Commentary:
Three RIOC Mantras – With Responses
by Frank Farance

Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity (in various roles) to meet and observe many people in the RIOC organization, including its Board and executives. I’ve discovered that there are several consistent themes that run across the organization. Here are three of them, and some responses.

RIOC Mantra: "We have a fiduciary responsibility."

Response #1: "That doesn’t prevent you from making poor decisions."

Response #2: "Where’s the benefit and who is the public in your public-benefit corporation?"

When RIOC Board members or staff are questioned about some past, present, or future decision, they often respond, "We have a fiduciary responsibility ..." They seem to think that is enough of a response and that RIOC’s decision-making needs no further explanation or rationale. It appears, at times, that they believe residents couldn’t possibly understand an explanation.

A fiduciary responsibility concerns a trust relationship – for example, being responsible for the administration of property owned by others. While acknowledging that RIOC has a fiduciary responsibility, one must ask: What is it about that fiduciary responsibility that prevents RIOC from making better decisions?

For RIOC board members and executives:

• Their fiduciary responsibility doesn’t prohibit them from staging a real-life test of the Tram’s emergency evacuation plan. It doesn’t prevent them from producing a response plan better than one that takes more than eleven hours with cabins at quarter-capacity and under ideal weather and uncomplicated health conditions.

• Their fiduciary responsibility shouldn’t prevent them from making more sensible use of their funds. What is it about fiduciary responsibility that causes them to spend $80,000 for trash cans instead of spending half of that for refuse receptacles and the other half for other Island needs, including beautification?

• Does fiduciary responsibility actually prevent RIOC from making money on Fourth of July fireworks rather than going with a profitable resident-proposed event?

• Fiduciary responsibility is no excuse for failure to reach out to Island organizations (e.g., RIRA) that have a longer history and a greater depth of experience with Island activities.

Invoking fiduciary responsibility seems to be the catchall excuse for further Island development. As RIOC Board Chair (and DHCR Commissioner) Judith Calogero has said, "If residents want a park on Southpoint with its ongoing maintenance, then RIOC needs to consider offsetting these costs with a high-rise built near the park."

Look at United Air Lines, the MTA, or (recently) Amtrak under similar circumstances. They’d investigate the accident and, if some part of it was caused by their mismanagement, then heads would roll – they’re real organizations that do understand fiduciary responsibility. No one at RIOC will ever be fired for incompetent management (fired for incompetent stealing, yes; fired for incompetent management, no).

RIOC could make better decisions and still meet fiduciary responsibilities. RIOC too often chooses to make sub-optimal decisions and use "fiduciary responsibility" as an lame rationale.

RIOC Mantra: "You’re just a couple of people complaining; everyone has different opinions."

Response: "I’m the elected representative of 1000 [or 3000 or 10,000] people of Roosevelt Island."

RIOC is quick to ignore residents’ elected representatives. Residents Association Common Council representatives are elected. In Island House, not only do we have elected RIRA representatives, we also have the Island House Tenants Association with its elected representatives (the current board was elected with 70-80% of the tenants’ support).

When RIRA and its Common Council members communicate with RIOC, RIOC is completely dismissive of RIRA’s role in representing the Island’s residents. For example, a complaint about X from three RIRA representatives is dismissed by RIOC Vice President Catherine Johnson with, "But three other residents liked X." Apparently that, in her mind, cancels out the view expressed by an elected representative who is speaking for a constituency, not just himself. In fact, this technique of citing one or two disagreeing opinions is RIOC’s usual technique for dismissing virtually any opinion expressed by an elected representative to the RIRA Common Council.

RIOC shouldn’t treat Pete Grannis, Jessica Lappin, Carolyn Maloney, or Mike Bloomberg simply as individuals whose opinions are easily cancelled out by an opposing opinion, though we’ve now had ten years in which the Governor’s appointees at RIOC have managed to ignore those elected representatives, as well. Neither they nor the Island’s elected Common Councilors should be treated as though they speak only for themselves.

RIOC Mantra: "If residents would just say nice things about RIOC, then RIOC would pay more attention to residents."

