NEW ROCHELLE, NY (May 22, 2026) — Natasha Fapohunda’s term as Chairperson of the New Rochelle Civilian Complaint Review Board expires June 30, 2026 — 40 days from today and approximately 26 business days. She will remain a board member through June 2028. But whether she continues as Chairperson beyond June 30 is a legal question the city has not publicly addressed.
Under Article XXXI of the New Rochelle city code, the City Council, with the approval of the Mayor, selects one member to serve as Chairperson for a one-year term. A member may serve no more than two consecutive one-year terms as Chairperson. Fapohunda was designated Chairperson when members were appointed in July 2025. Her first one-year Chairperson term expires June 30, 2026.
The board has never held a single meeting under her chairmanship.
Two Meetings, One Deadline
The City Council has two scheduled meetings before June 30:
- June 9, 2026 — Committee of the Whole, 3:45 p.m. This is the practical deadline for placing the reappointment on the agenda for discussion before a formal vote.
- June 16, 2026 — Regular legislative meeting, 6:15 p.m. This is the last scheduled opportunity for a formal vote before the term expires.
If the reappointment is not placed on the June 9 agenda, the city would be forced to either add it as a late item to the June 16 meeting — bypassing the Committee of the Whole process — call a special meeting, or allow the term to expire without action.
There is no public indication that any of these options is being planned. The reappointment does not appear on any publicly available agenda as of publication.
Two Deadlines, Not One
June 30, 2026 is not only the deadline for the Chairperson reappointment. It is also the due date for the next semi-annual public report the city code requires the CCRB to issue. The inaugural report, due by approximately December 31, 2025, is already five months overdue.
That obligation does not disappear because time has passed — the public is still owed that report, and the activity it would cover is a matter of public record regardless of when it is published. In the board’s first six months, members were appointed, oaths of office were taken, background checks and fingerprinting were completed, Luis Angel Ochoa resigned and was replaced by Christian Walker, Deputy City Manager Todd Castaldo was designated as the city’s CCRB liaison, Council Member Osinloye’s July 2025 communications pushing for board activation, and NACOLE contracting was underway — delayed by insurance requirements the city imposed on the national training organization. None of that was ever publicly reported by the CCRB or the City of New Rochelle. The only public accounting of the board’s first six months comes from Talk of the Sound’s investigation, published May 17, 2026. The board should produce that inaugural report immediately. Late is better than never.
The next semi-annual report, covering the current six-month period, is due June 30 — and the board should already be preparing it. It would cover substantially more activity: three NACOLE training sessions in March and April 2026, Monroe University training in April, the FOIL and Open Meetings Law training in January, the start of the Citizens Police Academy in May, Chairperson Fapohunda’s written declination of her stipend, Council Member Peters’ April 2026 objection to requiring full CPA training after a year of delay, City Manager Melendez’s written acknowledgment that the board could meet before training was complete, and the Talk of the Sound investigation published May 17 — which included 25 FOIL requests and 71 questions directed to eight officials including the board’s designated liaison and Chairperson.
The code requires all semi-annual reports to be published on the city website. Nothing is there. There is no public indication either report is being prepared — the overdue inaugural one or the one coming due in 40 days.
The Holdover Question
Section 9-114 of the city code — titled “Term limits, holdovers and vacancy” — states: “In accordance with the provisions of the New York State Public Officers Law, any member whose term has expired shall hold over until his or her replacement shall be named.”
That provision clearly applies to board membership. Whether it also applies to the Chairperson role is less clear. The Chairperson is selected separately by the City Council with Mayoral approval — a distinct designation from board membership. A reasonable reading of the code is that while Fapohunda’s board membership continues under holdover, her Chairperson designation may expire with the one-year term unless the City Council acts to reappoint her. A different reading holds that “any member” includes the member serving as Chairperson, and she holds over in that role too.
The city has not publicly addressed which reading it intends to apply. That ambiguity is itself a problem — the board’s ability to function, already severely compromised, depends in part on whether it has a presiding officer. Under Sec. 9-118A, the meeting schedule is “to be determined by the Chairperson.” If there is no Chairperson after June 30, who calls the meetings?
Talk of the Sound has previously documented how the city handles expired board terms. In June 2024, Words in Edgewise reported that Ethics Board Chairman Charles C. Phipps had continued serving — and acting as Chairman — for more than four months after his five-year term expired on January 31, 2024. During that period, Phipps accepted, acted upon, and signed a decision on an ethics complaint filed by Talk of the Sound against Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert. No reappointment had been made. No public acknowledgment of the vacancy had been issued. Corporation Counsel Dawn Warren retroactively cited reasons why Phipps could hold over — but only after Talk of the Sound formally raised the issue. The episode suggests the city has a cavalier attitude toward board term limits, addressing them only when pressed.
