Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

This is the season when Roosevelt Island dresses up and looks its best.  For a few short days, the Island wears a mantle of pink and white blossoms of cherry, apple, and pear, and when I walk by the flowering trees just south of 20 River Road, the perfume is captivating.  When friends decry the "isolation" of our Island home and ask why we chose to live here, I ask them to visit in the Spring.  And then, I ask them why they would choose to live anywhere else.

I want to mention some correspondence on which I have been copied.  Last month, Assemblymember Pete Grannis wrote to RIOC President Rob Ryan to ask about their efforts to secure funding for the seawall and other capital projects.  This letter was reported on in the March 10 WIRE, although Rob tells me he never got it.  As you may know, we have been waiting for a final draft of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report on the seawall for well over a year now.  Pete also expressed concern over the lack of progress in acquiring funding, much less starting the long-delayed repairs, for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd and for Blackwell House.  He asked for a prompt response.

Some weeks later, Rev. Luke McCann, administrator of the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish, and Rev. Curtis Hart, interim Vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd, wrote to our Assemblymember to add their concerns for the deteriorating conditions at the Church.  Pete sent this letter along with a follow-up to Rob Ryan, and again asked for a review of the Island's capital needs and an assessment of how they will be paid for.  To the best of my knowledge, these letters have received no reply.

In my first interview with Mr. Ryan as RIRA president last November, I posed many of these same questions.  I'm concerned that the answers I received then, and again this week, have not been translated into carpenters and stone workers, lathing and riprap.  The request for Blackwell House funds from the State Parks Commission languishes in red tape.  RIOC has been waiting to review an engineer's report on the status of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd written in 1995.  RIOC is still waiting for a report on the seawall, bought and paid for years ago, that was released in draft form in February 2000.  I hope that Rob will give Pete Grannis the courtesy of a reply, and that he will share this update on Island infrastructure with us, the residents.  These questions never seem to find resolution, and we must continue to plague RIOC with them until acceptable answers are found and implemented.

Another issue: Until recently, our only opportunity to address RIOC's controlling Board of Directors has been during the Public Access portion of their Board meetings.  Board Chair, Mary Beth Labate, has experimented with a bi-monthly evening-meeting format followed by a give-and-take with those Board members who choose to stay and participate.  Given the lateness of the hour after the Board adjourned for two executive sessions at the March meeting, this plan proved to be less than successful.  I wrote to Ms. Labate with my concerns that any interaction between Board and community that takes place after the Board of Directors has debated and voted on crucial Island issues has failed in its basic premise.  Since I wrote that letter, I've learned that RIOC canceled its April meeting and that the May meeting will be the last evening meeting (and presumably the last meeting to invite community participation) until November.  My hope is that we can sit down together and thrash out a solution that will allow meaningful interaction with the RIOC Board while permitting them to accomplish their tasks.

In the same letter, I asked Ms. Labate to reconsider the makeup of the recently-formed Public Safety Advisory Committee which was convened to address Island concerns with the utility and the cost of the Public Safety Department.  Chaired by Dr. Joan Dawson, presently it includes the resident RIOC Board members plus representatives of the housing management companies.  I suggested that this panel was incomplete without some representation from the community, and that the RIRA Common Council was elected expressly for that purpose.  Our First Vice President, Byron Gaspard, has made the appropriate policing of the Island and the adequate patrolling of resident housing his area of expertise, and I urged his inclusion on the committee.  Commissioner Labate has been traveling, but has promised to meet with me upon her return.

Spring is a time of renewed promise.  My hope is that the promises of Winter will become action this Spring.  We deserve no less.