NEW ROCHELLE, NY (July 2, 2026) — The New Rochelle Civilian Complaint Review Board will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, July 8, at 5:30 p.m. in the City Council Conference Room at City Hall, 515 North Avenue. The meeting will be recorded and posted on the city’s website.
The board was established by the City Council on October 15, 2024 and its seven inaugural members were seated on July 1, 2025. Wednesday’s meeting comes more than a year — one year and seven days, to be exact — after the board was first seated — and more than a week after the June 30 deadline by which the city code required the board to have held its annual public meeting and issued two semi-annual reports, neither of which has been produced.
No agenda has been posted for Wednesday’s meeting.
The board’s two Co-Chairpersons, Renée M. Baron and Damon Maher, were appointed by the City Council on June 16. Michael Cammer was appointed the same night to fill the District Four vacancy created by the resignation of Natasha Fapohunda, the board’s original Chairperson, in May.
The meeting will be recorded and available for viewing at newrochelleny.gov/999/Watch-Council-Board-Meetings.
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What to Watch For
1. Rules of procedure
The code requires the board to adopt rules of procedure before conducting any business. No rules have been adopted. This should be the first order of business — but no agenda has been posted confirming it will be addressed.
2. Co-Chairperson mechanics
This is the first time Baron and Maher will preside together. Who calls the meeting to order? Who rules on points of order? Who determines a voice vote? Robert’s Rules of Order — the board’s designated parliamentary authority — assumes a single presiding officer. Watch how the Co-Chair structure operates in practice.
3. The Kane/Harper window
The Kane/Harper matter is the board’s only currently viable founding case. A civil lawsuit by Ivin Harper is expected imminently. The moment it is filed, §9-122 Exception (d) closes the board’s window on that case. Will the board address the Kane matter before that happens?
4. Overdue reports
Two semi-annual reports are overdue — December 31, 2025 and June 30, 2026. Will either be addressed or produced at Wednesday’s meeting?
5. The annual public meeting
The code required the board to hold an annual public meeting open to the public and City Council members by June 30. That deadline has passed. Is Wednesday’s meeting a substitute — and if so, does it satisfy the code requirement given it was noticed only as a general “meeting,” not as the annual public meeting?
6. Agenda
As of this writing, no agenda has been posted for Wednesday’s meeting. The Open Meetings Law requires an agenda to be made available to the public. Will one be posted before 5:30 p.m. Wednesday?
7. Training status
Not all members may have completed all required training. Will the board address whether members are cleared to review cases — and specifically whether Cammer, appointed June 16, has completed the required curriculum?
8. Public access
The meeting is open to the public. It will also be recorded and posted on the city website at newrochelleny.gov/999/Watch-Council-Board-Meetings.
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Unanswered Questions Going Into Wednesday’s Meeting
The board’s first meeting takes place against a backdrop of unresolved legal and procedural questions that Talk of the Sound has raised over the past several months — none of which have been publicly addressed by the city:
- Sequencing: At the June 16 City Council meeting, Item 17 — appointing the Co-Chairpersons — was voted on before Item 21, the ordinance that actually creates the Co-Chairperson position in the city code. The resolution’s own recitals stated the code had “already” been amended at a moment when it had not yet been voted on.
- Term misalignment: Co-Chairperson terms run June 15 to June 15; member terms run July 1 to June 30. The 15-day gap was introduced by a last-minute change between the June 9 and June 16 agenda packets and has not been addressed.
- The Toomey memo: In November 2020, the city’s own outside labor counsel warned in writing that giving a civilian board authority over police discipline could trigger mandatory collective bargaining with the police unions — a concern never publicly resolved before the CCRB was created in 2024.
- Independent legal counsel: The code does not authorize the board to retain its own outside counsel, separate from Corporation Counsel, whose office simultaneously defends the city in litigation involving the officers the board is charged with reviewing.
- Resolution 2025-102: The resolution that created the board states members “may be” a present or former law enforcement officer — directly contradicting the code’s requirement that “no member may be” one. That contradiction has never been corrected.
- No payroll setup: The city’s Finance Department confirmed to Talk of the Sound via FOIL that no payroll, tax, or payment records exist for any CCRB member, despite a compensation requirement in place since October 2024.
- The exemption trap: The four cases that led to the board’s creation — McKenna/Flowers, Vaccaro/Fogg, Conn/Garris, and Kane/Harper — are all exempt from its review under §9-122. The board’s only currently viable founding case, Kane/Harper, has a civil lawsuit expected imminently. Once filed, that case too will be closed to the board under Exception (d).
Wednesday’s meeting will be the board’s first opportunity to address any of these questions publicly. Whether it does is itself a story.
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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 or contact via WhatsApp: +353 89 972 0669.