RIOC Board member John Mannix revealed during the Town Hall session that followed last week's RIOC Board meeting that he "couldn't conceive of a less congruous project for that piece of land" at Southpoint. Mannix was referring to a plan for two Marriott Hotel towers on the site.

Mannix added, "But I do think that we need to be realistic in looking at how we make that a beautiful park for the residents," adding that the Board's decision to employ a real-estate-marketing consultant was aimed, in part, at finding a way to reach museums and other institutions that might consider the Southpoint site.

Mannix's opposition to the Jamal plan was among very few pieces of new information to come out during an extraordinary three-hour Town Hall Meeting conducted last week by the Board of Directors of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC). Mostly, the exchanges once again reflected deep differences between the Board and those residents who chose to speak - differences on management, development and other matters at both a philosophical and a practical level.

But the session was extraordinary in that Board members traded argument for argument, blow for blow with residents as each side made its case. (In the past, Board members had listened, often without responding, leaving residents feeling unheard when the Board took actions contrary to their urgings.)

Issues included an increase in Motorgate parking rates, the Public Safety Department, Southtown and Southpoint Development, the extension of development beyond sites named in the General Development Plan (GDP), the Island's liability (or lack of it) for repayment of State bonds, and more.

There was one lone compliment for RIOC, from Rivercross resident Richard Donovan, on snow removal during and after recent storms.

Former Residents Association First Vice President Joan Christianson led the charge on Motorgate parking rates, angered by what she considered cavalier treatment when she complained about the hike to RIOC President Robert Ryan, who admitted to giving the go-ahead for the increase: "I don't think it's our job to tell M&D Deli what to charge for their sandwiches," Ryan said. "I don't think it's our job to tell Gristede's what to charge for their meat... It is not government's job to regulate the private sector and what they charge for things." Ryan called upon Patrick Siconolfi, RIOC's Chief Financial Officer, for a recitation of higher rates in Manhattan and Queens.

Christianson, who has been gathering signatures on a petition protesting the increase, was applauded by other residents when she called the comparisons unfair and pointed out that Manhattan and Queens residents have a choice: "We live on an Island... If I lived in Queens or Manhattan, I would have the option of parking on the street. If I wanted to get up at 7:00 o'clock in the morning [for] alternate-side parking, that [would be] my choice. I don't have that choice here." She said residents had been promised, when moving to Roosevelt Island in the '70's, that Motorgate parking rates would not "hurt."

Board member Patrick Stewart, former RIRA President, decried a lack of security and frequent damage to, or theft of, vehicles. Pointing out that many residents are facing rent increases, he said, "I think this is really piling insult upon injury. I don't know the figures, but I doubt seriously that this will be a substantial increase in revenues [for RIOC]. And I think the interests of the community, no matter what the revenues are, are more important."

The discussion of Motorgate and of RIOC's plans to engage a real-estate-marketing consultant also brought a discussion of the free market into the Town Hall session, with a number of residents unhappy over RIOC plans for "selling off parcels of Roosevelt Island to the highest bidder until there is nothing but concrete and very little open space and parkland left," as Linda Heimer put it. Heimer is a member of the RIRSD steering committee challenging RIOC's approval of the Hudson/Related plan for Southtown.

Board Chair Mary Beth Labate responded that the marketing of Island parcels "is not an end to itself. The intention of this Board in looking at parcels that have potential development opportunities is... to help this Island and its residents generate the capital that is needed to address many of the issues that you bring before us."

Board member John Mannix explained the Board's approach this way: "RIOC is a large real-estate company... You call it a State agency, but when you boil it down to its essence, it's a large real-estate company, [but one] that barely breaks even on an operating basis, and has effectively zero liquidity. If you took the RIOC balance sheet and converted it pro forma and brought it to a banker, he'd say you're bankrupt. You can't operate a real-estate company bankrupt. The intent, in a sensible fashion, is to fix the balance sheet of RIOC so that it [has] enough liquidity to handle crises, has liquidity to handle a five-year capital plan, has cash in the bank to support its ongoing activities. So I think that, in essence, is the exercise that we are undergoing with respect to raising capital. This is an investment-banking exercise, at its core."

Leo Kayser, the Board member who authored the plan to raise capital by changing its approach to development, told Heimer, "This Island has some major benefits which can be capitalized, which other communities do not have. One is that for the next 68 years there are no real-estate taxes paid on this Island. The fact that... real-estate tax... is not in your cost structure, is a great benefit to you which, if capitalized and put to your benefit, makes it possible for this Island to do everything it needs to do with the exception of the seawall. Everything else can be done within what you have given to you right here, and that's what we're trying to do."

The residents who spoke on this point urged Board members to observe provisions of the GDP and, as Steve Marcus put it in concluding a long dialogue over Island finances, "not to screw the place up too much."

Performance of the Public Safety Department became an issue when Ron Vass, a co-chair of the Eastwood Building Committee (EBC), asked for copies of letters specifying the responsibilities of PSD. Repeating familiar charges, Vass and others said that a lack of "vertical patrols" in Eastwood has led to proliferation of illegal activities ranging from intimidations to drug dealing. EBC plans to use Public Safety performance issues in challenging a proposed rent increase.

As the session neared what turned out to be an 11:00 p.m. conclusion, RIRA Common Council alternate Joyce Mincheff tried to persuade the RIOC Board that the Island has no specific obligation tied to State bonds. "There is absolutely no reason to be selling off property to be paying off bonds," she said, "because you have absolutely no obligation to pay down that debt immediately." Mincheff said that the State has refunded the bonds in the past - as recently as 1996 - and will again.

Kayser disagreed with Mincheff on the ultimate responsibility for the bonds while agreeing that, for now, there is no obligation falling due. He said that, in any case, he hopes to arrange debt forgiveness for the Island as part of the overall plan to raise capital by marketing parcels of Island property for development.

(The issue of bond indebtedness has been an open matter, with some lack of clarity and uncertainty over whether residents and others are talking about the same specific bond arrangements.)

Mincheff also had an exchange with Ryan when she criticized an arrangement between the City Department of Environmental Protection and RIOC over monies owed to the Island to repair Octagon areas damaged during construction of Water Tunnel Number Three, which crosses under the Island just south of Coler Hospital. Mincheff has asserted, claiming some backing for her argument from a DEP official, that Ryan effectively traded away future Octagon-area rehabilitation for the right to use DEP funds for Southtown infrastructure. Ryan claims that, on the contrary, the DEP still has an obligation for rehabilitation funding associated with the Water Tunnel.

There was no agreement on that issue during the course of the Town Hall Meeting.