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During that period, members of the community continued to feed their concerns and objections to
MTG. Audrey Berman of the Westview/Island House Task Force said she would find the
legislation unacceptable if her building's many non-citizens could not vote. MTG members
researched the matter with the help of Pete Grannis's office, and a precedent was found
for non-citizen voting. It satisfied not just Berman's concern, but a general MTG wish to
have the new era of resident control be as inclusive as possible
The March of Time
By the summer of 1998, Jerome Blue had been in charge at RIOC for two years. He was still
ignoring RIRA, and there was a pervasive feeling of discouragement among Blue's Island
opponents, who had begun to see him as untouchable, shielded by a stubborn Governor
beholden in extremis to Al D'Amato.
It seemed that nothing could loosen Blue's grip on the Island. In February, there had been the
Tramway accident, providing one more rallying cause for the community. Blue continued his
refusals to ask for State funds for the Island's capital or operating needs. He had
brought forward a proposal to take Octagon Park for an Eldercare facility. He was backing
conversion of Southpoint parkland into the grounds of a commercial hotel and conference
center marked by twin 25-story towers.
Some residents, angry and frustrated, were resigned that Blue would soon over-commercialize
Roosevelt Island in a quest for a break-even formula. Some spoke of movig away.
MTG, meanwhile, took its proposal for self-governance to Assemblymember Pete Grannis. Grannis
reviewed it, saw merit, did some further fine-tuning, and introduced it in the lower house
of the State Legislature.
In August, Ron Vass - one of only two remaining resident members of the RIOC Board of Directors -
resigned from the Board with a furious blast at Blue. He was promptly recruited by MTG,
whose members wanted to leverage not just his anger, but also his knowledge of Island
operations.
In September, the Grannis bill, as it was now known, was presented to a heavily-attended meeting
of the RIRA Common Council. Grannis had a family commitment and couldn't attend; his
aide, Tony Morenzi, called the bill a "beginning," adding, "This is the start of an
Island-wide discussion, to involve everybody who feels strongly about the quality of life
on this Island and how they want to live many years into the future." Morenzi pulled no
punches, however, stressing what an uphill battle was ahead. He cited the primarily
upstate orientation of the Republican-controlled State Senate, reminding everyone that any
bill would have to pass both houses of the Legislature and be signed by the Governor. By
his attitude, he was saying, "They'll never go for this," putting himself firmly in the
camp of nay-sayers.
Patrick Stewart, after calling for detailed financial analysis of Island operations before a
commitment to self-governance, told residents, "This is a great start, tonight. The
critical issue here is tomorrow - who's going to show up tomorrow at the meeting to
discuss paragraph one, subparagraph one, item C?"
Leaving the meeting, some were saying, "They'll never go for this."
Campaign
As the 1998 political campaign emerged from a summer warm-up into the frenzy of fall, the RIRA
Common Council agreed unanimously to put an advisory question on its November ballot:
Shall the present governance of Roosevelt Island, consisting of political appointees, be replaced
by a popularly-elected Board of Residents empowered to hire professional management, as
proposed in legislation introduced in the New York State Legislature by Assemblymember
Pete Grannis?
When Pete Grannis came to the Island for an MTG-sponsored Town Meeting on self-governance October
26, he told residents that the legislation still lacked a sponsor in the
Republican-controlled State Senate - a critical need, but when Lee Edelman asked him about
the chances for ultimate success, Grannis answered, "Good. I think the chances are
good."
Edelman, a member of the Island House Ownership Committee, became a regular at MTG meetings.
In November, in the General Election, Al D'Amato was defeated by Chuck Schumer, and Island
activists thought they could start counting the days until Jerome Blue would be out of the
RIOC Presidency.
Even more significant for MTG members, some 92% of Island voters who cast ballots on the advisory
question pulled the yes lever. In an election with a greater Island turnout than a U.S.
Presidential election, the count was 1,049 to 89.
But MTG members barely paused to celebrate the result. Even while considering possible revisions
of the legislation, the group's attention turned to a campaign for its passage. Ron Vass,
seeking a solution to the problem of a Senate sponsor, called Olga Mendez, the State
Senator representing Roosevelt Island. Mendez and her key aide, Jorge Vidro, came to an
MTG meeting hosted by Tom Shaker jst before Christmas, and she signed on, saying, "This is
a good idea." Vidro began working on a version of the legislation that Mendez could
introduce in the Senate.
