Both RIRA President Matthew Katz and City Council Member Gifford Miller were applauded repeatedly as they decried the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation's plan to consider the cutback at its September 13 meeting.  Miller criticized Governor George Pataki roundly for his failure to provide for the Island's capital needs in the State budget, and called the RIOC staff and Board inept for their failure "to understand what the Tram means to the Island."

Katz drew extended applause when he set out the purpose of the meeting:  "We need to send a massive protest to RIOC that says, 'No!  This isn't your Tram.  It's ours, and it is an essential service to this Island.'  It's RIOC's job to find the resources to keep that Tram open."  On July 12, the RIOC Board heard figures detailing a $645,000 annual loss for the Tram service, and suggesting that deletion of the 10:00 p.m. shift would erase most of that deficit.  That prompted a discussion of a reduction of service and a request for resident comments.

Katz urged the 200-plus residents at the meeting to circulate petitions among their neighbors, send e-mails and letters to RIOC, and to be prepared to protest further if necessary.

"This is a no-brainer.  Why does this question continue to come up over and over again?  We should not be discussing this," Katz said.  "It should never have seen the light of day."

Miller backed up that line of argument when he took the microphone.  "I'm shocked that they would even consider this again," he said, calling the proposal "unconscionable," "stupid," and "illegal."

"The problem here is that RIOC doesn't really understand what the Tram means to this Island," Miller said.  "It's more than just a transportation link.  It is a critical way for the senior part and the disabled part of this community to get to and from Manhattan.  But it's more than that.  It's part of the Island's character.  It's part of the Island's soul.  And to say that the Tram's negotiable, that we're going to cut it back, that we're going to start eliminating hours, is to say to the Island that we're going to destroy you."

Miller faulted the RIOC Board's reasoning in raising the question of a cutback:  "What transit link in the world makes money?  Not one of them does.  No one says the Staten Island Ferry isn't making money.  It's free!  No one says that the subway should make money...  No one says the buses should make money, and they sure don't make money in the middle of the night.  But we run them anyway because they are part of the lifeline of this City."

This poster helped bring out residents for the Town Meeting

"It's an outrage," Miller shouted. "It's an absolute outrage."  Referring to Pataki administration claims that Roosevelt Island is financially self-sufficient, he said, "It starts from the fact that there's this crisis of funding that they created.  There's no capital budget.  Why?  Because they say there's no capital budget.  And then they say, 'We have no capital budget, we need to make more money on the Tram.'"  Miller pointed out that Assemblymember Pete Grannis, who represents Roosevelt Island, has repeatedly asked RIOC administrators for a list of the Island's capital needs, but none has been provided.  Grannis's representative at the meeting, Tony Morenzi, said, "Jerry Blue [former RIOC President] had the best answer [to our request for a list of capital needs].  He said it was all in his head."

Members of the RIRA Common Council collected signatures during the evening, and provided blank petition forms for residents to circulate, as Katz put it, "wherever Islanders congregate."

Miller also responded to a call by RIOC Board member Leo Kayser for RIOC to consider placing "shrink-wrap" advertising on the Tram cabins in violation of its Tramway operating franchise, granted by the City on terms set by City Council.  Miller told assembled residents that RIOC has never been allowed to advertise on the Tram cabins.  "Let me be clear about what the situation is with advertising on the Tram.  RIOC has [to have] a franchise with the City of New York to be able to operate the Tram.  A year or two ago they discovered that they hadn't had the franchise renewed and came to the City [for renewal], and they came to me and said, 'We want to renew the franchise.  We'd like to be able to do some advertising.'  I said, 'Well, I'm willing to talk about that with you...  but I'm not just going to let you do the advertising and make a lot of money without some kind of assurance that you're going to use that money to benefit the Island...  I'm not just going to give you a blank check because you haven't been doing the right thing by this community for years.'"  Residents applauded, then Miller continued:  "So let me be clear here.  They never had the right to do advertising on the Tram, they don't have the right to do advertising on the Tram now, and they're not going to get the right to do advertising on the Tram until they... show us that they're going to do something with that revenue to benefit this Island.  Period."

Miller and others also pointed out that Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires ingress and egress from public facilities, saying that because the Island's subway platforms are not compatible with motorized wheelchairs, the Tramway cannot be closed.  Attorney Jim Kaufman, an alternate member of the RIRA Common Council, told residents that Federal courts tend to provide injunctive relief immediately when a suit is brought under ADA's provisions.

Sister Regina Palomara struck a responsive chord in the Chapel audience when she began a brief speech by asking, "Does anybody know what saint I prayed to on my way to this meeting?"  She then answered the question with the name of the late perennial defender of the Tramway:  "Saint Al Weinstein."  She added, "Now, that's modern, when a Catholic nun can pray to a Jewish gentleman."  Up to his death November 19, 1998, Weinstein had led many resident battles to beat down attempts to cut Tramway service.

Representing Assemblymember Grannis, Tony Morenzi related a conversation with RIOC President Robert Ryan.  "I'm the one who spoke with him, so these are almost direct quotes," Morenzi said.  He quoted Ryan as saying, "I don't want you to think any decisions have been made on closing the Tram on a third shift.  We're just asking for community response."  Morenzi said he then asked Ryan, "Have you looked in the files from four years ago, almost to the day?  Jerry Blue said almost the same thing in a letter to Assemblyman Grannis...  Blue said, 'I've got input from the community, and we've met,' and he listed all these people that he met - upstanding people' (and Al Weinstein must be rolling in his grave right now because he listed him), and within days of that there was a sign up saying the third shift of the Tram was going to be closed.  And I said to Ryan, 'It's not going to happen.'"

Representative Carolyn Maloney sent her aide, Jessica Fox, and later provided a letter to RIOC President Ryan.

Some residents who spoke at the Town Meeting sought to portray the current "skirmish" over Tram hours as merely symptomatic of an appointed RIOC Board and President who are out of touch with residents' needs, and simply inept at community management.  "The [real] issue is gross negligence and mismanagement by appointed officials who could care less about our needs," said Steve Marcus, a RIRA Council member.  The comment drew applause.  "The money is not the problem.  The problem is, the Governor doesn't give a damn, and he put a bunch of bozos in to control us...  Their job is basically to shut up, not ask for any money, and limp along so that the Governor can spend the money on Republicans upstate that will vote for him."  Marcus, who is a member of the Maple Tree Group, which has been pursuing legislation providing for a locally-elected RIOC Board of Directors, continued, "What we need to do is get control.  We're going to be fighting these skirmishes over and over again.  What we really have to do is get these clowns out and have control ourselves.  We have to elect RIOC from this neighborhood so that the RIOC officials have some understanding of what this community needs and deserves."

RIRA First Vice President Byron Gaspard called for unity among residents.  He called the RIOC Board's consideration of a Tramway cutback "vindictive," a response to the City Council's refusal to allow RIOC to sell advertising on the cabins.

Michael P. Gutnick, Senior Vice President for Finance at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, when informed by The WIRE of the RIOC question to residents, said, "This is the first I've heard of this.  We're very disappointed.  There are going to be several hundred new families working the late shift and, as you know, the subway service is rather sporadic, particularly in the evening.  We obviously will be having conversations with RIOC about it, and not only us, but the people from Cornell as well as Rockefeller."

RIOC is taking e-mailed comments at Tramway@RIOC.com or at 591 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, NY 10044.  The Internet mail link at the right allows composition of a single message to be sent to the Governor, RIOC, Grannis, Senator Olga Mendez, RIOC Board Chair Marybeth Labate, Website NYC10044 and The WIRE.