Yonkers Insider: 2023 Campaign Trail: Bipartisan Joint Statement In Support Of The Restoration Of Term Limits In Yonkers.

 

PRESS RELEASE.

 

( Yonkers NY, June 2, 2023)

TERM LIMITS MUST BE RESTORED IN YONKERS

 

By Corazon Pineda-Isaac and Anthony Merante

The writers are members of the Yonkers City Council and candidates for Mayor of Yonkers. Corazon Pineda Isaac is a Democrat; Anthony Merante is a Republican.

 

Over the past few weeks, several major news outlets, including the Journal News and  New York Post, have exposed a disturbing pattern of behavior by Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano. At least fourteen direct relatives of Mayor Spano have jobs with the City and as many as twenty-three clients of the Mayor’s lobbyist brothers have received City contracts or tax breaks. Taken together, it’s hard not to conclude that Mike Spano puts the needs of his family and friends first. Everyone else in the City comes second.

 

The two of us represent totally different values and disagree on many, if not most, major issues of governance and policy. But we do agree on one thing, the job of the Mayor is to serve the taxpayers and citizens and only them. It’s quite possible we will run against each other for Mayor of Yonkers following the primaries in June. At the same time, we are colleagues and friends, and that’s why we are taking the extraordinary step of speaking out together. We are doing this out of necessity to turn off the taxpayer-funded gravy train that the Spano family has exploited for twelve years under Mike Spano. The people of our City deserve better. 

 

The cost of the Mayor’s behavior is staggering. In just one year, the Spano family reaped over $2 million of taxpayer funded salaries and benefits from the City government. On top of that, the Mayor’s lobbyist brothers are paid at least $65,000 per month to represent clients that have business before the City. These clients have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax breaks for projects around Yonkers under twelve years of Spano reign. This is taxpayer money that could otherwise be used to fund schools, cut taxes, rebuild infrastructure, build affordable housing, equip our police and fire departments or any other priority. Instead, it is going into the pockets of the Spano family and friends network.

 

Regardless of whether this is legal, the appearance of impropriety alone is unacceptable. The residents of Yonkers expect the Mayor to be held to a higher standard than bare-minimum compliance. They should never be in a position to question who the Mayor truly serves. 

 

One solution we both support is to restore term limits for City elected officials. By a vote of the people nearly twenty years ago, the City charter limited the Mayor and City Council to two terms of four years. Mike Spano has disregarded the charter twice now and had his loyalists on the City Council vote to allow him to run for an unprecedented third and fourth term as Mayor. With all the money his friends and family make with him in office, it’s no wonder why. 

 

That’s why nepotism has taken hold the way it has, because the Mayor has essentially been given free reign. Yonkers today is an extreme example of the corrupting consequence of handing power over to one person and one family for too long. These issues have been whispered about for years in Yonkers, but the extent of it only came into focus last month after the news started shining a spotlight on it.

 

But this year, Yonkers voters can vote for a ballot initiative that will strengthen the term limits in our City. Both of us support this initiative because the people of Yonkers need protections in place to prevent the type of abuse that Mike Spano has engaged in.

 

If the two of us end up running against each other next fall, we will have a vigorous debate about the directions we hope to take the city, and we will disagree on many philosophical issues. But this is something that cuts across the political divide between Republicans and Democrats. Elected officials are elected to represent the people, not themselves, their families or their friends. Adhering to the most basic confines of the law as a public servant is a terribly low bar to set. Even the appearance of misconduct and profiteering is unacceptable. All of this deserves further scrutiny and investigation, because we don’t know what we don’t know and the people of Yonkers deserve better.