Response #1: "RIOC is government. It’s government’s job to listen to complaints."

Response #2: "Given the poor quality in RIOC governance, management, and decision-making, it is difficult to talk to RIOC about any constructive suggestion without RIOC perceiving it as an attack."

I’ve had the same experience with Johnson, who is VP-Operations, that I had with Sari Dickson (the prior VP-Operations). Remember the wintertime bus-route fiasco two years ago in which bus timing was decoupled from Tramway arrivals? Many of us complained of long waits in rain or severe cold. Everyone could see that RIOC had erred, but RIOC insisted, "We need to give it a try" for two more months of cold outdoor waits, though any competent transit planner and many laymen understood and could explain the natural tendency for busses to bunch together when running unscheduled. Waiting times became 30 minutes and more, and RIOC – whose personnel didn’t use the buses – persevered in that perversity.

There are many examples that Island residents experience on a daily basis. You have to scratch your head and ask, How can they have such a faulty operation?

Virtually none of the RIOC staff lives on Roosevelt Island. Dickson didn’t, so she didn’t understand. Johnson lives in Albany, so it’s hard to see how she could identify with resident needs. Take, for example, the new yield signs on Main Street. There’s a YIELD painted on the street for southbound traffic just before the road splits at Blackwell House. However, the oncoming traffic all have stop signs. There is no one to yield to because the other sides have to stop (they have to wait for you), so this sign is confusing to drivers.

The removal of the stop signs on Main Street is a bigger problem because it will take another child getting hit or killed on Roosevelt Island to change them back to stop signs. Johnson asserts that bus drivers stop at all stop signs. Any resident can tell her they don’t. This is oversight? Johnson should stop using the slogan "safety first" when speaking of Island operations because it is measurably more dangerous now.

You could walk into RIOC and point out this error, but wouldn’t you feel strange registering such a complaint? Because, beneath the complaint, both you and I know that a primary reason for the poor traffic signs and planning is that no one at RIOC has any traffic engineering or planning experience. What compounds this is that given the recurring and obvious blunders, both you and I know that either RIOC management is unaware of the skills they lack or they are unwilling to manage effectively – those are the only two possibilities.

Residents start out with good intentions, but continually have bad experiences when reporting problems. RIOC has shown itself as being truly unwilling to listen, and RIOC Board Chair Calogero has made it really clear that she sees little need to accept or respond to input from the residents.

The Tram is an even bigger problem for RIOC. If there were two policemen holding your legs in the Tram and two policemen holding your arms in the rescue bucket, and a 200-foot death drop to the water with no safety rope, then there are only three possibilities:

• The RIOC emergency response plan was inadequate because no one planned the details of actually getting people out of the Tram.

• RIOC’s plan had not been tested adequately. The difficulties with the operation of the safety bucket made that obvious.

• The plan was adequately developed and tested, but FDNY and NYPD executed it poorly.

It’s a safe bet that the first two are true. Residents must wonder if there is anything RIOC can do competently. When RIRA Common Council members discussed the Tram outage with RIOC Chair Calogero, she groused, "The Tram was only two hours away from working," suggesting that, had the police not stopped her Tram engineers, the eleven-hour recovery could have been avoided simply by running the Tram. With further follow-up questions to Calogero on the Tram, there were such answers as, "We have a fiduciary responsibility," and when we said things should be done better, she responded with "Some people like the way RIOC does things," and, most importantly, Calogero reminded us, "If you want the Tram, you need to be supportive of RIOC." Ah, there they are – the three RIOC mantras.

To add a final insult, Calogero told a delegation of RIRA Common Councilors that, if the Tram costs a lot to repair, RIOC will be forced to consider building another high-rise building to pay the costs. It seems that building a high-rise is RIOC’s all-purpose solution to any financial worry. And if you ask why they need a high-rise, the response is, "We have a fiduciary responsibility." The cycle starts all over again.

Finally, on a positive note, a week ago some RIRA members and RIOC board members have met again. David Kraut, Mark Ponton, and Patrick Stewart have given an outline of how RIRA members can communicate feedback and comments to the RIOC board. Hopefully, this will help.