Following is a nearly full transcript of the session, abridged only slightly at two points, one at the request of a participant, the other to eliminate irrelevant material.

Click on the topics below to access that portion of the discussion.

Role of Board Members
School Buses on the West Promenade
Procedure
Red Bus Route and Schedule
Youth Center Grant
Tram Station Elevator
Ramp Maintenance
Signage
Street Lights
Red Buses’ Condition
Senior Shopping Bus
Disaster Plan
Conclusion

Matthew Katz (Residents Association President): The [Residents Association] Common Council, based on long years of experience with the RIOC [Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation] Board, first when there was a public access period – 15 minutes – in which the community could speak to the Board but th Board had no obligation to respond – that was every month – then the current system was tried in which every other month or so there’s a period after the agenda is completed in which there’s an exchange of ideas.  However, it only happens three or four times a year, and it’s after the agenda’s business is completed, which has been somewhat frustrating when what you’re there to talk about is on that night’s agenda.  So the idea was concocted that maybe what we should do is try to have a third alternative, to meet before the RIOC Board meeting, and after the RIRA [Roosevelt Island Residents Association Common Council] meeting, to bring pressing issues to the RIOC Board members that live on the Island to see if they might be addressed during a RIOC Board meeting, and to reflect current issues of concern or ongoing issues of concern.  And that was basically it.  That was brought to the RIRA meeting last Wednesday. Margie took an idea of, first of all, who wanted to come tonight, and second, what people felt were the most important issues of the day.

Role of Board Members

Margie Smith (RIRA Vice President, Government Relations): Let’s just back up a minute.  [Introductions.]  I didn’t pass out agendas because I want to keep this really informal.  It occurs to me [that] there’s so much arguing going back and forth and so much animosity between the residents and RIOC and we might be asking the resident Board members to do more than you’re even supposed to do, or do something different than [what] you think you’re supposed to do.  The feeling that I get from the people in RIRA and the people that I speak to is there are concerns on the Island [and] they want to make sure the resident Board members are, in their terms, “fighting” for the residents, and not fighting in a mean and nasty way, but pushing and pushing and constantly holding RIOC’s feet to the fire to get issues fixed.  When the whole bus route thing came about, people started stopping a lot of us in the street, saying, “What’s RIRA doing about it, what’s RIRA going to do,” and RIRA felt kind of helpless, and we said, “There’s not a lot we can do.”  We sent some messages to Herb Berman.  Some of us got answers, but most answers said, “There’s a committee working on it; we’ll get back to you,” and the residents wanted us to do more than that.  We want to know from you guys, what is your role on the Board, and what do you want from us – how do you want us to interact with you so that you always know what everybody in the community is thinking.  I know you get it in an informal way with people stopping you on the street and, obviously, when you live here, you see that the elevator’s down or that the buses aren’t working.  But I’d like to hear from you guys what you think your role is.  We know what our role can be – to support it, to work together instead of constantly...  We’re not fighting necessarily with you guys, but I get frustrated with going to every Board meeting and feeling like I was just yelling at the Board, and not getting satisfied, and them just getting annoyed, but it didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere, so we thought we would start these meetings and see if we could work out some kind of a relationship where we can talk to the people in RIRA, say, “Talk to the guys in your building, find out what’s most important to you; we’ll go to the resident Board members and ask them if, as a group of four, when it’s an issue that’s important to the residents, they can push RIOC to get going on it.”  I don’t expect you to take something that the residents want done that you disagree with and say, “Even though I disagree with it, I represent the residents and therefore I’m going to go and fight for this.”  We wouldn’t expect you to do that at all.  We’d expect you to do what any elected official would do, which is use your best judgment in those cases after hearing what it is your constituents want.  I don’t know if that’s even the right thing to ask of you, so can I ask each of you to just tell us, is that what you want us to do?  Is that how you want this to work, and what do you think your role is?

Mark Ponton (resident member of RIOC Board): David, do you want to go first?

David Kraut (resident member of RIOC Board): No.

Ponton: OK, I’ll tell you what I think my role is.  It’s never been defined by anyone but me.  I think my role is to look at what goes on here and measure it against how I would run things if I were running them, and if it’s different, to try to cause an alignment between what I would do and what’s going on.  That’s what I think my job is.

Smith: OK, and do you think a forum like this is a good idea or not a good idea?  Deborah Beck had advanced the idea of maybe doing things at a public session before the RIRA [Common Council] meeting, but I could see those then lasting into the night, so I figured, let’s get together here with just a small group of us, and can we come up with a better way to work.  Do you think that this is an idea?

Ponton: I think it’s an idea.  I don’t think it should be the first stop.  I don’t think you should start – by the way, I’m speaking solely for myself – I don’t think you should start with the Board members hearing it first.  It seems to me you should go to RIOC first, and tell them what it is that you want, and then, if that doesn’t work, then maybe use the Board members as an appeal rather than as the first place you show up.

Smith: OK.

Ponton: There’s something else, though, that you need to know.  That is, you should not think for a second that if I say to do something, that the RIOC management says, “Oh, yes sir, right away.”  That is not the case.  Trust me, it is not the case at all. ...  Now, I see some quizzical looks as if to say, “What the heck is it being a Board member here?”  The answer is, this is different than any board I’ve ever been on, and I have... my track record of getting done the things that I think should be done stinks.  I’ve got maybe one out of ten things that I want done, and the real number is maybe closer to one in 50, or something like that.  I can’t say why; I can only tell you what I perceive, and what I perceive is that the RIOC management has no obligation to respond to the Board if they don’t want to.  That’s what I think.  That’s the feeling I get.  And that’s the result of that feeling.

Smith: All right.  Why don’t we let David...

Kraut: Well, if you see a Board member as some kind of gray eminence in the background guiding the RIOC management toward their imminent objectives, then you’re not going to find yourself too successful.  In fact, the RIOC management is bound by law to do whatever the Board tells them so long as a majority of the Board says it should be so.  Right now, I think residents are a majority on the Board...

Smith: No, it’s four and four, and one empty seat.

Kraut: Well, if the resident Board members agree that something should be so, I don’t think that you would have too much trouble convincing one other that it should be so.  It’s just that we’ve never approached issues that way.  Since Mark came on the Board, he’s occupied himself with a lot of the day-to-day stuff, detail, of living here, and I get into things like that from time to time.  But I take a slightly different [approach].  I see my responsibility as a Board member...

