There's nothing wrong with running a community in a businesslike fashion.

But a community is first and last a community, not a business.

A community is a community not just of people, but of their values.  And not all the values are related to money in any of its forms: income, expenditures, budget, costs, capital, profit, loss, cash flow.

We are not, here on the Island, like the rest of Manhattan, where real-estate values flex and strain with the demand for office space.  We are, instead, a flexing of the very human desire for quality of neighborhood and quality of life against the strain of financial reality.

Communities work their way through these competing concerns using an instrument as old as the very idea of community:  politics.  Policy is set through the political process, by the selection of leaders, through zoning choices, by taxing and budget decisions – all considered in the light of competing values within the community.

But not here.  Because here, the State makes all the decisions through a mostly non-resident Board of appointed Directors who largely ratify the decisions made by non-resident RIOC administrators and employees, including Public Safety officials.

But there is now clear evidence that RIOC is managing Roosevelt Island as a financial enterprise, not as a community.  It's evident in the terms of the deal for Southtown land, and in pressure on Becker and Becker (WIRE report) for maximum return from a development at the Octagon.

So community values – indeed, the very values that create a community – are out the window.  Decisions are driven by all those budgetary buzzwords.  Human values are being considered last, if at all.

It's evident in RIOC decisions to create homogeneous buildings – subcommunities of medical professionals, and homogeneous subcommunities of temporary Island-dwellers who will live in apartments unsuitable for raising families.  That's evident in high numbers of studio and one-bedroom apartments, and low numbers of apartments with two bedrooms or more.

This is a huge mistake.

It flies in the face of good sense and good social policy.  It reverses and discards Roosevelt Island's greatest strength – its diverse mix of people who have sunk roots here to create a community.  The policy disregards decades of promises relied upon by the people who moved here to make a life where they could expect to have a role in shaping the community's collective values.

And now we learn (WIRE report) that RIOC has steered the plans for Octagon construction toward a similar population of medical personnel – post-doctoral people who will live in buildings with an excessively high proportion of small apartments inappropriate for long-term occupancy.  RIOC has even looked more attentively to the bottom line, asking for eight stories of density rather than six stories adjacent to the Octagon structure.

It may make for a good financial enterprise.

It's a terrible community enterprise.

The State Department of Housing and Community Renewal has walked away from its responsibility to Roosevelt Island by allowing RIOC to become a corporation steered by financial concerns.

There is only one good solution.  The State should heed the resident vote taken November 7 when 80% expressed their preference for locally-elected control of the RIOC Board, and for professional community management here.

DL