The Public’s Right to Know: New Rochelle’s FOIL Stonewall — Part II
DUBLIN, IRELAND (August 17, 2026) — This is Part II in a multi-part series.
In Part I, I explained how increasingly targeted FOIL requests, the City's resistance to them, my reporting in The New Rochelle Thimblerig and, ultimately, litigation became intertwined. I also said that the next step in this series would be to open the files and let readers examine what actually happened.
We begin with Generations Church. The documentary history runs 68 pages and is now Exhibit D-1 (link below) in my pending Article 78 proceeding in New York State Supreme Court in Westchester County. It contains the original FOIL request, emails with City officials, the administrative appeal, the City's responses, my follow-up questions, the May 2026 request and denial, and City Manager Wilfredo Melendez's final determination.
Generations Church is a useful place to start because it illustrates several issues that recur throughout my FOIL disputes with New Rochelle: delays that produced no records, questions about who was deciding my appeals, claims of an enormous number of responsive documents without an explanation of how that number was derived, and ultimately a refusal to process a new request because the City contends I waited too long to challenge what happened the first time.
The legal questions are now for a judge. The underlying history is available for anyone to examine.