When I was president of the Residents Association, I campaigned on the platform that the president of the Residents Association should automatically be a [RIOC] Board member, as the best way to see that residents’ views are represented on the Board.  And needless to say, the State didn’t quite see things that way; we had a damn long fight with Mario Cuomo to get on the Board.  I did, eventually.  Now, having been appointed to this Board by Mario Cuomo, I happen to be, I think, judiciary aside, I think I’m the senior appointed decision-maker in the State of New York, or damn near.  Now how did this come to be?  Because when George Pataki was elected to the Governorship, things obviously changed drastically.  The most drastic thing that happened was Jerry Blue [RIOC President 1996-1999].  And among the things that Jerry Blue did was kick [resident member] Bill Warren off the Board and Ron Vass quit in frustration very shortly thereafter and I was left as the only resident on the Board.  And so my mission in those years was just to try and stop bad ideas and keep things moving forward, and protect the community against people who had responsibility for it but had no concept of it, no clear vision of it.  And also, I have to tell you that I saw very clearly then that the days when the State is going to invest heavy subsidies into the operation or the capital or maintenance or development of Roosevelt Island were over, and they were over, considering the state of the State’s finances during those days, even if a Democrat were to be elected to be the next Governor of the State.  The will has gone missing for the State to be behind projects such as the one we’re all involved in.  And so I thought and still think that my most important mission was, besides defending the Island from the excesses of State government, to do what I could to get the Island away from State government by completing the development plan in all its ramifications in such a way as the income from the development would make it unnecessary for us to take anything from the State ever again.  And then we’ll see how this experiment will play out.  And so that has been my underlying view.  I’ve stated this over and over and over again.  It’s no secret.  I did an interview with the paper years ago, I said exactly the same thing.  I said the same thing recently in public.  So that’s a contrast between me and Mark.  I get less involved with the day-to-day operation of the Island and I tend to feel that one of my jobs as a director now, when things have loosened up a little bit, is to keep moving forward to the point where, sooner or later, Roosevelt Island can exist free of any unwanted government influence of any kind, and just go on with our vision.

Which is not to say I don’t get involved in day-to-day things.  When they said the first thing to go was to be the soccer field, which I built years ago with a few other people, I said, “Good, let’s get a soccer field going as soon as we get the project going.”  They had the new soccer field built before the first building was built.  When I saw that they were building an intersection down here without the traffic circle, and the first turnaround was to be by the Tram, I said, “No, no, we need a turnaround right at that point,” so we got this rather badly designed little island, but there had been no plan for it at all...

Sherie Helstien [RIRA Secretary]:

[Inaudible question]

Kraut: I’m not going to defend moment by moment whether this worked real well or it was the best way to do things, or stuff like that.  I can’t build a soccer field.  So is that on our list of things to discuss – get the soccer field in better shape?

Smith: No, it’s not, but one of the things – the second one that I had down – was the Youth Center grant.

Kraut: What was the first one?

School Buses on the West Promenade

Smith: The first one is the school buses on the promenade.

Kraut: Yeah.  What’s that about?

Smith: Apparently, because the buses were tying up Main Street, what they’re now doing is going over to the Meditation Steps and lining up there and along the promenade, and then driving along the promenade down to the other school [PS 217], then across the street and up the ramp.

Kraut: Are they stopping to pick people up and let them off on the promenade?

George Reither (RIRA VP for Planning & Development): Yes, but they’re lining up, they’re queuing up during the afternoon, and they start getting here around, what, two o’clock?

Helstien: I saw the buses out there about 2:50.

Kraut: They start queuing up behind Rivercross?

Helstien: Yes.

Kraut: And where do they pick their students up?

Helstien: Down by the...

Smith: Some of them walk to Meditation Steps and get on right there.  Some of them appear to be leaving empty and going to pick them up at the actual school.

Kraut: Well, that’s wrong.  And...  That’s just wrong.  It shouldn’t be done that way.

Having your agenda, I discussed some of the stuff on it with Herb [Berman, President of RIOC] and Sari Dickson [RIOC Vice President for Operations] and they didn’t know what the issue was.  Apparently they’re not paying quite as such attention to what is going on, on their streets, as I thought...  What about in the morning?

Smith: In the morning they just drop them off...

Kraut: I think that’s what they see, and that’s all they see.  They’re not quite getting it.

Procedure

Smith: And that, I guess, is another issue.  I feel like, over time, when we talk about the lights being out or the buses or whatever, Herb’s answer is, “Well, tell us when you see that,” and I think that’s OK, but on the other hand, I’d rather be told, “We’re aware of this already.  We’re working on it and here’s where it is.”  And I feel like they think the way the way to get word to them is for the residents to tell them, and I think that’s a fine addition, but I don’t think that should be the primary way for RIOC to find out if there are problems.  Somebody had mentioned something about something that they did in Island House, and I believe they did in Westview – a piece of software, where you can get on a website and you can log in that a light’s out at the corner of such and such or whatever, the buses are coming up the promenade, and RIOC sees it and we see it and they can give a schedule by which it’ll be fixed, or a status.  And I think that would help both sides if we could do something like that.

Procedure  Sounds like a “trouble ticket” system.

Smith: It is.  But I guess my question is, like the people who wrote letters about the bus route and the buses on the promenade, we did go to RIOC first, we did say, “Here are the problems,” and it’s been three weeks now, three and a half weeks, since the bus route, and we just don’t see any progress, and maybe there’s progress being made behind the scenes, but we just don’t sense it.  Some of this could be a communications issue.  Some of it could just be stuff going on and we don’t know about it, but it gets us then to the boiling point by the time we get to a Board meeting.

Kraut: On the school buses, they don’t have an idea, based on the last thing they discussed with me.

Smith: Apparently Public Safety does.

Helstien: I asked the bus driver how they were being allowed to come up on the promenade.  I said, “This is a walking promenade, this was not meant to be used for traffic other than emergency vehicles, and he said something, he wasn’t sure what it was called...  I said, “Was it Public Safety,” and he said, “Yes.”  That’s where they got their permission, at least that’s what his story is.

Smith: So, using that as an example, do we write to Herb Berman, give it some time, if it doesn’t get answered, then we come back to you guys?  I mean, what...

Ponton: Well, I think you should go to Berman first.  I think that the ideal way would be that if somebody in the citizenry has a legitimate complaint, and that complaint is described, and that complaint is regarded as a complaint, legitimately, not as some kind of intrusion or harassment, then that gets done.  And if that doesn’t work, I’m happy to intervene.  Again, I’m not trying to duck out, but I’m telling you, my track record from the first minute I was on the Board, in my opinion, stinks.

Smith: All right, so let’s assume we’ve got that issue on the table and I’ll send an e-mail to Herb tomorrow and make sure he’s aware of it.

Red Bus Route and Schedule

What about the bus route itself?  Clearly, RIOC is aware of that?  Do either of you know what’s going on with that, or what we can do to get that fixed?

Kraut: Yeah.  They came up with a concept, and they’re pigheadedly damned if they’re going to change it until it fails utterly.

Reither: It has failed.

Smith: How do we define “failed utterly?”

Kraut: I keep getting answers from them...  They say they’re doing a traffic study.  Well, sorry, I do a traffic study every morning at 7 o’clock.

Helstien: We had people on the buses for a couple of hours, riding around...

Katz: I understand they hired a traffic engineer, but the engineer was paid for by Hudson and Related Companies, and engineers tend to find what their employers or the person writing the check wants them to find.

We’ve been told about committee meetings.  The only committee meeting I know about is one Mark and I attended on January 12.  That’s a long time ago.

Kraut: Who else was there?

Katz: Deborah Beck [resident RIOC Board member] was there, Pat Stewart [resident RIOC Board member] was there, Vinnie Kopicki [RIOC Vice President, Engineering] was there, David Kramer [of the Hudson Companies] was there, [and] Herb and Sari were there.

Smith: Dolores [Green, President of the Roosevelt Island Senior Association] and Virginia [Granato, President of the Roosevelt Island Disabled Association] were there for one meeting.

