An old addage – OK, at this point maybe a cliche – comes to mind when thinking about how the Yonkers City Council passed its noise ordinance in late 2023. Yes, it’s something like this: the making of laws, like the making of sausage, is a process that is best left unobserved. For several months after we heard about the insanely radical embrace of loud noise in the new ordinance, we were still a bit too dazed to carefully read some of the official documents related to the legislation. Then a couple of weeks ago, a couple of things became clear. The Council never passed an ordinance changing the night time residential noise limit – yet that limit was somehow mysteriously changed in the city code. The second realization is that the Council ordinance not only changed the daytime commercial to residential noise limit, but it also left it the same without changing it. Confusing? Yes, it’s so confusing that the law is now probably unenforceable. If they made sausage with this degree of competence, Nathan’s and Sabrett would be long out of business….Stay tuned, more to come…but folks, I think we got them in a bad spot.
