In a shocking and unannounced vote, the City Council voted to affirm the discredited and harmful Yonkers noise limits. With an 85 decibels day time noise limit — perhaps the worst in the US — anyone can pretty much make as much noise as they want, all day long, from 7 am to 10 pm. 85 decibels is about the noise made by a lawn mower up close. If your next door neighbor has a big all day party, and the sound is measured at 85 decibels on your property (maybe 100 or more decibels at the party), that’s OK with the Yonkers City Council. The 65 decibel night time noise limit will keep you up all night. If you have kids, it will keep them up too.
How did it happen? It dawned on someone on the council that Yonkers didn’t have ANY enforceable noise ordinance, because the incompetently drafted 2023 noise ordinance contained glaring typos and inconsistencies. After ignoring reports of this problem for four months, to fix their earlier mistake they doubled down on their flagrant disregard of the health and quality of life impact of noise. Right in time for July 4th and summer.
The council passed the ordinance by 4-2 at its June 22 meeting, with Council Members Merante and Breen voting against, as they had in 2023. Council Member Pineda-Isaac spoke at the meeting to note that she is opposed to the higher noise limits, but that she voted in favor because she had been told that it was necessary to fix the earlier mishap, and that there will be a noise study conducted, which will supposedly lead to another vote. Similarly, Council President Bellamy-Collins expressed her reservations about the high decibel limits, also noting that she wants to return to a discussion of the issue. Council Member Diaz, architect of the 2023 measure, was absent.
Why didn’t they roll back the noise limits to the pre-2023 levels? No one has been able to explain that. They’re probably not aware that those levels, passed in 2005, were actually very carefully thought out, and designed with significant input from leading regional noise experts at Rutgers. Our current council made no such efforts, and bought into Ms. Diaz’s uninformed argument that the noise limits were “old” and needed to be torn up to keep up with a changing city. The council embraced her argument with no research, accepting the dubious suggestion that a larger, more densely populated city needs less noise control.
The June 22 vote was not on the council’s agenda. It was added last minute, without public notice. In effect, there has been no public notice or discussion of the city’s higher noise limits. The defective and useless 2023 ordinance had no meaningful public input – just the tiny legal ads.
So we now have a city noise policy instigated in 2023 by a dubiously motivated and uninformed council member, a policy that has never been open for public comment or informed by evidence based knowledge.