Kraut: Well, I had asked to be at that meeting, but apparently I was the only one whose schedule couldn’t make it at the time that meeting was held, and as a result, not a single person who was at that meeting takes the bus to work in the morning.

Katz: Exactly right.

Reither: [Inaudible...] ...chaos, it works fine.  I mean, anytime I walk out of my building, I come across a bus.  But I get out at different times every morning.  So it works that way, it’s chaotic.

Kraut: So, if you live your life in chaos theory, you hit it.

Reither: That’s the point I’m trying to make.  It’s chaotic.

Smith: I don’t even blame RIOC for that.  For me, and I’m sorry, Mark and Matt, but I think you guys should have said, “Hey, we have no commuters here.”

Ponton: Nobody thought of that.

Katz: Nobody thought of that.  Not only that, but we thought we were talking about only the route and not the scheduling.

Kraut: Let me separate the issues out for just a minute.  Someone wrote in The WIRE recently – it might have been one of you guys – but it was a thought that I’ve voiced from time to time – that each succeeding generation of RIOC management comes and finds a status quo and if they stay within five or ten percent of that they think they’ve done pretty well.  In fact, five administrations means we’re 60 percent down.  They have no idea.

One of the things they have no idea of is that this bus has run with the Tram – not in the rush hour because it gets a little... but there’s always a bus meeting a Tram.  And so, it’s always left Gristede’s at five after the quarter hour.  I don’t know when this stopped.  They can’t believe that this was ever the case, and I have never thought that it was not the case.

Reither: It’s always been the case.

Helstien: It’s always been the case, and it stopped...

Smith: It stopped December 12.

Helstien: It stopped when they first started screwing with the schedule, taking the bus around to the new buildings.  That’s when it got cut from the scheduling with the Tram, and they have...

Katz: At the meeting that Mark and I were at, the first suggestion came from Deborah Beck, who said, “Why don’t you build two steps behind the landscaping at 465-475, and that was immediately taken off the table.  What of course happened is that through the ice and the snow and mud, people were walking across the landscaping, voting with their feet.  Everybody knows that around this table.

Kraut: I can’t help but thinking of what I first heard at Cornell when I took a pre-college trip there looking at the school, and I’ve seen it at every college campus I’ve been at since, which is that the paths across college quadrangles are never regular, and the reason is that most college facilities departments see where the kids are wearing a path, and then they pave that.  It’s seen everywhere.  All the Ivy League schools have this, with the erratic paths across the quadrangle, because that’s the way people actually walk.  And here, nothing.  What happened...  They were supposed to have building #3 and building #4 going by now, with the plaza between them which would be the way for these people to... and of course they haven’t done it.  So people have voted with their feet down there, and they can’t admit, “Yes, we should put a path there, and steps, or something,” because that’s where the people go anyway.  So they have this vision of people in the first two buildings using the bus to get to what?  The Tram?

Kraut: And why do they take a bus that stops on that side to the subway when they can just walk down the street...

Reither: Have you ever seen anybody get on at those stops?

Kraut: The twenty-odd mornings since the experiment began, none whatsoever.

Helstien: I’ve seen one person get off the bus, and the driver almost didn’t stop.

Smith: So what do we do about that?

Kraut: They’re just dragging their feet.  See, I don’t know what... they have not explained to me exactly what...  You said David Kramer was at that meeting.  What is his lead?

Katz: He was asked if he would build this little step down there and he said, “Absolutely not.”  It was not said as much, but clearly there was some kind of promise made to the developers that there would be a bus stop on what’s now being called Main Street South, and he’s sticking to it.

...

Whatever we talk about now is an interim thing, because what we were told is that in six months, building #3 will be starting.  Eighteen months to completion, that’s two years.

Kraut: I have trouble making them understand that it is nothing to throw in an asphalt path and stone or wooden steps, and then pull them out later and re-sod.  They have a blockage of imagination, and something is not...  When I explained to them that the bus always used to run on a schedule, they don’t quite understand that.

The other thing – having to do with the route – which is that in fact the vast majority of people who get on the bus going south, at 7 o’clock in the morning, between 7 and 7:15, which are the buses that I ride on, 80 percent of the early riders and two-thirds of the later riders are going to the subway, which means it makes sense for me to first go to the subway and dump most of the people, and then go to the Tram, and hang and wait for the next Tram to come in.  You know.  But instead the majority of the people have to wait, and take a chance that the Tram isn’t arriving, because if the Tram is arriving then they will wait for the Tram.  And meanwhile, do we run 150 yards over to the subway, or do we stay on the bus...?

Katz: Well, if the bus doesn’t wait for a Tram, it’s an addition of seven minutes.  Any circle route is not as good as a straight route down Main Street.

Reither: What they should do is reverse it at night.

Kraut: It should be like it is at night, and in the morning you go the other way, and then at night be coming this way.

Katz: If you had a stop to accommodate both Rivercross and Southtown at the juncture where the turnaround is, one stop going down, there’s a stop going down where there could easily be a bus stop, and then coming back at the triangle – we tested it – I got one of the drivers to do it for me... we made the right turn, stopped in front of the building.  Worked like a charm.  Nobody in Southtown has to walk any farther than anybody in Westview or in Manhattan Park.  So that works...

Kraut: I’m not quite understanding where, what left and what right, but that’s not important.

Smith: The point is to get something fixed now, because we’re talking two years.  What do we do, what do you do to get this...

Kraut: Well, I’m going to talk to him again – this is not the first time – and Sari, because this seems to be her baby – they keep saying, “We’re testing it,” and I say, “No, you guys don’t understand”... I haven’t used my harshest rhetoric yet, but there are few arrows left in my...

Smith: I hate to see you going individually.  Wouldn’t it help for the four of you to go together and say, “As representatives of these residents, we’re telling you you’ve got to go do something now...”

Kraut: Well, Mark and I – and I made the big speech about the bigger issues and so on – and I told him that I would support him on this issue if he brought it up at a meeting – I have no trouble going with Mark on that.  What would keep Stewart or Beck off the bandwagon, I don’t know.

Smith: I can’t imagine.  And I think they would probably jump right on it, but... I guess I’m just going to ask you guys, then to get together on it.

Ponton: Don’t make any assumptions about people jumping right on it, because, in my experience dealing with RIOC, there are multiple phases to deal with.  The first one is, you say what you want.  You get one of three responses: none whatsoever, or a few words like “Yeah, thanks, noted,” or “We’ll get back to you.”  Generally, they all produce the same result: zero.  So getting on board and going down there together is only the announcement of a play.  My experience has been that it requires absolute bulldog tenacity to go back and say, “Here is what I asked, here is what I want, what are you going to do about it, when and why.”  We are talking about 7, 8, 9, 10 times.

Reither: I understand.  But David said something I know is true.  Any CEO of a corporation reports to the Board of Directors.  The Board of Directors represents the shareholders.

Ponton: Not here.  Not here.  I am not the boss of RIOC.  I would love to think I am, but certainly in what my interactions have been, they have the right to ignore.  Now, it may be that they have the right to ignore only me... I don’t think so, but they have the right to ignore.

Smith: But David made an important point before.  If the four of you agree on this, all you need is one more to tip it over, and they are bound by law to do it...

