Through the Residents Association Nominations and Election Committees, The WIRE invited candidates for RIRA's executive offices to provide statements to appear in this issue and the next issue. At deadline, the statements appearing here had been provided. (No others were received.) With the November 4 issue, The WIRE will also distribute flyers for candidates for Common Council. (See notice.)

Dear Neighbors,

My wife Sherie and I have lived on Roosevelt Island for eleven years now. We love the life here with its international flavor, green spaces, fascinating history, small- town ambience and good friends. We didn't intend to get involved in Island politics or activism until we attended a RIOC Board meeting about four years ago. The community showed up in force at that Sportspark meeting, and Jerome Blue made it clear, in the most arrogant and callous terms, that Roosevelt Island is a colony of New York State without power or influence.

Since then, I have served three years as a Manhattan Park rep to the RIRA Common Council. I've served on the Housing Committee, the Government Relations Committee and been a founding member and treasurer of the Legal Action Fund Committee. At about the same time, Sherie and I became convinced that the American democratic way of governance, that is, elected representation, was both missing and essential for the management of the Island through RIOC, the Operating Corporation.

As a member of the Maple Tree Group, and currently its leader, I have labored for over two years on a bill that would change the RIOC Board, currently composed of appointees from the Governor, to one with a majority of elected Island residents. Of course, the State would still be responsible for the Island. The City, which still owns it, would still have appointees on the board. But, the majority vote would be with us, the residents, and the responsibility for running the Island would rest with a professional, experienced community manager, hired by the community's RIOC Board, instead of the political appointees who now run our lives and determine our futures.

I see an urgency in this endeavor as the various schemes for developing the Island come closer to fulfillment. After all, once the concrete is poured and the steel beams soar over the Island, it won't matter who calls the shots. Development is essential to providing the revenue to run this Island, to bring our population to the levels envisaged by the urban prophets who invented this planned community and to utilize some of our barren spaces that have lain fallow for decades. However those same seers wrote into the General Development Plan a solid, unequivocal requirement for the preservation of our open spaces and parkland that must be honored. Over four years ago, Governor Pataki declared the Island self-sufficient, and reduced our State operating capital budget subsidies to zero. RIOC has been scrambling ever since, unsuccessfully, to make this extraordinary proclamation so. Their desperation for revenue has made the need for preserving the Roosevelt Island quality of life secondary. I believe that a RIOC elected from the community will have other, more reasonable, priorities, and I know that the bill in Albany includes guarantees to protect Island finances.

These issues are important, but they are not the only reason I'm running for RIRA president. I've served three years now on a Common Council where the leadership has been unwilling or unable to enforce the basic rules of order and civility required by our Constitution, by Roberts Rules and common precedent, and by common sense. Time and again, the Council has passed resolutions to reform the way we do business, to support the movement for elected RIOC governance, and to influence proposed development projects by legal means, only to find that the current president was opposed to these ventures and simply refused to enforce them.

The Residents Association is neither a military unit, where a general gives orders, nor a corporation, where an owner gives absolute power to a chief executive. RIRA's authority derives from its members - the Island's residents. I believe RIRA's officers are obliged to act on the will of the majority. That hasn't been the case for the last two years, and a change is needed. I seek the Residents Association presidency to serve, not to command or act on my own, independent of the Common Council's will. I have over twenty years experience running committees of volunteers at the non-profit New York Academy of Sciences. I know that it's possible to work with volunteers, with busy lives of their own, and still expect and demand responsible work for the good of the group.

Your Common Council Treasury has not raised a dime or spent a dime, has not initiated programs or participated in existing programs, has not sought the participation of our seniors, our disabled or our hospital population during my tenure. If we are to get your support, first we must earn your respect. I propose to do this if you will elect me your president and if you will send to the Common Council people who are as concerned and as passionate about Roosevelt Island as I am.

The week of August 26, 2000, I decided to run for the First Vice President of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association. I want to unify RIRA leadership and members by recognizing the organization's goals and mandates rather than the pursuit of individual agendas. I will, if elected, do the following:

• Work hard with the community to resolve issues that threaten to destroy our community. Example: Continue to fight for a more efficient Public Safety system that meets the security demands of Roosevelt Island. I will continue to fight for more timely and efficient internal patrols by Public Safety for all our buildings, especially Eastwood, which is the least secure development of Roosevelt Island.


• I will continue my relationship with the 114th Precinct to secure more police presence on Roosevelt Island.


• I will work closely with all the committees of RIRA to develop more realistic goals that affect our Island and our everyday quality of life.


• I will fight to end the Governor's monarchy-style rule in the form of RIOC.


• I will avail myself to all legitimate organizations that have had an effective track record fighting for issues that have affected our quality of life here on Roosevelt Island.


• I will work with the Roosevelt Island Youth/Beacon Program to develop a Youth Representative on RIRA. Our youth should have a voice on this Island. It's their community too.


• I will work with Coler-Goldwater to get them to send a representative to the RIRA Common Council.


• I will work with Ms. Sherry Gregory, Principal of PS/IS 217 to obtain a PTA Representative to the RIRA Common Council. We need to support our schools.

For the last two years, I have served as Vice President of Education, Cultural and Social Services and Chair of the Public Safety Committee. I also served as a member of the 114th Precinct Committee and was appointed by Joseph Lynch of DHCR to the Capital Planning and Development Committee, which voted against the minischool development.

I believe RIRA cannot represent this community under a leadership that has drastically divided the Common Council and where personal ambition has taken precedence over the community's welfare. With me – the community will always come first.