On Keeping the State Involved & Interested

In his published agenda for the November 2 Maple Tree Group meeting, David Bauer raised several points which I would like to comment on. The agenda suggested, among other things, that the community should be discussing ex-officio, non-voting participation in Board affairs from the State level.

I perceive that giving only a non-voting status to certain State representatives will be a major stumbling block in the effort to develop self-government here. The State has a large investment on Roosevelt Island, and will want to protect that investment. There is a large bond debt to be retired, and the State will likely insist on enough oversight to be sure that process proceeds properly. We may well have to concede a seat on the Board to the Comptroller's office, at least until such time as the bondholders have been repaid.

Similarly, despite the fact that the current government of the State has shown little interest in our affairs, I remind everybody that this has not been the case in all the years since this community was founded. And there is no way to say what any future administration's interest might be. In any case, Roosevelt Island is an important part of the mental landscape of the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), even if DHCR itself currently plays a diminished role in State affairs. I suspect that DHCR will also want a voting say-so in our affairs during the life of the State's lease, although I see no compelling reason why the Commissioner of DHCR should automatically be chair of the board.

A further question is who will chair the board. Board chairs, by the nature of their position, have a strong role in the setting of agendas and the conduct of business through control of Board meetings. I suggest this issue might be a suitable subject for MTG to consider.

Bauer's agenda also raised a question concerning the range of Island residents who will be eligible to vote for the Board of Directors. I confess to being a little bit conservative in this area. As a former president of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA), I was and remain highly insistent that RIRA be open to all bona fide residents of voting age, whether or not they are citizens of the US or official New York residents or registered to vote in other elections. However, I would remind the MTG that RIRA, representative voice of the Roosevelt Island community at large, is not a government entity, but rather a representational forum to express the community's needs to government. But the new, elected Board of Directors proposed by the MTG would, in fact, be a government, by most definitions of the term that I can imagine. In this case, I personally prefer that the franchise be circumscribed as carefully as it is in the other city, state, and federal elections in which we participate, and that voting eligibility should be determined by the New York City voter registration rolls.

This discussion brings up another point, by the way: What should be the function of RIRA under the new format? Properly speaking, this question does not come under the purview of the Maple Tree Group's mandate. But I believe that anyone who thinks RIRA's function will or should disappear under the new system is perhaps fatally sanguine. RIRA's function has always been to speak to governmental power on behalf of the community, and that function will always be as necessary in this polis as in all others.

David Kraut