Ponton: I’m telling you – and I’m only talking about my own experience – if RIOC does not want to do what I want done, they don’t do it, and that’s OK.

Smith: But – and I can also understand that – if I’m RIOC and you’re one Board member saying, “Go left,” and seven others are saying, “Go right...”

Kraut: Or seven others are not saying anything. ...

Ponton: I’m just saying, they have the option of not doing anything.

Reither: Why do they have that option?

Ponton: I don’t know.

Reither: Honestly, I think they have the option because you let them have the option.

Kraut: So far, we don’t know.

Reither: I don’t know, politically, how you force them to do something...  But if you have the law on your side, you can say, “Look, we have a majority on this; we want this done; we’re not going to take no for an answer.”

Kraut: Don’t you think, Mark, that maybe if we can get four plus one insisting on...  These are not major issues...  Their major issues are building edifices...  What is it that John [Mannix] said, “RIOC is a real estate company.”  From his point of view, that’s why he and Leo Kayser are on the Board.  They don’t concern themselves with the minutiae of daily government, yet they are also pretty decent guys and you can get them on your side when they realize they should be on your side.  That is, neither one of them is a tyrant, and neither one is an ironclad servant of the Pataki interests here.  They’re a little too good at being themselves.  So those two are... I’ve heard Leo spinning a lot of pro publica rhetoric lately, and he might actually believe it.  And John’s just a decent man.

Smith: John surprised me a lot, because I remember last year when the budget came around, he said, “I feel like I’m flying blind because I don’t get all the details I need to understand the budget,” but then he approved the budget, and I think if RIOC can come every month and say, “Here are the numbers,” and so on, but I expect next year for them to come and say the same thing as this year.  I still don’t have my plan a year later, but then they’ll approve it.  And maybe if you guys didn’t approve it, then they’d have to go back and do the plan, or they’d be working without a budget, and that’s probably...  I guess it’s legal, but it would cause some other problems.

Kraut: The State does it.

Smith: Well, yes, the State does it.  But you would say the RIOC board is not going to let you guys keep yanking them around.

Reither: You’re not a rubber stamp.

Ponton: Well, I’m not.  I vote no against everything except what time it is, so...

Let me put another disillusioning (maybe) comment on the table.  It’s the idea about the four of us, if we could get together, marching down the street arm in arm.  I, after some escapade at one of the meetings, began to copy every Board member on every communication I had with RIOC.  And then I was asked to please not do that.

Helstien: By?  Who asked you not to do that?

Ponton: It was a member of the RIOC Board.  That’s all I really want to say about that.  And I said, “I don’t think that’s right.  I think at a minimum the people should be told that you asked me that, and they should be offered the opportunity to get back on the list.  Six of the eight – five plus me – said, “We want to get back on the list.  We’re adult enough that we can ignore what Mark is talking about if we don’t want to get involved in it.  On the other hand, we want to know what’s going on.”  And I would say something on the order of, I would say, conservatively, 50 communications – one guy wrote to me one time saying, “I agree with you on this; if you go public, I’ll support you.”  What I’m telling you is, this is not a situation where somebody says, “Hey, holy smoke, we haven’t thought about getting together, what a great idea.”  It’s people who have consciously decided that they don’t want to do that.

Reither: Then how could they truly be our representatives.

Ponton: You’re asking me something that I’m not going to say.  You asking me to speak for them.  I can only speak for myself.  I will only speak for myself.

Helstien: Are you talking about the Board members that are residents?

Ponton: I’m talking about Board members.  Board members were offered a choice to either hear what I have to say to RIOC or not.  Six of the eight do.  Two have chosen not to.  Of the six, four are in fact resident Board members.

Smith: That would at least lead me to believe that there are at least four of you who care about what’s going on, and obviously two others who are non-residents.  And if you can get together and be more forceful with RIOC on some of this stuff, at least if five of you say to do something and they don’t do it, we’ll know if that works.

Ponton: Yes, but what I’m saying to you is this.  It is not that people don’t know.  In my own particular case, it’s not that people don’t know what I’m complaining about.

Smith: I understand that.  But what I’m saying is, maybe there needs to be a concerted effort for the four or five of you to lobby each other or talk and say, “These three or four points are really important to the residents; I want us to get together as a block and just put our foot down and say, ‘Here it is. You’ve got to fix the bus route. You’ve got to get the buses...’”

Helstien: If there’s no united front, then what is RIOC...

Kraut: I agree.

Smith: All right. Let’s move on...

Katz: Clearly, if the Governor, in the fullness of time, gets around to implementing the law he signed 18 months ago, and fills the final RIOC Board seat with a resident, that could change the balance somewhat.  That was the intention of putting the law together.

Youth Center Grant

Smith: The next thing I have is the Youth Center grant.

Kraut: What was that about?

Smith: Charlie [De Fino, head of the Youth Program] had over a million bucks, evidently, from [City Council Speaker] Gifford [Miller], and first he was going to expand into Lilies School, and they didn’t – that was last year, I guess, when they renewed the lease on that for six months, so in that time Charlie went over to Island House and was going to get space there...

Kraut: The former nursery school space.

Smith: Exactly... and he started negotiations and all that, and he thought that was going fine, so he stopped asking for that space, and everything was fine, and now, apparently with this whole deal where the buildings may get sold – Island House and Westview, Lucido doesn’t want to go through with a lease there, because he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.  Doryne [Isley, General Manager of Roosevelt Island Housing Management, which manages Island House] was going to find some space and apparently she can’t, either.  When I was talking to Charlie, I said, “You’re just not making your wishes known to everybody – you’re just not yelling loud enough.”  But I’m afraid as a community that we’re going to lose those funds for the kids, and I don’t want to see it go away.  But I think what Charlie wants, and maybe we ought to speak to Steve Kaufman and Charlie or whatever – I don’t even know who’s on the Board of the Youth Center – I don’t want to see that money disappear for lack of a space that he can develop.  And, apparently, it’s going to.

Helstien: The space he was supposed to have, we understand, is going to RIOC now – I don’t know if this is accurate...

Smith: Charlie heard that they’re going to move their [RIOC] offices down to Lilies School.

Helstien: To the upstairs section, and then they’re going to put a bakery...

Smith: I don’t know that Charlie knows that.  I think it’s a rumor.  All I know is, Charlie needs some space to go somewhere.  Charlie said Gifford’s trying to hold onto the money, and will for a while, but if he doesn’t take it, it will disappear, and that’d be crazy.  And what do you need from the Youth Center?  Do you need [Youth Program Board member Steve] Kaufman to come to you, or Charlie to come to you?

Kraut: They’ve been.  And they have very little faith in RIOC at this point.  Charlie actually had it in writing from Jean Lerman, to go forward, and that was reneged on by Dr. Blue and Rob Ryan.  When we brought it up to Rob Ryan, Ryan laughed, “Oh, well, she said that,” in one of his pissy moments.  And I said, “Yes, well, she was the President of RIOC.”  I’ve seen the letter.  I don’t know what it’s going to take to get them into that space.

Helstien: He has something in writing.  Can’t RIOC Board members – at least the resident Board members – go to them and say, “This is in writing.  He has a contract.  He has a promise from RIOC.”

