Matthew Katz, President Roosevelt Island Residents Association e-mail: MatthewKatz@verizon.net

This is a time of great change on Roosevelt Island but, if you are waiting for RIOC to comment upon it, you will be sorely disappointed. Once again, The RIOC Column is missing from these pages, and has been since it last appeared in the March 10 issue. Granted, Herb Berman has entered his last week as RIOC President and CEO, but then, like The RIRA Column, RIOC’s offering is presented as The RIOC Column, not the RIOC President’s column. Further, RIOC has a publicity consultant, Bob Liff, as well as a community liaison staffer, Erica Wilder, who are charged with keeping the residents informed. But this is not to be and so, I will fill the breach as a public service.

At long last, and after four and a half months, the RIOC Board of Directors will meet on Thursday, April 12, at 4:00 p.m., in Good Shepherd Community Center. It seems that the long interregnum is over. DHCR Commissioner Deborah VanAmerongen is expected to convene her first Board meeting as Chair and, perhaps, we will learn whether she intends to continue in this role or delegate it to a subordinate, as is her prerogative. The paramount piece of business will be to appoint Steve Shane as President and CEO of the Corporation. As I mentioned in my last column, it is the Board’s responsibility to fill vacancies in this office. However, the reality is that the Governor makes the appointment and the Board rubber-stamps it. Such is New York politics. Nevertheless, we wish both public servants well as they assume their new posts.

You can download the Board’s agenda (www.rioc.com) or read the posting at 591 Main Street, but I’m happy to fill you in. First, I must remind you that, at the conclusion of the Board meeting, there will be a Town Meeting forum at which time you will have an opportunity to address the Board, the new Chair, and the new President. That alone is worth the price of admission! Seriously, these folks make decisions that affect your life here on Roosevelt Island and so, if you can attend, do.

In addition to the Board’s approving the new president, the RIOC CFO and financial staff will present the new RIOC budget, FY 2007-2008, to the Board and to the community. It’s mostly our money that they’re spending, so it pays to pay attention. Now that the Eastwood complex has left the Mitchell-Lama system, Jerome Belsen is selling his interests to something called the Putnam Holding Company, and requires Board authorization in conjunction with the ground-lease extension, one assumes. One also assumes that the new owners will be required to abide by the agreements hammered out between the Eastwood Building Committee and the current owners. Doppelmayr, the company that runs the Tram, will have their contract extended, and we hope that the lack of oversight that led to last year’s Tram failure will not be allowed to recur. And the Roosevelt Island Youth Center will learn whether its request for Public Purpose Funding has been approved. Also, mark your calendars: the Board will set dates for the rest of this year’s meetings. Most of the juicy stuff the Board addresses often takes place in Executive Session, which means that it’s secret, and the April meeting is no exception. The Board will discuss "proposals to lease real property." The agenda doesn’t indicate which real property is under discussion and apparently, this information is too sensitive to reveal. The agenda states that Board action is required, but the State’s sunshine laws mandate that all votes be taken in open (public) session. What you are likely to hear is a vote where the subject matter is undefined and therefore, its ramifications for the community will be unknown until such time as the Board determines that the public has a need to know. It’s amazing how much Island business, critical to our lives here, has been passed in this fashion and without public review. While the committee reports one usually finds on the agenda have not been included (was this an editing omission or have the RIOC Board committees truly not met over the last 4½ months?), the President’s Report has, and I wonder whether President Berman or President Shane will make it. Why don’cha come to the meeting and find out?

What will not be addressed, at least publicly, is the question of ground-lease extensions for Island House and Westview. These negotiations drag on month after month without resolution, and the residents of the 761 apartments involved can only hope and pray that the building owners will maintain a collegial relationship with the buildings’ leaders. I, for one, hope that the new RIOC chiefs will bring their considerable housing expertise to the fore and end this logjam.

Did you attend the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) "scoping" meetings that were held on-Island last month? This involved the RITE (Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy) project that Verdant Power has initiated. You will recall that they are anchoring huge turbines at the bottom of the East River, which will use the water power of that estuary to generate non-polluting, sustainable power. This is state-of-the-art technology, using turbines that were developed at New York University during the 1980s, that will be applied commercially for the first time here.

We learned that the "footprint" of the project, scheduled to extend from the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, along the East Channel almost to Wards Island, has been revised. The current plan is to site 150 to 200 turbines north of the Roosevelt Island Bridge and extending to the northern tip of the Island, and also in the West Channel for about 0.8 mile adjacent to the United Nations. This plan has the potential to produce 4-6 megawatts, with an average annual generation of 25,000 MWh (megawatt-hours) of electricity. The issues that must be addressed prior to final licensing include: fish migration, the impact on diving bird populations, threatened and endangered species, recreation and navigation questions, historical and cultural resources and others. All are being considered through this scoping process.

So what’s in it for us? I don’t know; it’s not clear yet whether or how much electricity will be provided to Roosevelt Island, and at what cost. The potential for savings on your costs, whether you pay for power separately or as part of your rent/common charges, remains to be seen. Verdant Power tells us that the first six-pack of turbines will be installed by April 20. I’ve been excited by this project for years, both for the pleasure of seeing innovative engineering at work and in anticipating the savings to Roosevelt Islanders’ bloated utility bills. Stay tuned.

At the February 7 meeting of the RIRA Common Council, the following resolution was passed unanimously: "RIRA supports an inquiry into the development of access from Roosevelt Island to the Queensboro Bridge." I forwarded this resolution to a variety of official agencies, including our elected representatives, DOT (Department of Transportation, responsible for the bridge), and Community Board 8 Manhattan. This is not a new idea; once upon a time, before the Roosevelt Island (36th Avenue) Bridge was built, all deliveries and street traffic to the Island descended from the 59th Street Bridge by way of an external elevator. That facility has long since been dismantled but, as our population grows, additional methods of access to Manhattan clearly are needed.

Community Board 8 will take up the question at their Transportation Committee meeting on Tuesday (April 10) at 7:00 p.m. at the New York Blood Center (310 East 67th Street). I would characterize this as an idea with minimal potential for success. DOT has been less than enthusiastic about such a project and it’s their bridge. On the other hand, getting the MetroCard system applied to the Tram was also a low-priority issue when I first proposed it to the City Transit Authority in February 2002 but, with the help of a CB8 unanimous resolution endorsing the idea, the project was completed two years later. So, you never know.

What is clear to me, and I suspect to you, is that our current transportation facilities, both on-Island and as part of the transit web, are rapidly becoming inadequate. As our population soars with continuing construction at Southtown, our needs for sufficient transportation will become acute. A footpath to Manhattan that will include conveniences (some sort of elevator, I suspect) for our disabled population may only be a stop-gap measure, but I don’t see anyone addressing increased capacity for the Tram or the F train anytime soon. RIRA will continue to look for alternatives and to encourage those responsible for this community to do the same.