After the Holidays
When calendars first read 1999, MTG members began to feel there was some real possibility of a
positive outcome for their effort. Mendez, though a Democrat, had supported the
re-election of the Republican Governor, and she was committed to putting the
self-governance proposal before him. In February, Acting Commissioner Joseph Lynch of the
State Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) became full Commissioner, and
almost immediately he passed word to David Bauer that the self-governance idea had caught
the Governor's eye.
It still had RIRA's interest, as well. The Common Council voted in February, 16-0, to support
the legislative effort actively. Three members abstained, however, including Patrick
Stewart. He was still concerned, he said, about the financial consequences of a change.
And with Jerome Blue still in charge at RIOC, nobody could lay hands on useful financial
information they felt they could trust.
Stewart had also started "explaining" the "so-called 92% vote," as he put it, telling Common
Council members that it "wasn't really 92%," but was only 92% of those who actually chose
to vote on the self-governance question. MTG stalwarts started wondering about Stewart's
commitment to self-governance; he had stopped attending MTG meetings despite his
exhortation at the September Common Council meeting, asking, "Who's going to show up
tomorrow at the meeting to discuss paragraph one...?"
But even without Stewart's active support, MTG members felt they were on firm ground with the 92%
November vote, the 16-0 Common Council vote, and a growing interest in breaking free of
Jerome Blue and appointed management. Blue had just put forward a controversial plan to
add a second floor to the Island's westside mini-schools, and he was widely viewed as a
man desperate to accomplish something in the development arena - anything.
In fact, the Pataki administration had asked Blue to resign in November, and he had refused, but
residents were not yet generally aware of that.
Armed with the 92% vote in the November election, and the 16-0 Common Council vote, MTG members
were warily excusing themselves for occasional thoughts that their plan for legislation
just might succeed. Notably, nobody was saying, any longer, "They'll never go for
this."
But the cogs of the legislative machinery have a way of turning in slow motion, and when viewed
from the perspective of MTG's weekly meetings, they seemed virtually to have stopped. MTG
members turned their attention to raising funds for a letter-writing campaign they thought
might be needed to push for the necessary votes of upstate legislators, particularly in
the Senate. Sherie Helstien organized a fund-raising concert of classical vocal music;
she, Vicki Feinmel and Fay Vass organized an auction, with help from Mickey
Karpeles-Bauer. Kathie Niederhoffer and Ron Vass put forward other fund-raising ideas.
Matthew Katz summarized the state of matters for guests at these functions, taking on the
role of MTG's all-'round host and pitchman.
Summer was coming, and the Legislature would soon go out of session.
A Changed Bill
And when the Senate bill, drafted by Mendez aide Vidro after consultations with representatives
of the Governor, arrived on Roosevelt Island for the first time, it was a very different
piece of legislation.
It was May 23, 1999.
Gone was the "Roosevelt Island Community." The existing name, Roosevelt Island Operating
Corporation, was to be retained. A change would require too much paper pushing, contract
rewriting, and general disruption, said the Governor's people through Vidro. MTG members
began speaking of "RIOC2." The loss of a clean break that might have been signaled by the
name change was lamented by MTG members as unfortunate, but primarily a cosmetic
matter.
But there were more important changes, out of synch with the original MTG plan expressed in the
Assembly bill:
- The five-member elected Board would now have seven resident members - five elected and two
named by the Mayor.
- Indemnification by the State - financial protection for the officers and directors - was
deleted.
- Because RIOC would stay RIOC, there would be no 240-day transition period during which prior
RIOC contracts would be reviewed.
Bauer presented all this to an MTG meeting with a characteristic gesture, his hands holding it
out, symbolically, for their scrutiny. Painstakingly, in a lengthy meeting that scrapped
the tradition of stopping after one hour, the group considered change after change.
At the end, the group reached a hesitant conclusion: Despite the alterations, all the major
requirements of the self-governance plan were intact - a resident Board of Directors, with
a majority elected by residents; professional management; and an end to management by
political appointees supervised by political appointees.
There were concerns about the many changes in the legislation, but MTG members concluded that the
new version of the bill satisfied the spirit of the 92% vote in favor of self-governance,
as well as the later RIRA Common Council resolution. Frank Farance contributed buttons
reminding residents of the November vote, reading, simply, "92%."