Kraut: Yeah, but they can say, “Things have changed.”  It’s not a contract.  But one of my fellow Board members [Ponton] says a contract is just an agreement about what you’re going to sue each other about.  And another one of my fellow Board members says, “Anybody can sue anybody about anything whenever they want to,” which is also true.  So, in other words, they can say, “No, we’re not giving it to you.  Sue us.”

Helstien: So this management is willing to...

Kraut: They’ve repudiated that.

Helstien: So they’re willing to probably give up a Youth Center for this community and lose that – they’re willing to be responsible for that?

Kraut: You put it in those terms, and I’m sure they’d say no.

Helstien: Well, what are they willing to do to help it?  And that’s the question that the Board needs to find out...

Smith: I just think, as a community, between the Board and RIRA, somebody has got to get [unintelligible; multiple voices] in that space...  Charlie, whether it’s the Youth Center, or...  I don’t know.  We can’t leave that money on the table in this economy when we can use more space at the Youth Center.

Kraut: I wonder if we’re not in the same kind of political problem there where we are whenever Pete Grannis tries to funnel money to the Island.  Whenever Pete Grannis tries to funnel money to the Island, RIOC is told they cannot take it.  The reason they cannot take it is they will do nothing to give Grannis any kind of a victory whatsoever.  He’s seen in Albany as the arch-liberal demon fiend of the east side of New York and the leader of the left, and as a result we are in political play all the time, and so you’ll find $75,000 that we can’t get, or he can find us a quarter of a million dollars to work on the Chapel, but only with the stipulation that RIOC is not allowed to touch it, you know?  And this goes on and on and on and on.  The most effective person for our needs in this community has been Gifford Miller, because he’s a City Council guy and those City Council guys are closer to the ground and he’s not interested in fighting with anybody, so stuff comes our way.  But I wonder if it’s possible that they’re doing this so that Gifford Miller cannot put his million dollars in this community, or whatever amount Charlie’s got coming his way.  You know, he did the Beacon.  What was the Beacon worth, Dick, do you know?  A lot of money over the years.  Big bucks.  And other stuff Miller has done.  I don’t know why I can’t get their vision wrapped around that.  Charlie and I go hot and cold with each other.  About every three years we get really mad at each other and won’t talk to each other for a while.  And then I remember that I was the guy who cast the deciding vote for his directorship of the Youth Center, and he remembers that I’ve sent more money than Gifford to the Youth Center over the past ten years – over three quarters of a million dollars – public purpose funds, RIOC direct grants, and stuff like that.  And then we get back together and he explains to me his vision again and he explains to me what he knows better than anybody else, how it’s supposed to be...  But meanwhile, he’s not wrong.  I told him once, “Charlie, you’re an asshole, but you’re my asshole.”

Smith: Charlie pretty much has the relationship you describe with a lot of people on this Island.  But that’s Charlie.  Anyway... so that’s what that’s about.

Tram Station Elevator

The elevator at the Tram, I don’t know what to say.

Kraut: How about this?  How about saying this?  The elevator at the Tram is working right now.  Sari called me a little while before this meeting, to tell me that she had heard, this evening, that they finally got the damned thing working.  She said, “However, if you say it out loud, it’ll stop immediately.”

Smith: There’s a big board there, so unless they got it working and forgot to move the board and forgot to tell anybody, it is not working.

Kraut: We spoke at 6:00.  She said they finished their work, and she thinks the damned thing’s working.

Smith: The deal was, they found themselves – Berman has explained it to me a couple of times – apparently there’s some part that they needed, and the company that has a maintenance contract had to hire someone else to make the part, and they had to come and measure the thing, and they brought the thing and the part didn’t work, so they had to go back another time, and that they finally got it, and they think it works, and they finally got it together as of 6:00 o’clock tonight.  But we’ll know tomorrow.

Katz: The problem is, if it happened once, it can happen again, and it’s another four months.

Kraut: Maybe they made two parts.

Katz: Well, “inventory,” I think that’s called.  But they’re saying it’s too expensive to keep an inventory.

Kraut: That elevator was supposed to be torn down years ago.  We had money – the beginning of funds for a complete rebuilding of the Tram around ten or twelve years ago, which included rebuilding the station on that side and getting some shelter and roofing in there, and changing the stairs around kind of like they are now, and putting two nice big disabled-accessible elevators on the backside of the Tram, so from the front you saw this tower was taken down, and they would have been big enough for the motorized chairs to turn, and that whole thing ended when Pataki was elected, and they actually had put some money, given us some money, but at the same time we found ourselves with a hole in the seawall up by where the prow is now, because one of the big storms came through, and the Corps of Engineers was getting ready to start fining us, so we had this money in our hand, and the Board voted publicly to spend it on that.  Actually, they spent it on that, and then the Board voted publicly, because in those days they would take an action before they had an official Board vote.  That kind of stopped when...  The Republicans put a stop to that, interestingly.  So that’s where the money went.  And then when Pete Grannis came in...  Pete’s first hammer they started beating Jerry Blue with, was “What happened to that $200,000 – where did it go?”  And he knew where it went; and Tony knew where it went.

Reither: I’m just curious, though.  That whole place is falling apart.

Kraut: Which place?

Reither: The Manhattan side of the Tram.  They have scaffolding up, because...

Kraut: They have spalling in the concrete.

Katz: The spalling’s terrible.

Kraut: We’ve had spalling issues here before.  We need to get some money together and go and do some permanent patches on it.  The Romans knew how to patch spalling concrete, and we do, too.  You just have to have the will and the money.

Katz: The press conference they had there last Monday, with all the pigeon shit and plywood over the elevator door – tacky.

Kraut: I’m going to get a drink of water.  I’ll be right back.

Helstien: I noticed something.  I’m going back to the bus thing just briefly.  On Sunday I went into the City. I took the bus, and he did the first turnaround and dropped people off at the Tram, and then he did the second turnaround and he couldn’t quite do it.  He had to back up because the cars that park over there by the Tram were parking on the concrete and facing the fence, but sticking out onto the pavement, so he had to back up.

Smith: [inaudible] ...the tennis bubble.

Helstien: Do they pay rent for any of that space?  Anyway, it was...

Ramp Maintenance

Smith: Let me just explain the next thing on the agenda.  And maybe you guys know about this.  There’s a hole in the ground by the ramp opposite Manhattan Park, right as you come down the ramp onto the Island, where the wheelchairs – by the crosswalk – right at the stop at the bottom of the ramp...  There’s a big hole there that you can see pipes or rebar or something.  Dolores asked us to put that on the agenda for sure because the wheelchairs are getting damaged, and they can’t get around it because that’s the only way they can get onto the sidewalk...

Signage

Next [item on the agenda] is signage on the Island.  Signage everywhere, actually.  It just needs a whole overhaul.  When you get off the Tram, you can’t tell... there’s nothing... I happened to be talking to someone today who’s telling me – asking me – are there any playgrounds on the Island, because my kids like to ride the Tram, but I don’t want to get off because I don’t know what’s there.  “Do they have... like, is there a place where we can get something to drink if we get off?”  If we could just get some kind of welcome sign there – something for the people that do come over – they could see...  My understanding was Tony Vita gave a plan to RIOC a long...

