To the Editor:
I’d like to call your attention to what I think is a worthwhile story. It seems that the Yonkers City Council has voted to make Yonkers one of the noisiest cities in the country. They voted to increase the day time noise limits by 8X and to double the night time noise limit. 85 dBA, the new day time limit, is on OSHA’s threshold for causing hearing damage. It’s unbelievable to me that no one on the city council knows about noise pollution or seems to care that for many people in the city, in many neighborhoods, it’s a major issue. I know you’ve been covering the city council for a long time, so perhaps for you it’s nothing new. As an average citizen who doesn’t pay much attention, I’m shocked.
This ordinance change took place in late 2023. There were no public hearings, just the legal ads and postings on the council webpage. That may be the legal minimum, but it’s just not enough disclosure to give people a chance to weigh in. I only found out about the ordinance a couple of months ago. I happen to care about the noise issue, so I got motivated and started organizing a campaign around the issue.
We have more than 166 signers on our petition https://www.change.org/quieteryonkers. and have launched a new website, www.quieteryonkers.org. The site has considerable background information about noise and about how the city council came to pass the ordinance. There are many aspects of their process that are shoddy, invalidating and perhaps even corrupt.
Thanks,
Peter Cohn, Yonkers
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To the Editor:
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is coming up for a vote in both the House and Senate. This legislation would require everyone to prove citizenship by providing specific documents, either a passport or birth certificate, when registering to vote or updating voter information, and to do so in person.
The League of Women Voters vigorously opposes this voter suppression legislation. It is unnecessary, divisive, and would severely limit access to the ballot for eligible Americans, especially voters of color, rural voters, military members, and women whose surnames do not match their birth certificates.
Let’s be clear: there is absolutely no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting in federal or state elections. It is already illegal for noncitizens to register and vote in federal and state elections. The SAVE Act is not about safeguarding elections – it’s about silencing voters.
On a local note, Congressman Mike Lawler, representing NY-17 (most of northern Westchester, portions of Duchess, all of Rockland and Putnam Counties), is a co-sponsor of the bill. Congressman George Latimer, NY-16 (southern Westchester, portion of northern Bronx), opposes the bill.
We urge everyone to contact their members of Congress NOW and tell them to vote NO on this dangerous legislation.
Susan Maggiotto
President, League of Women Voters of the Rivertowns, Yonkers
Letter to the Editor:
REFLECTIONS ON THE FEBRUARY 11th SPECIAL COUNTY ELECTION
I very much liked your articles appearing in the February 14th edition of Westchester Rising and Yonkers Times regarding the recently concluded special election for Westchester County Executive. I offer the following comments:
County Executive Jenkins’ victory was well-deserved in view of his stewardship of the County’s affairs as Deputy County Executive during George Latimer’s term of office, and more recently as Interim C.E.
I was particularly impressed by the turnout — over 90,000 votes cast — in a mid-winter special election, which I believe was helped by the early vote option;
While I commend Christine Sculti’s candidacy as offering voters a choice in this election, I wonder if she might have received more votes had she secured a second ballot line (i.e. Conservative or Independent) and taken advantage of additional voter forums and media interviews. In view of past county-wide elections, it seems to me that a MAGA Republican has a certain ceiling of support, which cannot win a county-wide race in Westchester County against a centrist Democrat. The GOP needs to seriously consider running more moderate candidates in future elections.
I also agree that special elections such as these cost a great deal of money ($ 4 million by one estimate). In an era of ever increasing tight budgets, serious consideration should be given to amending the County Charter to permit the County Legislative Board to fill a C.E. vacancy this close to a general election, as is done elsewhere.
STEPHEN R. ROLANDI
Larchmont
(The writer is an adjunct professor of public administration and formerly served in the administrations of New York City Mayors Edward I. Koch, Michael Bloomberg and Governor David Paterson. A life-long Republican, he is active in the Ripon Society, Principles First, and Moderate Republican PAC)
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Letter to the Editor:
END THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
This is a capsulation of an article by a national known educator, appearing in a major newspaper on February 14th 2025. “The founders of our great nation, in 1867, established land grants to the states,especially for the building of schools. They did not seek to control learning from a distant capital, but entrusted it to those nearest the student, they knew that education to be effective must be free”.
“The modern Department of Education is a repudiation of this principle,who quickly demoted it to an office of the Department of the Interior after public resistance. “
“The modest bureau was to be a clearing house of information by which citizens and statesman could learn from one another. Resurrected as a cabinet department in 1979, this department has grown into a sprawling bureaucracy that weakens, rather strengthens American learning. It governs by detailed and impenetrable rules, by mandates that burden schools, diminishes teachers, and estrange education from the purpose it was meant to serve.”
“The scale of this failure is plain, the department oversees $1.6 trillion in student loans—92% of all student loan debt. Employing 4,400 bureaucrats to enforce ever-shifting social policies, it issues thousands of regulations that entangle every level of schooling.
“Among the 23 million civilian employees in America, 11 million work in public education-yet fewer than half of them, only 4.7 million, are teachers or their assistants. The rest are administrators and regulators, consuming more than half the system’s resources while standing apart from the classroom.”
Joe Pettit
Yorktown HTS, NY
(source: Restoring America, End the Department of Education-Published in the Washington Examiner By Larry P. Arnn, Ph.D. President of Hillsdale College)