Over the next ten days, it became clear the legislation was a moving target. There were
revisions in the works, even as a date for Legislators' summer hiatus approached. Vidro
wanted the bill passed before an expected adjournment of June 16. In Albany, he was
working constantly on changes based on conferences with the Governor's people, Mendez, and
representatives of the Senate leadership.
On Roosevelt Island, there were questions:
- At what point should MTG actively publicize the latest series of changes in the legislation?
With changes being made and put into the bill-drafting process almost daily, it was hard to get a
handle on the bill.
- Was the new version sufficiently in key with residents' 92% vote and the Common Council's
16-0 vote to support the MTG push?
- Were the changes being imposed on Vidro and Mendez by the Governor's people?
Some MTG members feared, at least briefly, that the Governor was imposing changes crafted to
insure failure of resident-supervised management of the Island. One, changing the ceiling
fom $10,000 to $5,000 for items that could be purchased by the RIOC2 General Manager
without an advertising and bidding process, really alarmed the group. (Blue's limit, at
$50,000, was ten times as high.) The change was explained as a standard for the State,
but it made several MTG members uneasy. David Bauer was comfortable with it, he said,
feeling that a strict bidding process would promote management honesty and openness.
But after three years of the Governor ignoring pleas for removal of Jerome Blue, and his tacit
approval of Blue's near-paranoid secrecy in RIOC management, there was a strong tendency
to distrust the Governor's motives.
Blue Out
Then the word came: An MTG meeting Monday night, June 7, heard the rumor - reliable, as it
turned out - that Jerome Blue was out as President of RIOC. After brief disbelief, the
meeting decided to accept it as true, and think through its consequences.
Theories were advanced:
- The Governor didn't want Blue in the RIOC office acting vindictively during a transition to
self-governance.
- Blue, still a favorite son, was being moved out of harm's way.
- Blue, seeing self-governance coming, had asked to be moved elsewhere. (But at that point, it
wasn't known that Blue was being reassigned as State Commissioner of Human Rights.)
And, a working hypothesis that seemed to gain acceptance: The Governor, having just endorsed
George Bush of Texas for the GOP Presidential nomination, was angling for the Vice
Presidential nod. As a Republican Governor, he would serve himself well by cleaning up
the Roosevelt Island mess, and by turning New York State's last vestige of feudal
government into a locally-ruled community. And, in any case, the anti-Blue pressure could
be notched up substantially if there were a debate in either house of the Legislature over
the self-governance legislation and the 92% vote if it became widely known.
Still, there was the nagging distrust of the Governor's motives. To some members, notably Ethel
Romm and Lee Edelman, joined by Tom Shaker, the worriers were ill-advisedly examining the
dentition of an equine gratuity. "Take it and run with it," Edelman advocated. But the
bill was not yet available in final form. Even as a changed bill would arrive by fax,
other changes were already in the works.
An issue of The Main Street WIRE was scheduled to go to press Thursday night, June 10
(cover-dated June 12). After some debate, members put a priority on having a sufficiently
final version of the legislation for publication.
MTG found itself torn on how to proceed.. Should the group continue in its Monday sessions to
address the changes in legislation as they came down from Albany, and present to the
community some document that could reasonably be assumed to be final? Or should they go
to the RIRA Common Council with what they had, with the understanding that it was a work
in progress? Dick Lutz, Managing Editor of The WIRE, declared his intention to
print the latest version regardless of consequences. MTG members, who had been vetting
every change in the legislation for fatal flaws and "deal-breakers," agreed after
impassioned debate to present what they had accomplished and what they knew for the
approval of the community.
Reaction
Publication of the new version of the legislation resulted in an immediate series of reactions.
Some had been anticipated by MTG, such as an email sent by Jessie Rademaker's "Roosevelt
Island Community Association," (see Letters, page 6) urging Senators to vote the bill
down.
Another reaction, not fully anticipated, was the immediate opposition of RIRA President Patrick
Stewart, who almost immediately began planning a meeting of his RIRA executive committee,
consisting of the RIRA Vice Presidents responsible for various areas of resident concern.
Stewart later told confidants, who repeated it to The WIRE, that he was furious he
had not been given an advance copy of the legislation, and not alerted until he read in
the newspaper that it might be close to passage.