Katz: Two years ago.

Kraut: Tony Vita – he’s an artist who lives on the Island.

Katz: He’s a very good commercial artist.  Two years ago I got RIOC to join NYC & Co., for an annual membership.  We renewed that a year ago, it’s every June, with a premise of making the Island more accessible to outsiders.  Tony came down with varying stages of signage – either static signage or video signage or interactive signage.  I mean, whatever they wanted, he could do and everybody who saw it was enthusiastic about it.  There isn’t even an “Eat at Trellis” sign at the Tram, and it’s nuts – I mean, they complain that the merchants can’t pay their rent – and nobody does anything to help them do it.

Ponton: Well, I have in draft form – and I might send it out tomorrow or the day after – a situation I’ve provided where I put myself in the eyes and mind of a first-time visitor to the Island, and I read all the trumpeting and arm-waving about how wonderful MetroCard is and how the people are coming from distant hinterlands of the world to see the icons of New York, and then I try to reconcile that with soda machines, with a Tram that hasn’t been polished in years – even while your car is polished twice a year – the battlefield that you see coming down from the high point on the Tram, the car and boat in there, which is a nice little touch.  In general, you come away asking yourself, “Why did I ever do this?  Why am I here?”  There is not one word that says “welcome” and not one feeling that says welcome.  Now, that’s fine, except the problem is if you say, “Who is in charge of making Roosevelt Island feel welcome?”  I don’t know what that answer is.  I suspect there is nobody in charge of that.  I can’t say that there isn’t, but it’s – I can’t be the only guy who notices that.  And if I am, that’s a very sad situation.

Reither: Believe me, I think a lot of people notice the bleakness.

Smith: Even just some of the silly signs.  If you go down the east road there, there’s a sign – the only thing you can do is make a right turn to go up to the Tram, and then there’s a sign that says “no right turn.”

Helstien: And the buses keep making a right turn because that’s where the turnaround is.

Katz: Or the same sign at the traffic triangle as you...  It says “no right turn,” but it’s inappropriately placed.  What they mean is once you make the decision to go left, you can’t go right across the base of the triangle.  But when you approach it and read it, it says you can’t go right.

Reither: The [City] Department of Transportation does not do the signage here.  These are public streets.  Aren’t they obligated to do the “no parking” signs and everything else?  None of the stop signs say “Department of Transportation” on the back.

Kraut: That’s exactly right.  Neither do the “no parking” signs.

Smith: I’m told that Triple-A will actually come and do an analysis of the neighborhood for free if you ask them.  Now, I haven’t explored that, but apparently Triple-A will come and do a traffic analysis for you.

Helstien: But somebody has to ask.  Somebody would actually have to ask for that.  I’m not sure if it’s true now, but in the past none of them were capable of even asking.

Katz: I would be happy to call AAA and see if that’s...

Smith: Would you?  I sent an e-mail, but I got...

Katz: The problem is, if I take that information to the Board meeting on March 18, I’m not allowed to speak.

Smith: Well, send it to somebody.

Katz: Yeah, but if I sent it to Herb Berman, I’m always afraid that that’s the black hole, and it’s going...

Smith: But I think that’s what we’re establishing tonight.  We can send that stuff, we can keep track of what we sent and what we’ve asked RIOC.  We can meet with these guys as often as...

Katz: What I’d like to do is CC the Board.  That’s a good idea.

Smith: OK.  That’s fine, too.

Ponton: Something else you might want to do.  Keep track of the amount of time from the time you made your request to what actually got done.  Now, of the items we’ve discussed so far tonight, my guess is the cold patch above the rebar will be done in three or four days.

Kraut: No, that’ll be done when the weather’s warm enough.  I mean, they may do a cold patch, but that won’t really fix it.

Smith: Even if they throw some...

Ponton: And my guess is the other stuff will not be done quite so quickly.

Kraut: Like...

Reither: It’s been like that for weeks.  Why doesn’t somebody...

Kraut: What?

Reither: That hole.

Kraut: Oh.  It has to do with the weather.

Smith: Yes, but that’s where I would expect Vinnie Kopicki (RIOC Vice President, Engineering) to see it and say, “OK, at a minimum, let’s put some tar or whatever...”

[Multiple voices; recording unintelligible]

Reither: It’s been warm enough.  I mean, it was 60 degrees yesterday.  It was 55 the day before.  It’s been in the 50s and 60s.  It hasn’t been below freezing.  I mean, since October last year there’s been a water-main leak right in front of River Road, and nobody’s ever fixed that.  And that road is going like this [wavy gesture].

Ponton: Well, now, that’s interesting that you mention that, because I wrote that up, I would think, about six months ago.  And I specifically cited the fact that there was bus traffic there, that the bus impacted the road and further damaged the road, and put wear and tear needlessly on the buses.

Reither: And every car that goes through, you get a scraping that goes on.

Ponton: That falls into the first category I told you about, which is no response whatsoever.

Helstien: Is the leak a City issue?

Reither: Yes, the City has to face that.  It’s a City issue.

Street Lights

Helstien: I also e-mailed Herb about the lights that were out; I started a walking regimen that I used to do years ago down – north – from Westview behind Manhattan Park and around the Lighthouse, and I know that a year ago when I did that walk, the lights all along there were out, just past Manhattan Park.  They’ve always been out.  I got a message back from Herb, “Oh, no, those lights were OK, and now I guess they’re out again,” and “I’m forwarding this to the appropriate person.”  So I guess I’ve made that walk once a week after that, and of course the lights are still out.  But is this a City issue or a RIOC issue?

Kraut: This was one of the toughest ones.

Helstien: These guys can’t seem to fix these things.  Is there some way to just chuck all of it and start over and just get the lights...

Kraut: Yes.  It costs money.

Ponton: Pat Siconolfi tried to put in place a philosophy that says, “I don’t care who owns it – I just care if it’s on,” and he was somewhat successful at that.  But, as you know, he’s no longer here.

Smith: Can we get them to do whatever it is he was doing?

Ponton: All you gotta do is just go and fix it, and then worry about who pays for it later and all that stuff.

Katz: And even ConEd subcontracts with Wellsbach, so you’ve got four entities...

Kraut: Over last winter all the lights were out going down this way.  You’d come out of the subway, you’d be in the dark, all the way up the whole path.

Ponton: Many things have to do with an operating style, and that is, what’s your operating style – you going to ask permission?  Or are you going to ask forgiveness?  And if you’re going to ask permission, first you’ve got to find the guy you’re going to ask, then you’ve got to ask him in the right way, and then he can’t be threatened by that; where if you just go fix it, and the guy says, “Hey, you fixed my light,” then you say, “Great.  Noted.”

Reither: And I’ll send you a bill.

Ponton: My perception is we don’t have that latter attitude here.

Smith: But what can we do to get that?  I’m just so tired of everybody fighting.  I just want the lights on when I’m walking home from the Tram.  I just want the bus there.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  I want the kids to have their Youth Center.

Helstien: When I walked up to the Lighthouse, the lights were out.  There was a little chained-off area.  I couldn’t see it.  I had someone with me who has maybe better night vision than I do, but I knew that I had to kind of walk around to the side.  But I really couldn’t see where it was, and if I had been on a bike, or if I were an older lady and, you know, was just out taking a walk...

