ITHACA, N.Y. — Common Council’s two sitting members of the Solidarity Slate, a self-described Democratic Socialist voting bloc, split on two major votes Wednesday. The development stands as an unusual surprise during the last council meeting of the year, and as Slate member Alderperson Jorge DeFendini prepares to leave council after losing his seat to surprise write-in candidate Patrick Kuehl.
Slate member Alderperson Phoebe Brown was the sole council member to vote against appointing Chief of Staff Deb Mohlenhoff as the City of Ithaca’s inaugural City Manager. DeFendini was the sole council member to vote against appointing Schenectady Police Lt. Thomas Kelly as chief of the Ithaca Police Department (IPD).
As the sole dissenting voices in each vote, they made little difference in the council’s final decisions — neither DeFendini or Brown offered statements in the discussion preceding their votes — but they marked the meeting with what appears to be one of the only instances in which the two council members differed on major votes.
“I don’t know where this notion that we always vote together came from,” Brown said Wednesday.
Currently, the Solidarity Slate’s website does not describe the group as a “bloc,” but Slate members have nearly always voted together since the coalition’s founding in 2021.
When DeFendini and Brown co-campaigned in 2021 for their seats on council, the Ithaca Solidarity Slate Facebook page posted on March 3, 2021 that the two were running to “create a voting block [sic],” that they “would make decisions together,” and that their “campaigns themselves are being run as one.”
In the past, neither DeFendini nor Brown have requested a correction with The Ithaca Voice or attempted to clarify what they meant when the Slate was described as a voting bloc.
The Solidarity Slate’s uniform voting style, among other tactics, were criticized during 2023’s local elections. Asked why the Slate didn’t address these attacks as inaccurate, DeFendini said he doesn’t think every criticism necessitated a response.
“A lot of these criticisms come in bad faith. That’s what it comes down to,” DeFendini said. “A lot of times when people have an issue, [it’s] with the substance it’s being voted on, rather than how you arrived with that vote.”
Other members of the Slate, like Alderperson-elect Kayla Matos, have defended the practice of bloc voting on the campaign trail.
At a candidate forum at the Eagles Club in Ithaca on Oct. 17, Matos was asked by an attendee if she would always vote as a bloc or if there were instances in which she would “diverge from other members of the Solidarity Slate.”
“We’re just being transparent and open that we are coming to an agreement at the table, and that we will be pushing for the same policies,” Matos said in her response at the time. She did not attempt to dispel the idea that the members of Solidarity Slate would vote differently on different matters.
Asked why the two council members chose to vote against the two measures Wednesday, Brown said she respects now-incoming City Manager Mohlenhoff, but would not vote for her because Mohlenhoff played a role in laying the groundwork for the City Manager transition. Mohlenhoff worked on the government transition while serving as a council member in 2021, and as the chief of staff in 2023.
DeFendini told The Ithaca Voice he voted against appointing Kelly to the chief position over an additional $15,000 that was allocated to help pay for his relocation to Ithaca from the Schenectady area.
“I feel like we’ve already invested a considerable amount” in the search for a new police chief, DeFendini said.
Kelly is set to receive a $50,000 signing bonus to be paid out over his first three years as chief, and a starting salary totaling $150,000 after a 13.6% increase approved by council in May.
Wednesday’s council meeting was the last meeting of the full Common Council as it currently stands. At the next full meeting on Jan. 3, half of the council’s membership will change over as newly elected members are sworn in.
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