The vehemence in Stewart's feelings was evident in a telephone message he left for one member of
the executive committee:
This is Patrick Stewart. I'm going to drop off a document for you which is a
letter to Pete Grannis detailing the serious problems that we have with
this most recent legislation which no one has seen until The WIRE comes
out. In addition to that we are going to have an executive committee
meeting to discuss this, take a vote, and with that vote ask Pete to take
it off the Assembly floor until such time as we have had a chance to
shmooze with him. This is just a goddam outrage that no one has consulted
with us about this thing at all... and if we hadn't read it on Friday, this
thing probably would have passed the friggin legislature and this Island
would be in deep s**t.
Stewart called the executive committee meeting as a closed session. When Dick Lutz of
The WIRE said he would attend to report on the meeting for the newspaper's
readers, Stewart said that if he attended, he would be ejected. Lutz insisted on
attending. Stewart insisted he would be ejected. David Bauer wanted to attend, and
Stewart said he, too, would be ejected. But by mid-day Monday there was a growing list of
residents who wanted to be present, and Stewart reversed himself, declaring the meeting
open.
By the time the meeting convened, about 30 residents had heard about it, and came for the
session.
Stewart supplied executive committee members with a copy of the letter to Grannis, marked
"draft," even though it had already been faxed to Grannis's office and by then, had also
found its way to Vidro at Senator Mendez's Albany office, igniting an angry reaction to
one section.
Stewart, momentarily removing his trademark toothpick from his mouth, set careful
ground-rules.
"We are here to discuss the Grannis bill, as put forth most recently and as published in The
Main Street WIRE," he said. "Only members of the executive committee will speak. At
the end, David Bauer will speak, at his request. Then we will vote. That vote will be
faxed to Pete Grannis. Tomorrow night we have called an emergency meeting of the full
Common Council to duplicate what we do here tonight. The results of that meeting will be
sent to Albany, and based upon that, it is my information that Pete Grannis will either go
forward with the bill or ask that the bill be withdrawn."
Stewart's ruling that only members of the executive committee would be allowed to speak through
most of the session meant that Linda Heimer, the sole MTG-active member of Stewart's
executive committee, and the only one openly in favor of the legislation, would be its
only advocate. Heimer expressed distress that, as matters had evolved, MTG's two years of
effort would now rest on her ability to speak in defense of a bill that had been changing
day-by-day through legislative negotiations, and in the drafting process.
Heimer started by asking that the executive committee approach the matter with an open mind. "I
know you've all received correspondence from Patrick, and it does address some of the
issues. We didn't get the majority of the recent changes until a week ago, and since then
we have been trying to make changes.
"This has been a two-year process. We asked for the sun and the moon, and we got the moon. We
asked for the ideal, and of course we knew that, in negotiating, the state was going to
take something back. We even put some things in that we knew wouldn't fly so they could
be trading points. We are getting what the 92% asked for - elected representation,
professional management... I really do understand the concerns of Patrick Stewart and
others who have seen this in the paper and have said, þWait a minute,' but you have to
understand the reasons behind each of the changes."
The meeting went on past midnight. Much of it was a flight amid the technical linguistics of
legislation, Heimer attempting to satisfy a barrage of questions on each change from the
original Grannis bill to the then-current Mendez bill. MTG members had failed in a
last-minute attempt to get an absolutely current version of the bill from Vidro - he
explained it was in pieces and not all ready - so Stewart insisted on using the version
published in The WIRE, ruling out consideration of more recent changes of which MTG
had learned.
Near midnight, with a vote imminent, Stewart called on Bauer.
"We have carried on a series of conversations over the last week with the Grannis and Mendez
offices. Things have been moving at a pace where they were unable to provide us with a
copy of the bill in final form." Bauer cited one example of the pace of change: "On
Saturday there was a point raised by the Grannis office, Wick's law [on unions in
construction], and that took a lot of conversation. Sunday morning they agreed on
wording, sent it to bill-drafting, but then that had to be approved in the Senate and by
the Administration. We were promised the bill today. I have to throw myself humbly upon
your grace. We don't have it. They listed the changes for me. They are not
earth-shaking. Some of the modifications [respond to] items Patrick had in his letter.
"But let me tell you this. Grannis and Mendez have been diligent in looking after what they
understand to be the best interests of the Island. And they will not do something which
puts this Island into more jeopardy than we are right now. And we are in jeopardy. It
can't get worse."
Stewart spoke next: "I've always believed it can get worse. My old Grandma used to say that
haste makes waste, and I'm afraid if we're too hasty here we'll end up with something we
don't want."
