Whether or not Roosevelt Island residents should seek the right to elect a majority of the members of the RIOC Board of Directors has emerged as the defining issue of the year 2000 campaign to lead the Residents Association.  Here is a condensation (a fuller transcript is available on Website NYC10044 www.nyc10044.com) of what the two candidates for the RIRA Presidency said about the referendum in the RIRA Common Council meeting that agreed, 13 to 8, to put it on the November 7 ballot:

Patrick Stewart "I'm against any kind of a referendum, to tell you the truth, because it's too complex.  We are asking people to understand what we understand over many years here in conference... "It is very important that we understand what's going on here...  Why would the new RIOC Board be able to do any more than the old RIOC Board would?  The new RIOC board would not have any more money than the old Board would.  Understand that the 8.5 million dollars gross revenue that comes to RIOC is used to run the Island, to maintain the Island, not to fix the infrastructure, not to pay for legal bills, not to pay for anything other than hopefully keeping the street the way it is. "The projected new Board is assuming all the obligations on behalf of the Island that the present Board has.  The present Board has well in excess of 300 million dollars in obligations.  Where is this new Board going to get the money the old Board can't get?  Is Pete Grannis gonna get us $500,000?  That's not $300 million.  Is Gifford Miller gonna get us some trees?  That is not going to do it. "This is fiscal irresponsibility.  It is financial suicide to do these things.  No matter how you look at it, the numbers don't add up to a fiscally responsible policy for the Island.  Please understand that you've got $40 or $50 million of infrastructure debt, you've got $200 million in bonds to be paid off, you've got capital spending that hasn't been done for lo these many years, and you have $20,000 in the bank to do it with.  The money is not there.  You can hire all the management in the world, you can have every one of the people in RIOC being an expert in whatever it is, the money isn't there.  You can't operate without money.  There is no program to get money.  That's it, pure and simple. "So, do we want to take on that obligation on behalf of our neighbors to say, 'We're going to go out and get some neighbors here, and they will take care of it'?  They will not take care of it because they can't borrow money without the State, they can't float bonds without the State, they can't tax because it's illegal to do that.  So where is this money going to come from?  It isn't.  It isn't there and it will not be there.  That's simple."

Matthew Katz "We want to elect RIOC, and we want RIOC to hire professional management.  [As for] financial responsibility - whether it is this RIOC or a [new] RIOC, it is still a public benefit corporation and the responsibility of the State.  That doesn't change.  If the State wants to allocate subsidies to this Island, it can do so under a RIOC1 or a RIOC2 Board.  There's nothing to prevent it.  What does change is that the political status of the Island is no longer there.  This is no longer a Board appointed by a Republican Governor.  It's just a Board.  And so the strictures against giving money to someone of a different party no longer are there.  If Pete Grannis wants to get us $600,000 there is a RIOC Board that is prepared to accept it.  That's not the case now.  So what we are doing is not changing anything about whether we can accept money from the State. "Also, I would bring to your attention this whole question of the deductible.  The deductible as it exists now in the Assembly bill is $250,000; in the Senate bill, $500,000.  The current responsibility of this RIOC is $6 million for the seawall repairs, $40 million or $50 million, depending on when you ask, for the infrastructure of the entire Island, $4.5 million to connect the existing infrastructure to phase one of Southtown.  The current RIOC is responsible for the whole kit and caboodle, because there's no one else to pick up those costs.  What this legislation will offer us is an opportunity to limit liability, because one way or another, somebody's got to fix this Island. "[As for the City] If they bide their time and wait 66 years, they get a completely developed Island back as a cash cow.  So I'm not sure why the City would consider taking us back under our present situation.  Also, I wonder why we would want this to happen.  [If] we go back to the City, the first thing that goes is the Master Lease [and] the General Development Plan...  We should have an idea of what kind of protections we can expect from the City. "This is a country in which there are three levels of government, federal, state, local.  Each of those levels of government is elected by the people they serve.  And I think that is essential to any kind of government here on Roosevelt Island."

 

Full transcript of selected remarks during RIRA Common Council discussion October 11