The CCRB Chairperson situation is now on the public record with 40 days remaining. The city cannot claim it was unaware of the deadline.
A Term Defined by Inaction
Fapohunda has served nearly her entire first term as Chairperson of a board that has never met, never reviewed a complaint, never held a public session, and never issued a semi-annual report as required by city code. No record was found showing she called or attempted to call a meeting.
FOIL records obtained by Talk of the Sound show she was not entirely passive. She raised concerns about training structure. She declined her stipend in writing on March 11, 2026, also stating she does not consider herself a representative of the government. She questioned whether training requirements were creating a barrier to the board doing its work.
City Manager Wilfredo Melendez acknowledged in writing on April 13, 2026 that “the Board can still meet, hold public sessions, and take care of other responsibilities” before training is complete. The board did not meet after that email.
What makes that acknowledgment more damaging is what preceded it. On February 27, 2026, Deputy City Manager Todd Castaldo wrote to Martin Sanchez, a former New Rochelle school board member who had asked about the CCRB’s meeting schedule: “The CCRB has not begun having meetings yet. The board members are still in the process of completing the required trainings. Once trainings have been completed, meetings will be scheduled.” That email was copied to City Manager Melendez and Council Member Osinloye. A city staff member gave Talk of the Sound the same explanation in May 2026 when asked why no agendas or minutes appeared on the city website.
That position was never supported by the city code. A plain reading of Section 9-118C is unambiguous: in the absence of complaints to review, meetings shall be used for training and continuing education. The code does not merely permit meetings before training is complete — it requires them. The board was required to hold its inaugural meeting by August 1, 2025, thirty days after members’ terms commenced on July 1. It did not. Under the code, the board was required to meet monthly from that point forward. It never has.
The City Manager’s April 13 email — which stated the board could meet, hold public sessions, and “take care of other responsibilities in the meantime” — confirmed what the code had always said. That email was copied to Deputy City Manager Castaldo, Council Member Osinloye, Police Commissioner Reynolds, Council Member Peters, and Mayor Ramos-Herbert. None of those officials took any action to convene the board after receiving it.
Whether the City Council reappoints Fapohunda for a second one-year term or not, the reality is stark: she has served nearly half of her maximum possible time as Chairperson — two consecutive one-year terms — without the board convening once. If reappointed, her second term would begin with the same unresolved questions, the same absent meetings, and the same unanswered accountability failures that defined her first.
Under Fapohunda, the community is owed eleven public meetings including agendas and minutes for each, case reports, a semi-annual report from December and clear answers to precisely the questions we (and others) have been asking since July 1, 2025.
A Board That Doesn’t Exist Online
The city code requires the CCRB to publish its rules of procedure, its semi-annual reports, and its case reports on the city website. None of those things exist. But the infrastructure for them — a dedicated webpage — doesn’t exist either.
The CCRB currently appears as a line item on the city’s generic boards and committees page, alongside the Telecommunications Advisory Committee and the LGBTQ Advisory Committee. That framing fundamentally misrepresents what the CCRB is. It is not an advisory committee. It is a legally constituted oversight body created by city ordinance with statutory powers — the authority to review Internal Affairs investigations, issue opinions to the Police Commissioner, require public explanations for deviations from its recommendations, and issue public reports. It belongs in a different category entirely.
Nothing stops the Chairperson from asking the city to create a dedicated CCRB webpage right now. It would cost nothing. It would require no completed training. It would require no board vote. It could include member names, photos, and contact information; instructions for filing a complaint; the enabling legislation; placeholder sections for meeting notices, agendas, minutes, and semi-annual reports; and a clear statement of the board’s mandate and powers. The public would know the board exists, what it does, and how to reach it.
The board’s hands are not entirely tied. They are choosing not to act on things they could do today.
What Comes Next
Talk of the Sound will be monitoring the June 9 Committee of the Whole agenda and the June 16 legislative meeting agenda for any action on the CCRB Chairperson appointment. If no action is taken before June 30, that will be reported.
Whether the Council reappoints Fapohunda, selects a new Chairperson, or takes no action and allows the holdover question to go unresolved — Talk of the Sound has submitted that question to Mayor Ramos-Herbert, City Manager Melendez, and Chairperson Fapohunda. No responses have been received as of publication.
This story is part of a continuing investigation into the New Rochelle Civilian Complaint Review Board. The full research report is available to paid subscribers at Words in Edgewise.
This article was prepared with the assistance of AI tools under the direction and editing of Robert Cox.
Have information about this story? Email robertcox@talkofthesound.com (preferred) or contact via WhatsApp: +353 089 972 0669.