cathlin Gleason suggested that the ROAs had been completed in real time and that the issue was simply a former Clerk who failed to transmit them.

But the Clerk’s own testimony does not support that. If ROAs had truly been completed and submitted years ago, there should have been some trace of them inside City Hall: completed templates, internal copies, email confirmations. None of that was produced in response to the FOIL request. None of it.

The Excuses Don’t Pass the Smell Test

The claim that a sitting City Clerk cannot access records created by a former City Clerk is, frankly, absurd. Those files are City records, not personal files. If the Clerk truly lacked access to prior records, the office could not perform even routine archival or certification functions. This is the office that maintains the City’s official records — that’s the whole point.

Making it worse: the former City Clerk – who no longer works at City Hall – was able to locate several prior ROA-resolutions online, indicating that supporting materials exist. In fact, she is adamant that they do.

Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard told the Council that her office had submitted ROAs in 2020 and again in 2024 and insisted the administration had been “in compliance.” If that were accurate, there should be a paper trail. The City could not produce one.

Then They Shut Down the Clerk’s Office

Just hours after these concerns were raised in writing to state oversight bodies, the City abruptly closed the City Clerk’s Office — the very department responsible for these records — for “vault maintenance.”

Maybe that is coincidence.

But in Mount Vernon, we have seen too many “coincidences” involving missing records, late-night activity at City Hall, and documents that conveniently disappear when scrutiny arrives. Sometimes even filing cabinets in the Building Department go up in flames after somebody calls in a bomb threat.

Why Every Resident Should Care

This is not a story about timesheets and pension paperwork. This is a story about whether your government will tell you the truth when you ask a direct question.

FOIL exists so that you — the residents and taxpayers of Mount Vernon — can hold your government accountable. When you file a FOIL request, the law says the City must produce the records or explain why it can’t. What the City cannot do is tell you the records don’t exist, and then turn around thirteen days later and produce them. That is not a clerical error. That is a violation of state law.

And if the underlying records were never kept in the first place — if elected officials were claiming pensions without ever filing the documentation required by the State — then the problem is much bigger than a FOIL violation. It’s a question of whether public money was disbursed based on records that didn’t exist.

What We’re Doing About It

We are asking for real oversight from the New York State Comptroller and the Committee on Open Government.

Residents should not have to chase basic truth about how their government operates — or whether officials are following the rules that determine their own pensions.

Mount Vernon deserves a government that tells the truth the first time — not one that rewrites history after being caught.

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

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

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

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

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

The Numbers Don’t Lie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Council That Never Breaks Ranks

The individual voting records are just as striking.

Read that again.

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

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

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

Where the Deliberation Should Be

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

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

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

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

This is not deliberation. It is ratification.

The Slate System: Built to Produce This Result

None of this happens by accident.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What This Costs You

So what? Everyone agrees. What’s harm?

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

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

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

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

These are the outcomes the current system produces.

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

That is not happening.

The Predetermined Vote Problem

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

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

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

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

What Can Be Done

Here is what residents can do:

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

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

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

Click here to learn more about our research and analysis.