Smith: You are an older lady.

[Laughter. Multiple voices; unintelligible.]

Kraut: The only person got escalated on was Jerry Blue.  Your predecessor, that radical activist Pat Stewart, led people into the street, and it actually contributed, I believe, to Jerry’s departure, because he became an embarrassment.  But since then there’s been no street action.

Reither: Well, I don’t necessarily mean street action.  With RIOC’s interaction with other agencies, other departments, I understand that to get things done, you have to escalate things, move up the chain.  Granted, you want to get things done at the lowest level, but you know... I’m a telecommunications consultant.  In the business I’m in, you very rarely get anything done at the lowest level.  It’s “May I speak with your manager, please,” and you give the manager a certain reasonable period of time to get something done.  He doesn’t get it done, OK, “Let me speak to your manager....”  You have to be able in a reasonable way, to escalate to get things done, because people on a lower level are not going to take responsibility because they don’t have to.  But somewhere along the line, somebody has the responsibility for it and is going to be measured by that.  And if you don’t keep, get it up to that level, nothing is going to get done.

Katz: The ultimate responsibility for the Island is all the Governor’s, and escalating to that level is very difficult.  You can do it, but then, once you’ve done it, has it been worth the effort?  We don’t factor into anybody’s scheme of things.

Reither: I’m not saying it that way.  I’m talking DEP, the Department of Environmental Protection, or with ConEd...  Somebody at ConEd is responsible for the distribution, and that person is getting paid and if somebody above him knows that distribution is not there, he’s not going to get a bonus.  There’s something called the Public Service Commission.  The P.C. regulates utilities.  Go to the P.C.  There are utilities supplying electricity to lights – they’ve got to fix it.  You put a P.C. complaint in...  The P.C. regulates when they get a rate increase, and if there are too many complaints, they don’t get a rate increase.  That’s the way life is.

[Multiple voices; unintelligible.]

Katz: When you find a particular light stand that is not working, who does it belong to?

Smith: That’s a very good question.  Do we have a map somewhere?

Kraut: Well, the thing to do, but I don’t really care who owns it, I just want the light bulb...

[Multiple voices; unintelligible]

Helstien: It shouldn’t be our issue, but the fact is, we need to know in order to know who to pressure – to make sure we keep the pressure on Vinnie to do what he’s supposed to do, because otherwise, it doesn’t get done, because there’s nobody in that office that’s pressuring Vinnie to do what he’s supposed to do.  My belief is that every time there’s been a change of president of RIOC, it’s been because the residents have finally made enough of a noise and have embarrassed the Governor, and I believe that’s what we have to do over and over again – just keep embarrassing the Governor with these guys he sends us that don’t pressure their employees to do the work that they’re supposed to do – that we are doing for them.  So we need to know who those lights belong to.  We should have maps for RIRA members.  We should know this stuff, and we should be coming to you guys to go to these guys to pressure them – to make sure that Herb goes to his employees.

Ponton: Let me make another suggestion to you, and it involves things like quality control.  When I talk about management, people say to me, “Well, you know, quality control’s job is to find things that are wrong with a given product and get it fixed,” and that’s not correct.  Quality control’s job is to verify that the product or service is free of defects just as the development organization warranted that it was.  So your walks through the night, other than recreational, are a total waste of time.  You should never find anything wrong.  Never.  You never should find anything wrong. Because somebody should have taken it upon himself to say, “I am going to fix this because it needs fixing, and I will keep it fixed.  And if someone finds something wrong, the first person I’ll be mad at is me.”  That’s where we ought to be.  I don’t perceive that we’re there.

Helstien: We’re not.

Smith: At a minimum, if we could get us to the point where Sherie comes home and gets on the computer and says, OK, well, that’s light #47 and that’s already been reported and they know about it, it’s going to be repaired, the estimated date is such-and-such, and great, then we get the feel that they do know what’s going on and somebody’s working on it and there’s something happening.

Helstien: In the meantime, I’ve gotten an e-mail from Berman saying I’ve given this to the person responsible to fix it, and I think I may have sent him an e-mail back asking when, and, “Well, it’ll be fixed soon.”  Soon could be in a day or a week, or it could be two years from now.  I don’t know what “soon” is.

Smith: And I think most of the Island is pretty patient, as long as they... if they know somebody’s working on something – I don’t think we have a bunch of unreasonable people here, but I don’t think that they want to keep beating somebody up.  They just want to feel that somebody’s listening, that something is being done.

Ponton: Let me insert this with the idea that somebody’s listening.  I think that’s very naive of all of you.

Smith: No, I get the feel that somebody’s listening; even if I get the feel...

Ponton: Even if they’re listening, so what?  The first night I was on the Board, somebody walked up to me from the audience and said, “Tell us about yourself; we don’t know anything about you.”  And all I said was, “Judge me by what I do, not what I say.”  It’s not whether somebody’s listening or not.  It’s whether the frigging light is on.

Smith: But what I’m saying is if I could get on the internet and see that they know about it, maybe they’re having problems or whatever, but they do have an estimated time that somebody is trying to do something.  I’m not saying I would feel that much better; I’m not saying it’s a final answer, but it would give us some idea that somebody’s got some control of what’s going on.

Helstien: My great fear is that you’d get that kind of program up and running, and it would be a lot like the minutes of the RIOC Board meeting, in terms of being kept up to date.

[Vicki Feinmel, another Common Council member, arrives]

Red Buses’ Condition

Smith: Back in December of 2002, there was something about RIOC getting hybrid buses and a $1.1 million grant was given to us, and the time is almost up when we should be getting those buses, which would mean that we’re going to have, what, four more buses, and that might come into place with the route, and I don’t know the schedule for that...

Kraut: I think that whole project has lost its champion.  It hasn’t moved forward an inch.

Helstien: Who was the champion?

Kraut: [RIOC Vice President Robert] Antonek.

Helstien: So why can’t we find another one.

Kraut: No reason at all.

Ponton: There’s something else, and that is that there are supposedly two buses coming to us in lieu of rent from Manhattan Park, so that would give us six buses.  Now I have heard beans about the two buses from Manhattan Park.  They were part of the deficit reduction, looking strange. “No money?  We’ll take buses.”  So we’re either going to get six buses or none within the next...

Smith: That could make a big difference.

Reither: Some of these buses are on their last legs.

Ponton: Well, it’s a little more severe than that.  I had, I’m at the end of Chapter 2 about the electrification of buses, and I’m about to send a report to RIOC that says I had a couple of guys from the Dutch company here, and we crawled all over and under one of the buses, and the chassis on some of them are severely rusted, which suggests either we paid for undercoating and didn’t get it, or we didn’t pay for it and didn’t get it, not that it’s impervious to salt, but it would have delayed things.  You can’t say they are going to fail tomorrow morning, but there’s some residual damage, mostly from the use of salt on the streets.

Reither: Those buses are from 1989?

Ponton: I don’t know that.

Reither: I think it’s longer than the Transit Authority keeps buses.

Kraut: When did they move the bus stops?

Ponton: Minimum three years ago, I think.

Reither: These buses came in when Manhattan Park, River Road, came up.

