In 2023, the Yonkers City Council quietly voted to raise residential daytime noise limits to 85 decibels — loud enough to damage hearing, and eight times higher than before. Nighttime limits were doubled. There were no meaningful public hearings. No expert input. No real notice to residents.

Documents the city fought for months to suppress tell the story: the ordinance was drafted at the request of a Council member to benefit a politically connected backer, who donated $1,000 to her campaign weeks earlier. Only under threat of a lawsuit did the city release nearly a thousand pages of records it had falsely claimed didn't exist.

The science is settled. Noise at these levels damages hearing, raises the risk of heart disease, disrupts children's learning, and hits hardest in lower-income neighborhoods. Yonkers now has one of the most permissive residential noise laws in the United States.

We're asking the Council to do what it should have done in the first place: reverse this ordinance and let experts — not campaign contributors — set the policy.