RIRA Considers Election Questions On RIOC Performance and Initiatives Resident Group Faces Fresh Challenges, Including Change in Albany
News Analysis by Dick Lutz

The Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) is turning its attention to two major challenges as its election approaches, now just 45 days away.

The first is to bring new buildings into the fold – make their residents part of the active Roosevelt Island family.

The second is to leverage the change in Albany to get residents more power in setting the priorities by which the Island is run.

Making new residents part of the community has been a challenge over the years. While the original WIRE buildings (Westview, Island House, Rivercross, Eastwood) shared the camaraderie of sometimes difficult pioneering days, the struggle to build a community was an end itself: bonding occurred.

By the time Manhattan Park was occupied in the mid-’80s, the struggle was past: Subsidies were flowing from Albany, the Tram had solved commutation problems, and subway service was on the way. New residents found little fight to join and, in any case, tended to be a bit more transient and a bit less interested. It took the Pataki administration and the arrival of Dr. Jerome Blue as president of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) – and his periodic attacks on the Tramway – to reunite the community. But it was a struggle against, more than a struggle for something, and longtime residents felt a greater stake.

Now, the advent of condo housing in Southtown, and perhaps a population of Octagon Park residents who see a future here, present a new opportunity for involvement, and RIRA leaders face the challenge of securing real participation not just by them, but also by hospital employees in the first two Southtown buildings who may feel truly temporary.

The change of administration in Albany is a fresh opportunity to change the law governing the Island – to create a RIOC that residents would see as more residentoriented, rather than Albany- and development-oriented. But getting the attention of a new governor, whatever his party, can be difficult for a community of 12,000 in a State of 19 million.

At its last meeting the RIRA Council started looking at referendum questions that could put a clear statement of resident preferences before a new administration and, possibly, a new RIOC Board of Directors. RIRA President Steve Marcus outlines them in his column in this issue of The WIRE (page 3). In most cases, they portray a resident view that is at odds with current RIOC practices and predilections. Reorienting RIOC, if that’s what the resident organization tries again to do, could be a severe test for an organization which, to date, has felt largely powerless in a community controlled by gubernatorial appointees.