NEW ROCHELLE, NY (April 6, 2024) — Whatever Mayors of New Rochelle like to believe about their job, in reality they have a part-time job with one role: to chair meetings of the New Rochelle City Council.
The City Council operates under parliamentary procedures known as Robert’s Rules of Order.
Yadira Ramos-Herbert has one job.
Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert has yet to learn this one job.
She has now chaired seven City Council meetings and continues to struggle with even the most basic elements of Robert’s Rules.
At last night’s Special Meeting, she had just one resolution to act upon. She managed to make two major errors and several minor errors within 2 minutes. The major errors were failing to call the vote on the resolution she had just read and ending the meeting without asking for a motion to adjourn. The minor errors were various failures to clarify who was voting and how they voted. The root of this recurring problem is that when the Mayor gets nervous she speed talks to a degree that she is often unintelligible.
As far as knowing the rules, she has no excuse.
She is a lawyer. She served on the New Rochelle Public Library Board of Trustees. She is now in her fifth year on the New Rochelle City Council.
As far as her speed talking, maybe meditation and breathing exercises would help.
This is no small thing. The public has a right to know what their elected officials are doing. She makes it extremely difficult to follow City Council meetings.
She is not being helped by the new council members, Shane Osinloye, David Peters, and Matt Stern — they appear totally flummoxed by parliamentary procedure.
I had recommended that they receive training on parliamentary procedure only to learn they had received such training — it just did not take.
At $14 a copy, the City Clerk ought to provide all council members a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order — 12th Edition.
They should each have a cheat sheet in front of them during the meetings.
This mess needs to end. There is not just the public’s right to know at stake, but a danger in projecting to the world that the people leading New Rochelle do not know what they are about.
For our part, all we can say is, if there is no dramatic improvement evident during the two April City Council meetings, expect a video compilation of every vote this year. That video will certainly show a fair number of illegal votes. We will then start a campaign to require they re-vote every illegally adopted resolution. Going forward, we will monitor every meeting for illegal votes and call them out until there is marked improvement.
The choice is simple: Learn and follow the rules, speak intelligibly or get an audit.