Ponton: Well, it’s not only age that matters.  It’s mileage.  Relative to City buses they’re relatively low mileage.

Reither: But they also go through a lot of damage because of the shape of the roads and things like that here.

Ponton: Yeah, that’s true, but if you just go by mileage, there’s three or four times the existing life left in those buses.  From what we could see, the problems appear to be in the chassis and the infrastructure itself, but that was one bus we examined.  I can’t say we looked at them all.  But since they all showed up about the same day, there’s no reason to believe that any are any different.

Reither: There are some, when you get on them, you can hear that they’re worse than others.  Bus #2 always has bad brakes, no matter what they do.  Those brakes grind consistently.

Ponton: By the way, I’m not trying to defend one view or the other, but I’m saying that because you can hear it doesn’t mean it’s a permanent problem; it could be a fixable problem.  If you go by mileage and you go by severity of use, those buses have lots of life left in them.  Whether that’s practically true or not, I can’t say.

Senior Shopping Bus

Smith: While we’re on the buses, too, it just dawned on me.  I still don’t understand why the seniors are down to one bus shopping trip.  Sari told them at a senior meeting that it had to do with insurance, and when I asked at the Board meeting, I expected to discuss insurance, and Herb said it has nothing to do with that, it’s something about the mechanics.  But it seems to me if we could get the buses there on Tuesday, we should be able to get them there on Thursday, too, and I know the buses aren’t always full, but that’s because some of the seniors like to go on Tuesday and some like to go on Thursday.  You could get it down to once a week, but the bus can only take two wheelchairs, so they have to have the two trips just for that – just to accommodate the wheelchairs.

Ponton: Well, to me it’s a very simple equation.  If you have buses to do the thing, to go to Queens on Tuesday, and you have the same number of buses on Thursday, that suggests that you could go to Queens on Thursday.

Smith: But also, it stopped because of the Blackout, and then they stopped because of insurance reasons, then only put one back on, so if it’s an insurance issue, why...

[Multiple voices; unintelligible]

Smith: What they said is it’s not insurance, and I couldn’t understand the answer.  Something about the mechanics could get hurt... something that I just don’t get.  When I talk to Dolores [Green, President of the Roosevelt Island Seniors Association], I say, if this is a problem, why don’t you go in there and raise a ruckus?  But they’re very laid back about it; she doesn’t do as much of that as you would expect, knowing Dolores.  But I’d like to see them get their bus back.

Ponton: I don’t think I would say “laid back” there.  I think I would use the term “apprehensive.”

Helstien: Yes.  They don’t want to lose whatever they may be getting from RIOC now.

Ponton: And I think it’s very easy to equate apprehension and fear of loss of whatever you have, with the level of satisfaction, and you can say, “I don’t hear people yelling so they must be satisfied.”

Smith: Because they do charge the seniors for it.  It’s not like they’re losing money.

Ponton: They do?  I didn’t know that.

Smith: Yes, the seniors pay...  It’s not much, but it’s something that certainly covers any gas.

[Multiple voices; unintelligible]

Disaster Plan

Smith: The last thing that I had [on the list of topics] was the disaster plan.  We had asked Herb about that at a RIOC meeting after the Blackout.  I know they’re working on it; I know they’re working with FDNY; I know they’re working with police, but what we asked him for, and we asked for it like three times, was a meeting with the residents where we can sit down and say, if there’s a Blackout tomorrow, where do we go?  What do we do?  Do the seniors go down to the hospital?  What is the interim disaster plan.  Charlie De Fino said that there’s some book that he has, that there are supplies and beds and everything down at the school.  I don’t know if that’s true, or used to be true and isn’t anymore, or what, but we’re concerned that we don’t know what to do if it happens tomorrow.

Vicki Feinmel: And supposedly there was air conditioning and supplies at the school, where a lot of people could have gone rather than just sitting outside and people walking them upstairs late at night, when maybe they could have... when supposedly there were workers at the school with their families, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Katz: I want to bring up one thing, too, that was not maintenance and repair.  A few months ago, David, you and I had talked about the potential of reincorporating RIRA into Public Purpose Fund questions in some capacity and that kind of got dropped, and I was wondering if there has been any discussion of that.

Kraut: Well, what happened on that is that Berman is adamant that all final say-so, any say-so about the money, is a prerogative of the Board.  The way it was set up before was it wouldn’t even come to the Board until both the Council of Organizations [RICO] and the Residents Association had vetted and approved of...  What they vetted and approved of came to the [RIOC] Board and, what they did approve of, the Board usually just voted for.  Jerry Blue’s corporation counsel, Frank Rubino, put a stop to that and said, “This is not even legal.  This is a State-controlled fund, and no one can have a say-so.”  So the last thing Berman told me was that by all means he approves the concept of RIRA input into the process, but the notion that RIRA would have any say-so over the process isn’t viable.  So if I was in RIRA, I would say “the hell with that.”

Smith: Yes, that’s just going to get us frustrated.

Kraut: That’s just... where you would really be in support of someone’s proposal, the Board could say, “Sorry, no,” or you could be saying, “As residents, we know this is a boondoggle,” and we might say, “Oh, no, we want it.”

Conclusion

Smith: Did you guys want to say anything before we wrap up?

Ponton: I’ve said what I’ve had to say.

Kraut: No... [unintelligible]...

Smith: I want to thank you guys a whole lot for doing this.  Do you think it was worthwhile.  Do you think it’s a good idea to keep doing these?

Kraut: I’ll promise you one result.  I’ll send an e-mail to Herb tomorrow – that this is what we discussed, and this is what they mean by all this, and what are we doing about all this stuff.  Whether that moves anything forward or not I don’t know, but he’ll have heard it from me rather than just from you guys.

Smith: Could I ask you guys to get together, though, as a group, if you would, to see what you can do?  I just think if the four of you came, even if you pick a couple of these to take a shot at, and say, “We just plain insist,” and see what you can do, we’d really appreciate it.

Feinmel: I think this is such a great idea.  When we were talking about... all of a sudden we came up with this idea.  I don’t know what took us so long.  It’s really very obvious that we should be speaking with you.

Kraut: Many years ago, resident Board members attended RIRA meetings.  That idea kind of went away.  I don’t think as a resident Board member...  There are deeply felt personal reasons why I did not attend RIRA meetings after I didn’t run for the Presidency in 1994.  And while later on there was no reason for me not to come back, I just lost the habit.

Smith: I’m not even sure that’s a great idea.  I mean you’re certainly welcome to come, but I think we discuss a lot of things that may or may not interest you, but a lot of the time, we’re saying, “OK, how do we get RIOC to do this or do that,” and we might be getting mad at you guys, and we might be doing something that you’re not going to like.  I mean, is that...

Katz: The problem we have is the same problem that RIOC has: we only do it once a month.  There is so much business to do that it seems to me we get a hell of a lot more done just sitting around and doing it informally, deciding what you want to do this time around and just doing it, rather than going into a meeting where you’ve allocated 15 minutes to talk about something that needs three hours to get done.

Kraut: Legally, I’m not sure that we, as Board members, are allowed to do this.  Maybe it can only be two of us at a time or it becomes a Board meeting.

[Multiple voices; unintelligible.]

[General concluding discussion; goodbyes.]