Mt Vernon Ethics Board Members Running For City Council

MOUNT VERNON, NY — Two members of Mount Vernon's Board of Ethics have announced their campaigns for City Council, saying they’ve seen enough.

Ethics board Chairman Gregory Cannata said “continual corruption, dysfunction and abuse of power which has resulted in loss of taxpayer dollars and city services not being delivered” were too frustrating to bear. His running mate, Vice-Chair Nicole Lucio, said the experience of monitoring “egregious” municipal wrongdoing in Westchester’s third largest city left her disheartened with only one viable path forward.

"What we saw showed us we have to run," she told gathered supporters Monday.

Three of the five seats on the Mount Vernon City Council are up for election this November as the terms of councilmembers Marcus Griffith, Delia Farquharson, and Janice Duarte will end.

Farquharson has announced her intention to seek re-election.

The field is expected to be crowded. Lucio and Cannata are both Democrats seeking the party's nod in the primary June 22.

Griffith is running for city comptroller. Current Comptroller Deborah Reynolds has been mired in controversy during her term.

The city's current problems go back a-ways, Lucio and Cannata said, including a Mayor’s Office that has periodically been at war with the City Council, an elected Comptroller who refuses to authorize approved expenditures, a crumbling infrastructure, and an arcane city charter that is complex and encourages legal shortcuts at best, and bad behavior at worst.

The city has recently endured allegations of officials breaking into each other’s offices, two mayors claiming authority at the same time, and an appointed police commissioner being arrested for trespassing by his own officers when he tried to come to enter Police Headquarters, they said.

"The stories are legion: a fire engine stored in a warehouse because the manufacturer wasn’t paid; a drainage system that pumps raw sewage into the Bronx River when it rains; excessive overtime because employee positions go intentionally unfilled," they said. "The voters of Mount Vernon have turned over the years from one political personality to another only to be let down when the old patterns re-emerge."

In November, Mount Vernon voters approved four revisions to the City Charter.

Now the two ethics board members have chosen to run together on a platform of collaboration, teamwork and basic change.

Lucio and Cannata decided to make their announcement on Dec. 28, the third day of Kwanzaa known as Ujima. It is symbolic, meant to speak to the residents of the predominately Black city.

"Ujima means building and maintaining a community together,” Lucio told the crowd at City Hall. “We want to be part of a much-needed solution."

And they are determined that it can get done if they do it together. Cannata added a surprising caveat to their campaign: “We’re asking the voters of Mount Vernon to vote for both of us or don’t vote for us at all. Together we can get something done."