The Yonkers City Council will comply fully with a federal subpoena ordering it to supply a variety of public records to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, council president Chuck Schorr Lesnick said this morning.

Those public records, he said, include council agendas, decisions, video recordings of meetings and documents related to council proceedings dating back to 2004.

“I asked them if they could narrow the focus a little bit so that we wouldn’t have to copy everything, but they wouldn’t tell me what they were looking for,” Lesnick said. “When they want to tell me what it’s about, they’ll tell me what it’s about. Until then, [if] they ask me for information, I’ll comply.

“I have nothing to hide,” Lesnick added.

No council members or staffers have been subpoenaed. A temporary employee has been hired by the City Clerk’s office to copy the records sought by U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia’s office, Lesnick said.

Because of the time frame for records sought, officials and others have speculated that the subpoena’s purpose is to obtain information to answer questions about the council’s actions regarding the $650 million Ridge Hill Village mixed-use development planned for an 81-acre campus off Interstate 87 by Forest City Ratner Cos. of Brooklyn.

Ridge Hill began detailed reviews by the council early in 2004, after Forest City Ratner announced a conceptual plan for the project in September 2003. A divided council approved an environmental review, then a zoning change allowing the project to be built in 2005, then again last summer.

In the meantime the project sparked angry opposition and two lawsuits. One suit was filed by neighboring residents joined initially by Lesnick, who campaigned in opposition to the project. A state judge nullified the four-vote approvals granted by the council in 2005 and required a five-vote approval which the council carried out last July following concessions by Forest City Ratner.

The second lawsuit was filed by the neighboring town of Greenburgh and its villages of Hastings-on-Hudson and Ardsley. Greenburgh and the villages settled with Yonkers last month.

Greenburgh Supervisor Paul J. Feiner said neither the town nor he had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

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