Rob Ryan, RIOC President, called to extend his congratulations and to invite me to meet with him. Over the course of a cordial hour's meeting many issues important to the Island came up. Rob reported that repair work on the ramp leading to the Roosevelt Island bridge was being conducted "even as we speak." We discussed the difficulties in getting ConEd to honor its obligations for maintaining street lights, and Vincent Kopicki, chief engineer, reported on his expectations of a resolution within the week. Keep your eyes on the street lights, neighbors, and let us know if the work is getting done. Finally, Vinnie informed us (and this has been corroborated by Assemblymember Pete Grannis) that the final draft of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report on our seawall should be ready, and available to the community, by the first week in December. This is critical to an understanding of the cost of infrastructure work that has been neglected since we lost our capital budget subsidies from the State. Both Rob Ryan and Jim Fry, Chief of Public Safety, offered me an open door policy and a readiness to addre ss the RIRA Common Council when necessary.

I met with Pete Grannis on Tuesday morning and he reiterated his long-standing support for the bill that bears his name. He has pledged to work toward a viable bill to give us an elected RIOC Board and professional Island management. His main caveat was the necessity of convincing the Governor to sign such a bill, which would deprive him of a source of appointments to use as favors for services rendered. The Common Council and the whole community will need to put pressure on the Governor to convince him of how correct and how timely passage of the Grannis bill would be.

Leo Kayser, RIOC Board member, was good enough to give the Maple Tree Group a second chance to meet with him on Monday evening. He is pushing a plan for the future of Roosevelt Island that is described elsewhere in The Wire. His plan would use the services of a sales agent to sell our open spaces to developers for the 68-year duration of the Master Lease between the City and the State. The fees would be paid up front rather than annually as ground rents. This would accrue a considerable amount of money that could be used to repair and maintain Island infrastructure and to create a trust fund for Island needs. At some point, the Island would revert to the City, with some entity, perhaps a sub-committee of Community Board 8, replacing the General Development Plan to represent the needs of the residents. Superficially, the plan is intriguing, but MTGers recognized the following flaws: 1) The sales agent would be constrained only by the GDP, any applicable environmental impact statements (EIS), and the marketplace. I haven't noticed the New York City marketplace building much affordable housing in recent years, have you? This plan eliminates any sense of aesthetics, of ethics, or any understanding of proportion or quality of life that currently drives, we hope, the current RIOC Board in their planning of Island development. And wasn't the purpose of creating this planned community to override the callousness of the marketplace? 2) The plan puts the cart before the horse. It sells off the Island and then enfranchises the residents. By the time we get any say about the Island's future, that future will have been frozen in concrete and steel. If this sales agent was offered a lucrative hog-rendering plant (to take an extreme example) for Southpoint that conformed with the GDP and an EIS, there would be no recourse to fight its construction. Mr. Kayser has said there is support for this plan, and in fact, the RIOC Board voted unanimously (as they usually do) to support it. However, I know that Council Member Gifford Miller and Assemblymember Pete Grannis are highly skeptical of this economically ultra-conservative approach to Island development and rule.

By the way, Vicki Feinmel and Margie Smith have been elected co-chairs of the Maple Tree Group, replacing yours truly. This should give me a bit more time to devote to RIRA, and give MTG a separate and distinct voice. I'll continue to participate in MTG (and you should too!) but I'm happy to turn over the leadership to such capable hands.

I've met with Councilmember Miller, and plan to meet with DHCR (Department of Housing and Community Renewal) Commissioner Joe Lynch, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, State Senator Olga Mendez and anyone else who will talk to me in the near future. I'll report on these meetings in subsequent columns.

One other hot flash to report on. Wednesday evening the new Common Council met in what I call a Freshman Orientation to familiarize new (and old) members with the procedures, rules and regs of the organization. The turnout was good and refreshments were served (I reminded the members not to expect such luxe treatment in the future). We examined Council agendas and minutes and every member got a copy of the Constitution to read, and read again. The agenda for the first meeting of the Class of 2000 was distributed and we should roar into our first session on December 6 up to speed and in overdrive.

Why don't you come on down to the Chapel of the Good Shepherd on Wednesday evening (at 8:00) and watch us do our stuff? More anon...