Sunday Briefing: Fugitive Teacher Jailed, Mayor Loses an Ally, Residents Grill City on Development

Robert Cox

11 May 2026 — 8 min read

The original Surf Club photo sans Wrecking Ball

This briefing draws from reporting at Talk of the Sound, analysis and commentary published in Words in Edgewise, and selected regional coverage for the week ending May 10, 2026

A Note from the Publisher

It’s been one of those weeks where some of the most interesting stories didn’t make the top three, so I want to encourage you to scroll all the way down through this week’s links — there are some real nuggets buried in there.

The Rubicco saga continues. I know some of you have been following that closely and I want to say that while the subject of that reporting may think it’s all about him — and that’s very much in keeping with his nature — there’s something considerably larger going on that I’m not quite ready to lay out in full just yet. We’re getting closer. Stay with me on that one.

I also published a story this week about Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert’s appearance at a conference in North Carolina where she spoke on a panel about development in New Rochelle. She didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard before. It wasn’t very different from her State of the City address or interviews she’s given. But I thought it was worth publishing because there’s something revealing about watching how an elected official talks about their city to an audience that has absolutely nothing to do with them — no constituents, no developers, no one with skin in the game.

That story connects to something I’ve been working on since last summer that I think deserves its own dedicated piece. Under Mayor Ramos-Herbert, a significant number of development projects have been announced with considerable fanfare, but no shovels have actually gone into the ground. Stella 2 was approved long ago and is less a new development than an annex to The Stella (my last address before relocating to Ireland). Not a single project approved since she took office has broken ground. I think what we’re seeing now raises a different set of questions, and I intend to get into them.

On the subject of Davenport Neck — I was a little surprised by how much attention that story got. It lit up on Facebook. It began when I learned Council member Al Tarantino had been walking District 2 handing out flyers about a community meeting at Trinity School on Monday, May 11. I spoke with him. He was not happy. The city had agreed to promote the event and then didn’t follow through, so he took matters into his own hands. I asked him to send me a copy of the flyer and said I would post a meeting announcement. I needed a photo to go with it and the pictures I found of the beach clubs were too far away or not very interesting. I used AI to get a better angle on one of them, and then, on a bit of an impulse, I added a wrecking ball.

City Hall was not pleased. They called it misinformation, saying the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss demolishing the beach clubs but to talk about rezoning the property so that owners could build more housing on their property. Calling the wrecking ball misleading is a classic case of boiling the frog — they’re just changing the zoning and who knows what comes later.

Now, there’s a story I covered this week that I want to explain in a little more detail because I think the significance of it goes beyond the surface. A woman named Kemesha Salmon, who owns TP Toys in New Rochelle, posted a flyer on social media saying she would be posting videos. A reader sent it to me but it didn’t mean much to me. I learned her target was the Mayor. I had actually just seen the Mayor and Kemesha posting warmly about each other on Instagram, including a video of Yadira helping move boxes at the store. So the whole thing went on my radar but I didn’t think it rose to the level of a story so I posted a simple social media post.

Then I watched the videos. All five of them. They were painful to watch. Meandering and self-congratulatory. By the time I got to the third one I was ready to climb the walls. She kept circling around without getting to the point, and it wasn’t until she was halfway through the fourth video that she actually said what she was upset about. I decided a story was warranted but not for the reason she gave. So I used transcription software to pull the full text of all five videos, built an outline from that, and wrote the story so that you don’t have to suffer through what I suffered through. The videos are embedded if you want to watch them yourself (don’t!)

The short version of her complaint is that she was encouraged to apply for a THRIVE grant by the City Manager then didn’t get it. That is silly, the idea that someone encourages you to apply for something is not the same as promising you’ll get it, and taken on its own, that’s not much of a story. But here’s what I think is actually significant. Kemesha Salmon is well connected — to local politicians, county and state officials, nonprofits, the community broadly. She’s the toy lady. People like her. And we are about a year out from a mayoral primary. Mayor Ramos-Herbert has been losing supporters, and I’ve been hearing for some time that Jared Rice was no fan of hers — now I know why, and it fits a pattern. You cannot keep burning bridges with people who helped build your political foundation and expect that to have no consequences come election time.

There is one legal element of this story I’m continuing to look at. I asked Mayor Ramos-Herbert directly whether she was present in the meeting where the THRIVE grant decisions were made — the meeting where Kemesha’s application was reviewed and rejected. If that’s true, it raises real questions, and I’m waiting to see how that gets answered.

The Samuel McVey story reached a significant milestone this week. McVey, if you’ve been following, had absconded — disappeared while his case was pending. He turned up in Colombia, then Miami, then Louisiana, where police discovered he had an extraditable warrant out of New York. The Westchester County warrant squad flew to Baton Rouge and brought him back, and he was arraigned on new charges including a felony count of contempt of court and bail jumping. The court set bail at $100,000 cash. In my years of covering local courts I don’t often see that number on a case that started out as a misdemeanor — a threatening email. He could not make bail and was remanded to Westchester County jail, where he spent the weekend. The next question is whether he finds a way to get out, and whether anyone in his life is willing to put up that kind of money for someone who already ran once.

Finally, I want to tell you about the work I did on the environmental impact statement hearing that was held on April 14 at New Rochelle City Hall. What struck me about that hearing was how well-prepared many of the attendees were. I’ve been going to school board and city council meetings for a long time, and my advice to people has always been the same: don’t go up to the microphone to vent. Go up with questions. A politician or a board can sit there and let you rant for three minutes and they don’t have to do a thing about it. But questions — especially at an environmental impact hearing — are different. Under New York State law, they are required to answer them. And the people who showed up on April 14 largely understood that. They came with detailed, substantive questions across a wide range of topics.

So I did two things. I covered what happened at the hearing generally, and then I did a separate piece where I gathered up as many of the written submissions and spoken questions as I could — I think I got about ninety percent of them — grouped them by topic, and published them as a complete reference. Think of it as a toolkit. If you were there, you can check whether your question made the list. If you were watching from home, you now have the full picture of what was asked. And at some point, when the final environmental impact statement comes out, they will be required to have addressed these questions. When that happens, I intend to go back to this list and do a full accounting — what did they answer, how did they answer it, and what did they quietly leave alone. The questions they don’t answer will tell us just as much as the ones they do.

Remember all those technical issues with my RSS Fees? Resolved 😄

Below is this week’s structured briefing.