After Months of Stalling, Talk of the Sound Obtains New Rochelle Civil Service Eligibility Lists

Over the years, Talk of the Sound has worked to open up the opaque function of New Rochelle’s Municipal Civil Service (CSC). We have had a good deal of success — all of their meetings are now videotaped, the meetings are broadcast on NRTV and archived on the City web site, all of the CSC agendas are posted on the web before the meetings, the meeting notices are published on the City web site and part of the notification system so residents can get alerts for upcoming meetings and the meetings are held in a regular, public meeting room as opposed to past years when meetings were not always announced, agendas were hard to come by and the meetings took place behind the locked doors of the Executive Director of the CSC.

After Talk of the Sound exposed how CSC Chairman Domenic Procopio failed, for many years, to pay his full taxes on an investment property at 7 Pinebrook Road by receiving combat veteran exemptions, military exemptions and STAR exemptions for which he was not eligible (Procopio never served in the U.S. military), the City Council changed the City Charter so that the CSC Chairman’s sole power — to hire/fire the CSC Executive Director was removed and transferred to the City Manager. Procopio paid back the combat veteran and military exemptions but kept thousands in illegal STAR exemptions. The City claimed the windfall for Procopio was a “clerical error”.

From time to time, Talk of the Sound has filed for Freedom of Information requests for CSC records. Let’s just say that the CSC has not been enthusiastic in their response and has engaged in aggressive foot dragging. This sort of behavior is to be expected by an entity that is a major hub in the corruption that goes on in New Rochelle — they have a lot to hide.

This past August — after getting multiple complaints from residents and public sector employees that CSC Executive Director was refusing to allow them to see the Eligible Lists maintained by the CSC, Talk of the Sound had enough of the games and made a broad Freedom of Information request. These are public records that the City itself should be publishing on the web site. The idea that any resident, any employee, any test-taker, would be told they could not see the list is an outrage. And if the CSC says “no” to a candidate where does that leave them? If they press to see the list they are branded a “troublemaker” and blackballed — and knowing this few ask and those that do are told “no” and give up.

Talk of the Sound intends to eliminate this altogether by first getting all of the active lists and related documents and publishing them here. We will then monitor the CSC meetings and obtain all new documents. I want to figure out a way to create a database for all of this information so anyone can see where they or anyone else stands on any list at any time. Of course, one thing missing is when people are selected off a list or determined to be ineligible (and that opens a whole other can of the worms. But we have to start somewhere.

I made the following request in August:

“I would like get copies of the eligibility lists, letters/emails requesting tests, confirmations back from NYS CSC as which have been scheduled/when.”

I just received on Friday a partial fill of my request — the eligibility lists (with the scores redacted). This after repeated back and forth with the City in which the City claimed not to understand my request, that it was found to be confusing. At one point they typed up a list of eligibility lists and sent that (and it was incomplete!)

For those not familiar with the CSC, there are various processes required which include holding a test for a CSC position and then ranking the results to create a list of people who passed the test. This “Eligible List” is used when hiring candidates — by law, the agency hiring must select from the top three candidates on the Eligible List, also referred to as the Eligibility List.

One form of corruption that occurs in New Rochelle with regard to the CSC is not selecting candidates from among the top three — now there are way too many stories to tell here about this but in the past couple of years, we have reported on CSC games involving positions in the City School District of New Rochelle, various departments in the City of New Rochelle including the Police Department, the Development Department and more. These are crimes (except apparently in New Rochelle).

In any case, I have plans to do extensive reporting on all of this and did finally obtain some of what I requested — Eligible lists for jobs in the City School District of New Rochelle, City of New Rochelle, Fire Department, Police Department and Library. It would be difficult to overstate the deep reluctance of the City to part with these records (that it took 3 months to produce documents that are readily available ought to make that clear).

That said, I went ahead and scanned the records I did finally obtain and present them here.

I could use some help if anyone is interested.

1. There are some lists that do not say which agency they are for and I need to be certain; if you know about any of these tests let me know.

2. I want to create a database for these lists — and add all new lists as they are created so if you want to help do the data entry or know how to create a web-database let me know.

3. Some of the related documents include job specifications or job postings; if you happen to have any of these please get them to me.

4. I do not trust CSC Executive Director Jeanette Medina or School District Civil Service Director Stephanie Oliver any further than I can throw Domenic Procopio so expect there is something missing from what I have gotten so far — if you notice something missing let me know.

Here are the lists for which I am not 100% positive which agency they are for…

CSC Eligible List – Asst Custodian Decentralized #2345

CSC Eligible List – Custodian B/E PROM #74-076 #2355

CSC Eligible List – Customer Service Rep. (Spanish) #67-233 #2306

CSC Eligible List – Data Entry Clerk

CSC Eligible List – Dispatch Clerk – Prom #2346

CSC Eligible List – Housing Compliance Officer NCP #2347

CSC Eligible List – Principal Clerk #73-892 #2356

CSC Eligible List – Senior Account Clerk #62-568 #2331B

CSC Eligible List – Senior Typist #2353 O/C Decentralized

CSC Eligible List – Working Supervisor #62-575 #2341 Open Competitive

CSC Eligible List – Working Supervisor #71-494 #2340