Stewart then adopted an MTG tradition, and asked each member of the executive committee,
round-robin, to summarize their reaction to the session.
Rhoda Jacklin: "I think you've done a great job... We are being asked to set social and
political policy... for the next 20 to 50 years, and I think in all good conscience, this
is not the right way to do it. I know that most of it is right, and there's nothing to
prevent changes, [but] this is not the way to do this."
James Kaufman: "We all want this. But I really caution you, if you wing a bill without going
through every single provision you can put yourself into a legal governmental bind and
find yourself in the most untenable position. We want a bill, but we make a major mistake
if we don't approach it with great caution."
Joan Christianson: "Linda, we're not attacking you. As far as I can see a lot of the changes
were made on June 4. We have a right to have our questions answered. I don't believe we
have to rush this through if it's not the way we want it. We have the ability and the
right to keep this bill alive until we get something that is going to benefit this
community."
Byron Gaspard: "I appreciate the hard work of the Maple Tree Group. Right now the bill... is
not the bill the community voted for. It's a question of getting back a bill that the
community as a whole can support."
Judy Berdy: "You're getting the shaft from the Legislature. In simple words it's the same way
they made Blue Human Rights Commissioner. I'm not going to sell Roosevelt Island down the
river with all these vague things. If the Senate and the Assembly don't want to come back
with a decent piece of legislation... it's unfair to you and to the Maple Tree Group.
It's pathetic. This is what our State government is. It's even more pathetic."
Linda Heimer: "This is not a rush. We've been at this for two years. We have gone over every
inch of this bill painstakingly. We have called the appropriate people in the government
to clarify points. No legislation will ever get through without these last-minute
changes. If you ever want self-governance, you will have to bear this process. We have
had two years of weekly meetings. Anybody could come. Half the core group are Common
Council members. My point is, if you didn't come [to the MTG meetings], how could you
expect to understand all the changes and their implications."
As members of the executive committee seemed to be nearing the end of the session - which had
been reasonably orderly to that point - Prof. Richard Wade, now retired but once active in
the world of publicly-supported housing - walked into the room with a dramatic
announcement. He had just talked with Pete Grannis, he said, and had learned that, "The
bill is on the floor now, and they will go on to tomorrow. We have no safety valve..."
Though Wade was out of order under Stewart's rules regarding participation only by members of the
executive committee, his level of excitement seemed to make it imperative that he be
heard. Ron Schuppert, who represents Rivercross on the Common Council, asked him, "We all
know that Pete can withdraw this bill anytime he wants to. What does he want us to
do?"
Wade responded, "He hopes it will be voted down."
Stewart picked up that line, and seemed to be getting ready for a vote: "It is the wish of one
of the sponsors of this bill to have us vote against its passage."
Grannis later said, by telephone, that Wade's pronouncement was a total misstatement of what he'd
said, but the exchange had served to open up the meeting, and it resulted in an
argumentative round of comments from almost everybody present. With a break in the
emotional dam, tempers flared. Comments flew from the floor. Shirley Margolin pointed
out that the new RIOC would have no authority to issue bonds. Lee Edelman responded that
the present RIOC has no authority to issue bonds. Byron Gaspard lamented the lack of
respect in a meeting that had, by then, disregarded all the rules Stewart laid down at its
start. Laurence Brodsky accused Stewart of disingenuous questions. Stewart responded
that residents would have an opportunity to vote him and their Common Council
representatives out in a year. Rhoda Jacklin said she really resented Albany "doing this
to us." Stewart said he found the bill, as published in The WIRE, "sloppy
work."
When Stewart restored order, he said he had a series of questions - the same questions he had
been asking "for a year." Did the Maple Tree Group have an estimate of the cost to repair
the Island's infrastructure? Did it have an estimate of day-to-day operating costs? A
statement of RIOC's money in the bank? A statement of RIOC's expected revenues? A
recommended set of by-laws for the new corporation? An operating plan for the new
corporation?
Like a good lawyer, he was asking questions to which he knew the answers - all "no." Heimer
countered that reliable financial information had been unavailable during Jerome Blue's
reign at RIOC, and repeated a request she said she had made before - that if Stewart had
useful information, MTG would like him to bring it into the process. She added that
by-laws and an operating plan would be the province of a new RIOC Board, once its members
were elected by residents.
