Matthew Katz wants a mostly-elected RIOC Board of Directors, and professional community management.

Patrick Stewart wants Roosevelt Island returned to New York City, and time to develop a plan for that.

That was the one stark philosophical difference between the candidates for President of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) that was evident in last week's debate at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd.

Katz goes on to push for a specific plan - legislation introduced by Assemblymember Pete Grannis and Senator Olga Mendez - that calls for an infrastructure audit to fix State responsibility for Roosevelt Island's financial needs, and places a cap on how much of the necessary fix-up funding would have to come out of the budget of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC).

Stewart calls Katz's approach "financial suicide," pointing out that New York State floated $200 million in bonds to build Roosevelt Island and that tens of millions of repairs of deteriorated infrastructure are somewhere in the Island's future.  Katz responds that the Island will remain a State responsibility under the plan he advocates.

[The candidates speak for themselves in the text of their debate (click here).  At deadline, Nneka Pope, a former RIRA President, announced a run for the RIRA Presidency, too late to participate in the debate.]

The backdrop against which the battle for the RIRA Presidency (and First Vice Presidency) is being fought is a three-and-a-half-year history of New York State's denying funding to Roosevelt Island, a period in which the Governor-appointed RIOC Board has refused to ask the Governor for funding for Roosevelt Island.  Actually, RIOC has gone further than that, turning down State money offered by Assemblymember Grannis for some specific and fairly desperate Island needs.

The history (is there anyone left who has not heard or read it repeatedly?) is a mid-70's takeover by New York State - leasing this Island from New York City and promising to develop it to provide affordable housing.  With the Lease, a General Development Plan (GDP), a supposedly strict "zoning" that described exactly what could be done with each parcel of land on the Island.  And with that 99-year Lease responsibility, a promise to subsidize Island operations and capital needs until population reached 20,000 souls (later revised to 16,000) - a goal only half met here at the turn of the century.  Those heady plans, made under Governor Nelson Rockefeller by visionary Ed Logue, were followed by 20 years of the State's providing the necessary funding - as high as $6.6 million a year at one point.

But the State funding was cut off by the Governor in 1996.  George Pataki sent Dr. Jerome Blue to occupy the President's seat at RIOC.  Together, they declared Roosevelt Island "self-sufficient," and the scramble was on to find ways to turn that widely-doubted political pronouncement into financial fact.  By all accounts, that has been done by spending little on maintenance, letting Roosevelt Island's infrastructure deteriorate to the point where needed repairs are estimated, by RIRA Patrick Stewart, at $40 million or $50 million.

Today, no State funds flow to the Island, and its current RIOC President is charged with making do on the income generated here - mostly rent paid for the ground on which apartment buildings sit both now and with future development.  Development, in fact, is seen by RIOC as the key to the Island's financial future - more ground rent, more people, and perhaps something close to the 16,000 residents that would go a long way toward completing the promises made to the City in the Lease and development plan.

The competition for the Presidency of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association is essentially a philosophical and practical fight over what residents should do, if they should do anything, about all this - and about other dissatisfactions with the way the Island is run.

Stewart, as four-year incumbent, says RIRA under his leadership has accomplished a lot, including getting rid of Blue (who has since held two other high-paying State jobs) and eventually getting Stewart himself, and Susan Whitaker, appointed to voting seats on the RIOC Board.  (Others dispute the claim about Blue, and other accomplishments Stewart says, in campaign materials, are RIRA's to boast of under his leadership.) He wants time to work out a plan under which the State would give up its lease 60-some years early and put the Island back in the hands of New York City.

Katz, who now leads the three-year Maple Tree Group (MTG) effort to revise State law to require a majority of elected residents on the RIOC Board - and replace politically-appointed RIOC management with professional management - backs the Grannis-Mendez plan to accomplish exactly that.  He says the five resident members of the RIOC Board, including Stewart, have failed to cast votes in line with resident wishes.

Part of the Katz program, if enacted into law as the legislation is currently written, would specify State responsibility for the Island's capital financial needs, limiting capital funding taken from Island cash flow to something under $500,000 a year.  Stewart points to a current RIOC budget with only $19,000 to spare and says Island management, no matter how professional, won't be able to come up with its share.

Stewart, in characterizing the Katz/MTG/Grannis/Mendez plan as "financially irresponsible," worries that the State will abandon the Island altogether.  Katz points out that the State's responsibility is a continuing one under the Lease.  Stewart claims no, that under the proposed legislation the RIOC Board and City and State could declare the GDP fulfilled, and the State could walk away.  Katz says a resident-controlled Board would demand, or at least lobby for, rather than refuse, State funding.

Katz points to a three-year MTG effort to gain more resident control over RIOC.  Stewart points to his four years of experience as RIRA President and says the self-governance bills haven't gotten out of committee in the State Legislature.  Katz points out that Pete Grannis says his version of the bill could have passed the Assembly last session, and cites a promise Olga Mendez says she has, from Pataki, to go along with an infrastructure audit that would place all but a fraction of responsibility for infrastructure repair squarely on the State.

Katz urges residents to vote Yes on the "democracy referendum" the RIRA Common Council placed on the ballot which, if passed, would urge "immediate passage" - a relative term, to be sure,given the pace of the Legislature - of the legislation putting a majority of elected residents on the RIOC Board of Directors.  Stewart, who voted against putting the referendum question on the ballot (the vote was 13-8 in favor) wants more time to investigate possible formulas under which the City might take Roosevelt Island back from the State.  Responding to that idea, Katz sees a City take-back as complicated (as does Stewart) and unlikely to happen in time for residents to have any meaningful input on further development of the Island.

On other matters, both Stewart and his running mate, Joan Christianson, and Katz and his running mate, Byron Gaspard, say something needs to be done about Public Safety.  Stewart talks about NYPD being able to do a better job with the millions that flow from ground rent (and thus from residents' pockets) into Public Safety services; Katz talks about getting more control over RIOC so that Public Safety can be shaped up.  Both agree with some of Stewart's past speculation that the Island and its crime statistics would not warrant much NYPD attention if the Public Safety Department were disbanded.

But in this campaign, all other matters have faded into near-incidental status, and the one stark difference between the candidates is whether or not residents should demand more power in, and assume more responsibility for, operation of Roosevelt Island.

Stewart's most pronounced vulnerabilities in this campaign are probably his advocacy of what, in the end, sounds very much like the status quo, and of an incompletely developed notion of somehow putting Roosevelt Island back in the hands of New York City.  He could also suffer a backlash from his abstention, as a RIOC Board member, on the Board's minicondo vote.  Stewart's strength is name recognition, a well-known running mate in Joan Christianson, and his four years of experience in the RIRA presidency.

Katz's vulnerability is that he's not the incumbent and is new, despite some years on the Common Council and his current leadership of the Maple Tree Group.  One strength (and, for many, a possible weakness) is in a well-developed call for change that Stewart has portrayed as risky.  In Byron Gaspard, Katz also has an energetic and outspoken running mate.  And having tied himself closely to the referendum calling for a mostly-elected RIOC Board, Katz may ride to the RIRA Presidency on the coattails of democracy.