These RIOC members are Michael Shinozaki in Manhattan Park, Alberteen Anderson in Westview, Patrick Stewart in Island House, David Kraut in Eastwood, and Deborah Beck and Mark Ponton, both in Rivercross. Ask them how they’re going to vote on these issues, and why.

The ownership status issues are different in each building, and can best be explained by the building task forces, but the land deals affect us all. During the three weeks since the last WIRE publication, Island residents were treated to a unique exercise in consensus building as RIOC held a public meeting to discuss its five initiatives to sell off the Island to various business interests.

I use the word "public" loosely because of the lack of publicity surrounding this meeting. When RIOC wants the community to know something, like the fact that there is a swimming program at Sportspark or that we can buy tickets for fireworks, for example, they put up signs all over the place. But when they want to do something minor, like inform the public about plans to knock down Sportspark and the tennis bubble for a Walmart or Target, to sell the parking garage to the same companies that charge people $7000 or more a year to park in Manhattan, and to sell a third of Southpoint Park to the highest Pataki contributor, we get only cursory notification.

In this sad little meeting, RIOC President Berman and his flack, Paul Mas of the private real-estate company, Jones Lang Lasalle (or maybe Berman is the flack to Mas – it’s hard to tell the pecking order without a scorecard), and real-estate committee appointee Deborah Beck explained that these proposals are just an innocent little fishing expedition to see if there is any interest in cheap property on Roosevelt Island. Although the bidding has been closed for several months, this was a meeting where no one said a word about the details of bids, just a bunch of pablum about how "they are testing the waters." What a great scam – RIOC received 21 proposals from 14 potential suitors, each with a $4,000 to $8,000 check attached. So, having received $80,000 from these eager developers, how can anyone believe that RIOC will look at the proposals and say to them, "Sorry, just kidding."

One of the fine plans RIOC is floating it to sell off all the commercial property to a private concern. This explains why the merchants are being given month-to-month occupancy. Many of these folks who we all know, such as the owners of M&D Deli, the Stationery Store, and the Grog Shop, attended this meeting in an effort to find out if RIOC intends to let them continue to pursue their livelihood. The response from RIOC? Call Paul Mas.

At the end of the meeting RIOC passed out forms and asked people to comment up until March 17. Since we don’t know what’s being proposed, it’s difficult at best to comment on the actual plans, but I encourage you to comment on the process, Island development in general, or whatever scraps of information have been disseminated to us.

Although this meeting was a total waste of time, where attendees were not offered even a shred of substantive information and where the real-estate agency of Jones Lang and Lasalle couldn’t possibly care about the legitimate concerns of residents, since they only make money from RIOC if they sell off Island property, you can bet that it will be categorized in the future as "one of many community outreach" meetings. This is what passes as good government in the waning months of the Pataki administration.