The Vote
As Stewart tried to move toward a vote of the executive committee, Schuppert pointed out that
nothing in the RIRA constitution gave the executive committee the power to vote on the
matter, and thereby override the whole Common Council's earlier votes to support the MTG
effort. He proposed that, in lieu of a formal vote, members of the executive committee
simply state their positions. Stewart tried to insist it was the executive committee's
job to make a recommendation to the Common Council. "We will vote one way or the other,"
he said, but after a bit of wrangling, he agreed to an informal statement of views. Down
the table of RIRA Vice Presidents, each stated their stand:
Jim Kaufman: "I'm against it in its present form."
Joan Christianson: "I want to think about what I've heard tonight."
Bryan Gaspard: "Against it in its present form."
Patrick Stewart: "Against."
Judy Berdy: "Against it in its present form. I'd like to see a list of pros and cons."
Rhoda Jacklin: "Against it in its present form."
Ron Schuppert: "I want more information; I have reservations but I'm afraid of throwing out the
baby with the bath water."
Linda Heimer: "For the bill."
Once the meeting adjourned, there was a lively debate pro/con among those who had been present to
the end. At times, it was more orderly and respectful of speaers than the formal meeting
had been. Notable comments:
The Marathon
Tuesday night's full RIRA Common Council meeting was called, like the previous night's executive
committee meeting, on an emergency basis.
Once again, in his role as RIRA President, Patrick Stewart set the terms of the debate. "We are
not here to discuss the legislation as drawn by the Maple Tree Group. We will discuss
solely the dangers of the removals." Stewart's concern was focused on the most recent
alterations, 
primarily items removed from the bill. He repeated the plan of the night before: "Based
on the vote to be taken at the end of the meeting, Pete will act."
Dick Lutz of The WIRE, who has editorialized in favor of the self-governance movement, had
confessed to some outrage that Linda Heimer had been forced to defend the legislation
without help at the executive committee session. MTG members agreed to let him voice an
opening argument for going forward with the legislative process, and he was the first to
speak. He explained that he was stepping out of the role of objective reporter or quiet
editorialist, "because I have a stake in what this body will do tonight. I live here, and
I'm weary of living in a world where Jerry Blue can pull the levers of my daily life. I
live here, and I am weary of seeing all the Common Council's energies go into fighting to
stop things, rather than to start things.
"This is a crucial moment of crossroads for Roosevelt Island, and for RIRA. I want my neighbors
to have the power to make decisions for and by the people of Roosevelt Island. I want my
neighbors to control the ground leases for Westview and Island House and Rivercross and to
make the decisions about how those leases will serve th future of this place. I want my
neighbors to decide whether Southpoint must be sacrificed to commercial greed. I want my
neighbors to have the power to make their decisions stick... not just to have the power to
criticize and whine, and hope somebody will listen and heed. Why my neighbors? Because
they are stakeholders. And my stake in this Island is closer to theirs than it is to any
stake Jerry Blue, or George Pataki may have." Speaking to Malcolm Cohen and Byron
Gaspard, he said, "I don't quite know what George Pataki's stake is, but I know what yours
is, Malcolm, and I know where your heart is, Byron, and I know that Patrick Stewart is of,
by, and for the people of this Island.
"This occasion calls for a word about the legislative process. You can forget what they taught
you in eighth grade about how a bill becomes a law," Lutz continued. "In the New York
State Legislature, it's a lot more than a neat series of boxes in a textbook. You can
forget the idea of a brilliantly drafted bill that finds its way through the process
unscathed. The real process involves horse-trading, arm-twisting, gutter fighting, and a
lot of compromise.
"To put it simply and bluntly, we all have to grow up. We have to work with a system that is not
perfect, that produces a bill that is not perfect, that produces a system of Island
management that will surely not be perfect at birth.
"But what it can give you is something far, far better than the political pay-off system of the
past. It gives you a handle on this Island's future - an opportunity to build
something.
"So please forget the idea that you can kill this bill tonight and then easily again get the
convergence of circumstances that have made it possible. Forget the idea that you can
ever get a perfect bill out of an imperfect system. And recognize that your choice is not
between this legislation and something ideal in your mind, or even the ideal MTG started
with.
"Ironically, it is the democracy of this body, the RIRA Common Council, that gives you the power
tonight to kill this Island's only chance for democracy." Lutz referred to the Council's
past three years of fighting against Jerome Blue's RIOC, and urged them to break the
pattern of working against things.
