American Notes NEW YORK

It was literally an eleventh-hour rescue for the city of Yonkers. Convening at 11:55 p.m. last Friday, the city council finally agreed to comply with a federal judge's order to build 800 units of moderate-income housing in predominantly white neighborhoods. On Friday escalating fines imposed by Judge Leonard Sand had hit $1 million a day, and 447 Yonkers employees -- nearly one-quarter of the work force -- faced dismissal Saturday morning under a "doomsday" plan devised by the state-appointed Emergency Financial Control Board. Libraries were to be closed, building-maintenance operations reduced, and street-cleaning service cut in half. And that would have been only the beginning: by mid-October roughly 88% of municipal employees were to be laid off, including large numbers of police and firemen.

For six weeks, four of the council's seven members had held out against the court-ordered plan, but increasing voter complaints as well as the threat of massive firings and eventual bankruptcy finally forced two councilmen, Nicholas Longo and Peter Chema, to back down. "I knew many of those people who would have been terminated," said Longo. "I'd been to their weddings, the baptisms of their children." This week the council members will present recommendations to the court that they hope will make the housing plan more palatable to its opponents. Said Longo of the ordeal that ultimately cost Yonkers $800,000 in fines: "It turned out to be a very expensive civics lesson."