The RIRA Column

It is now three months that the Tram has been down. With the subway brownouts, floods, planned service stoppages and generally lousy service on our only remaining means of access to and from our homes, this has been one lousy summer for commuters and visitors. I would wager that, if this Island was managed by elected individuals, the Tram would have been up and running within days, with the appropriate emergency program in place should another failure occur. Backup systems would have been maintained and tested so that the April debacle wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

The last issue of The WIRE indicated that over two and a half additional acres of land are about to be expropriated by the Department of Environmental Protection for a security zone at the water tunnel near what used to be Octagon Park . I wonder why so much land is needed for security purposes, to protect the "access hatch" that is used for adding chlorine, if the chlorine trucks pose a risk to our environs, if our gardens and baseball field to be affected? I hope that RIOC attempt to minimize the loss to our open space and environmental health and to maximize our gain in terms of compensation from the DEP, but if past is a predictor of future, we’ll never hear another word about it from them until its a done deal.

And while our remaining open spaces are being eviscerated we see that the Trust for Public Land has recently issued a request for proposal for Southpoint Park that reserves two acres of the park for commercial or residential development. The TPL has worked long and hard to develop a really beautiful plan for this land and they hate the fact that RIOC has strong-armed them into adding this provision. Now, nuthin’ says "park" to me more than a hideous development project right at the entrance. RIOC really knows how to design a community. So far, there has not been a word of protest, or a word of public discussion among our esteemed Board members.

As for a glimmer of good news – RIRA representatives have reached out to the Spitzer organization to permit us to democratically elect our own members to the RIOC Board, should he be elected Governor. We have urged him to make a campaign stop here this summer, and hope to be able to report something definite is the weeks to come.

In the last WIRE, David Stone, a gentlemen I respect for his fairness and civility, wrote that my "demeaning" references to RIOC management and Board members is counterproductive, and he hoped that it might be replaced with some dialog between RIRA and RIOC. What Mr. Stone may not know, however, is that RIOC has been assiduously avoiding dialog or, for that matter, the release of information of any kind, for over a year. There was a time when RIRA members had a monthly meeting with Herb Berman and his operations officer, Sari Dickson. Then, when Catherine Johnson replaced her, we met monthly with her alone – and the discussions were restricted to operations matters only. Then, in spring of ’05, in a comical series of emails, Ms. Johnson postponed and then stopped the meetings entirely, explaining the Operations Committee was the place for us to ask questions. But the Operations Committee barely meets – I think twice this year. Seems that, although all RIOC board members are invited, they can’t get a quorum of three, so the meetings can’t take place. These guys are more secretive than the Nixon (or current) White House.

I’m not the only one that they don’t talk to, the editor of the only newspaper on the Island can’t get any info either. In recent meetings with RIOC Board members, they admitted that even they are frequently kept in the dark about what’s happening. In the past twelve years, RIOC Management has repeatedly proven that there isn’t much they can do properly or on time. It’s not only the Tram, or the stupidity with the bus routes, or the awful initiatives to sell off giant chunks of the Island. Blackwell House is now a slum that has rotted for ten years, RIOC threw away a two-million dollar grant to refurbish and drastically improve the Youth Center because they couldn’t make the most minimal efforts, and the street lights haven’t worked properly for most of the last decade – even though they are readily repairable. The residents of Island House have been begging for a lease extension offer from RIOC for close to a year so they can have some hope of keeping their homes affordable.

RIOC management enjoys raises that far outpace the consumer price index because they have so effectively furthered the only objective they were planted here to perform – to dish out as many goodies as they can to Pataki’s cronies before the next administration pulls the plug. At this point. they don’t want to talk, they want to be left alone to work on their resumes.

In the lacunae of actual information, I’ll pass on some hearsay from a RIRA Council member who spoke with someone repairing the Tram – work is complete, it is fully operational and should be in service by mid-August pending additional testing. Hopefully, Mr. Berman will have a more definite date for us in his column on this page.

In closing – Here’s an email I sent three weeks ago. As yet, no response.

Feel free to write your own to hberman@rioc.com. If you get any answers, please let me know.

Steve Marcus