"You can deny this particular future and embrace the past, remain wards of the State and
perpetual victims of the State. It's the devil you know, and you're comfortable with him
- or are you?
"Or you can shed the past and embrace this future with all its discomfort and uncertainty, its
opportunities and risks, but knowing that what you make of it is your own doing."
Once Again, Point By Point
There followed another detailed analysis of the legislation, with the "defense" managed by Linda
Heimer, who now was able to call upon MTG members and the expertise they had brought to
various facets of the legislation.
- Ron Vass and Matthew Katz defended the loss of the name change to "Roosevelt Island
Community," Vass pointing out that RIOC's status as a New York State public-benefit corporation
would remain, Katz explaining why existing contracts meant there could be no name change.
- Joyce Mincheff drew on her background in bond trading to explain the nature of State bonds
that had supported the original capitalizaton of Roosevelt Island. The bonds were "full faith
and credit" of New York State, she told the Common Council - not bonds solely dependent upon the
Island's ability to pay them off.
- Lee Edelman drew on his background with the Island House Ownership Committee to describe the
benefits of resident control - being able to set conditions in a ground lease to protect
tenants.
There were questions about the DHCR connection to the Island, and the future of Mitchell-Lama
housing here (safe, said Lee Edelman, if residents control ground leases). Susan Waide
asked if a reported RIOC budget surplus might disappear if maintenance were improved.
There were questions about the seawall, Southtown, Motorgate, and how the technicalities
of the legislation might affect them. Members of the Common Council checked wristwatches
as the meeting ground into its fourth hour, questions and answers still flying.
Curiously, the meeting was orderly - a sober consideration of how the current version of the
legislation might impact on the Island. As facile as MTG members were with answers, there
were some questions deemed simply unanswerable, and some answers so complex that Council
members held heads in hands, as though in pain.
At a few minutes after midnight, Matthew Katz  was called upon to make MTG's closing argument. Standing,
he paused and gathered himself, then began:
"Whatever we do tonight - whether we vote to press on with this process, or to pass on this
opportunity - we will make history.
"Maple Tree Group understood from the start that the one organization representing Island
residents is RIRA. But something like 80 people have worked on this process, giving
themselves a task because no one else would do it. None of us were politicians, but we
consulted politicians. None of us were lawyers, but we were able to talk with lawyers.
"We knew that a perfect bill was not something we were ever going to find ourselves considering,
because everybody involved has interests - the Governor, the Assembly, the Senate, DHCR...
What we hoped to do was find some resolution of those different interests.
"As this bill changed over the last two weeks, one of our primary questions about the changes
were, þAre they deal-breakers? Are they fatal flaws?'
"And over the last couple of weeks we've exorcised some of the flaws. We've gone back and forth
with the people in Albany, and the result is a bill that we feel we can live with.
"We will not find this confluence of interests again anytime soon.
"I think we have a bill that we can build on... Are we setting out in uncharted waters? You bet
we are. It's scary, there's risk involved, and there are no guarantees. Either we are
willing to step up to this, or we are not."
Katz closed with a quotation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken on the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.
Patrick Stewart followed Katz. He told his fellow Common Council members, "It's not scary, it's
foolish. I took an oath to myself and my fellow citizens to serve and protect all 8.500
people of this Island. It seems to me we are embarked on a foolish and mistaken course,
with the possibility of jeopardizing all 8,500... I hope this bill will be set aside
until we can revisit it after we have done the appropriate amount of homework and have
gained sufficient knowledge of what we are taking over. We can ask that they look at it
in October, January, or a year from now, and they will. I ask us to exercise the trust of
our fellow residents and vote against thisvery foolish and very risky course."
The vote followed. It was 12:21 a.m. Common Council Secretary Mary Lou Risley called upon each
voting member, in turn. Some passed, not yet ready to vote. There was a "no" here, an
"abstain" there, but as the votes came in and those who passed were re-polled, it became
clear that MTG had made its case for going forward with the legislative process.
The final vote was announced as 17-4, with 4 members abstaining.
Several executive committee members had defected to the MTG cause, or had abstained. Byron
Gaspard, asked why he had changed his vote from no to yes, said, "Last night, I voted my
fears. Tonight, I voted my hopes."
Another Common Council member, Zakieh Wazani, told members of the MTG defense team, after her
vote for continuation of the process, "Now I really feel like an American. I wish my son
were here to see this. I feel complete."
Aftermath
MTG held a brief Town Meeting the next night to inform residents on the legislation, and for the
first time were able to hand out photocopies of the bill as it stood. Residents attending
the meeting were warm to the idea of an elected Board of residents taking control of
Island affairs.
But afterward, members of the group met around the piano at the front of the Chapel of the Good
Shepherd. They agreed that, with a bill now in hand, they would meet again Friday night
for an additional review of the legislation, including the most recent changes. In fact,
by Friday the MTG die-hards would have attended eight evening meetings in nine days - none
under three hours, and two lasting over four and a half hours.
But by early Thursday morning, concerned about several of the latest changes, and with MTG
convenor David Bauer abroad on a long-planned vacation Heimer polled members to ask if
they thought it prudent to ask for a temporary hold on the bill. They agreed, and she
made the call to Grannis.
At that point Grannis didn't know if the Senate had passed the legislation the night before, but
he agreed to hold the bill in Assembly committee while MTG sought additional answers to
the questions raised by the latest version - and combed through the new language for any
possible hitches.
There were indeed hitches - hitches MTG members had come to consider routine in the give and take
of the legislative process. At the Friday night meeting, Lee Edelman reported finding a
change of wording that would give the outgoing RIOC Board some 70 days to push through
development projects. That turned out to be a drafting technicality, but it alarmed
members of the group. Along with other last-minute concerns, it caused MTG members to ask
Grannis and Mendez to keep the bill on temporary hold in both houses of the
Legislature.
The Process Goes On
That's where it stands today, as MTG members continue to work through details, meeting with
informed officials and pulling together the further information needed to make sure the
legislation passes muster, or to craft changes that can satisfy all parties in a final
bill.
Curiously, after picking their way through the underbrush of the legislative process to find
common ground among Assembly Democrats, the Governor, and Senate Republicans, David
Bauer's Maple Tree Group had found that the hardest parties to satisfy with a piece of
legislation are right here on Roosevelt Island.
At this writing, RIRA President Patrick Stewart remains opposed to the legislation currently
under consideration, indicating as recently as Monday night that he intends to take the
matter back to the Common Council, to ask for another vote, this time against the
legislation - based on the most recent changes.
Stewart calls for more "homework," particularly on the Island's financial situation. (His column
discussing the legislatin appears on page 3 of this issue.)
MTG continues to insist that the Common Council voted for a continuation of the legislative
process - not for a frozen, finished product. It takes the stand that RIRA has passed on
the overall plan at least four times - by putting the question on the November ballot,
then through the ballot box in November, 1998, when 92% of those voting on the matter
decided self-governance should be pursued, again in February, 1999, when the Common
Council voted 16-0 (Stewart and two others abstaining) to support MTG's efforts for the
Grannis bill actively, and again Tuesday, June 15, in the 17-4 vote.
MTG points out that either house of the Legislature can make changes at the last minute, insists
that the time is right now - and may never be again - for a successful move to resident
control of Roosevelt Island.
The Maple Tree Group meets Monday nights at 7:30 at various Island locations. For information on
meeting places, Islanders may call David Bauer at 593-7259. The next meeting is slated
for Tuesday night, July 6, because of the Independence Day holiday, and will be held under
the Maple Tree behind Blackwell House, exactly two years from the date of MTG's first
gathering.
The Maple Tree Group's second-anniversary meeting was held under the Maple
Tree at Blackwell House, where its first meeting was held in
1997. |
|
July 4, 1999
replacement of Dr.
Jerome Blue, the President of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), who had
just spent a year actively ignoring the elected Common Council and President of the
Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA). The frustration brought on by this lack of
resident input
had resulted in a July 4 "Democracy Rally" in Good Shepherd Plaza. One poster announcing
the protest showed a human brain with the headline, "Missing in Action at Your Local
Government." The WIRE's headline made clear the proximate cause:
Judy Berdy on infrastructure
defects, Jim Bowser on the reflections of Willard Warren on RIOC operations, David Bauer
on RIOC revenue and expenditures - and there was even a look at why Main Street trash
receptacles so often overflowed on weekends, prepared by Mary Camper-Titsingh, who, with
Laurence Brodsky, had also looked into serious deterioration of the landmark Blackwell
House.
