To RIOC President Herb Berman:

I am writing you about the alarming increase in crime occurring at the Motorgate garage.  I am an Island resident and a monthly parking customer.  Last December, my right front and right rear tires were vandalized, which I reported to the Public Safety Department.  The tires were slashed and therefore rendered unusable, for which I incurred a couple of hundred dollars.  Sometime during the second week of this month, my rear tire was again vandalized.  Luckily, the flat tire was fixed, but the tire shop extracted a three-inch nail which, according to the repairman, seemed suspicous and intentional.

I have checked the Public Safety Blotter of The WIRE dated March 20, and was overwhelmed by the number of incidents which occurred at Motorgate: a total of 12 criminal mischief and 8 petty larceny.  And in all instances, the Police and Motorgate manager were informed but the perpetrator/s to date remain at large.

I would like to believe that part of Motorgate management’s responsibility is to provide a secure and safe facility to its customers, and that part of the taxes I pay the City should guarantee me some form of protection and safety by the Police Department.

What is being done?  It seems more frequent patrols are not preventing recurrence of the crime.  Motorgate has video cameras in place.  Can these be strategically located to try and catch the criminal/s in the act?  Are we waiting for more incidents to sharply rise at an alarming rate before something is done?  Or perhaps, garage customers ought to band together and file a class-action suit against Motorgate management for negligence.

 

To RIOC President Herb Berman:

I am a Rivercross resident who currently garages two cars at Motorgate.  On March 25, my wife discovered that her car, a Honda Civic hybrid, had been vandalized.  The vandals had walked up her hood and jumped on the roof.  Today I went to Motorgate, the RIOC offices, and Public Safety to find out what is being done to end this scourge.  Motorgate told me that it’s Public Safety’s responsibility; a very nice man at your office told me to see Mr. Fry or Rene Bryan; and a sergeant at Public Safety told me the problem is being addressed, but because of cutbacks, they really don’t have enough staff to handle the problem. So this is what I can look foward to?  I pay a lot of money to park my vehicles, and I think I should be able to expect that they will be safe.  From what the man at Motorgate told me, at least ten cars have had their tires slashed in the last two weeks.  Please, if this problem can’t be solved, tell us so we can make other arrangements for our cars.

 

To RIOC President Herb Berman:

Thank you!  Much appreciated.

 

To RIOC President Herb Berman:

Thank you for reversing the previous change of service.  From my observation, that change resulted in considerable inconvenience during the winter months for the elderly, disabled, ill, and parents of young children.  It is difficult to understand what logic, if there was any, for the now-suspended schedule.  This appears to be another example of the lack of communication and consultation with the community.  In the end, a change of governors in Albany seems to be the only hope for establishing a democratic environment on Roosevelt Island.



Dear Mr. Berman:

I have a two-year-old daughter, and when I take the Red Bus, my daughter sits in her stroller.  The recent inception of the “fold-your-stroller policy” has added unnecessary hardship to my life.  I have herniated disks in my lower back and cannot carry my daughter.  Taking her out of the stroller, folding the stroller, and lifting baby, stroller, and shopping bags onto and off the bus lead to pain in my lower back that lasts for days.  The Red Buses have more room than the white City buses, and can accommodate strollers better.  The convenience of the Red Bus service was an important factor in our decision to move to Roosevelt Island.  Please continue to let strollers be on the Red Buses.

 

To Speaker Miller and Staff:

Please accept my sincerest thanks for listening to my complaint about the lack of a Tram MetroCard for my son, Daniel Ruiz, who attends PS 77 (Lower Lab).  I recently received notification from Mr. Heslin at the Department of Transportation, as well as from your office, regarding the agreement to supply MetroCards to children who live on Roosevelt Island and who take a yellow public-school bus to attend school.  This means a lot to my family, and you can bet we will remember this when it comes time to vote for you in any capacity.  Everyone we speak with on Roosevelt Island will hear our words of praise for you and your staff.  Thank you!

 
 
To Schools Chancellor Klein:

Recently, I wrote you a letter regarding a MetroCard for the Roosevelt Island Tramway.  The situation revolved around a policy which does not allow students to receive a student MetroCard and ride a yellow public school bus.  Thankfully, with the encouragement of City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, your Department of Pupil Transportation will allow my son and other children (who live on Roosevelt Island, attend school in Manhattan and who also ride a school bus) to receive a student MetroCard for the remainder of this school year.  I thank you.

However, while I understand this policy, Roosevelt Island children in this situation will continue to run into this same predicament every year.  Can you please take Roosevelt Island as an extenuating circumstance and create an amendment to this policy wheras you will provide children who ride the Tram and school bus to and from school with a student Metrocard each year?

I thank you for your understanding and look forward to your reply.

 
 

To RIOC President Herb Berman:

Thank you for listening to and heeding all the many negative comments you have received in the past weeks about the erratic change of the Red Bus route and schedule.  I congratulate you for taking positive action to correct this mistaken notion of service.  The Southtown residents, for whom the changes supposedly occurred, obviously found better access to Tram and subway on their own, and we Northtowners can now once again set our watches to Red Bus time!  I for one am a happy camper!

 
To RIOC President Herb Berman:

You did the right thing.  I had not met one single person happy about the change.

 
 
To the Community:

We all know about the shortcomings of the Red Bus route and schedule.  I would like to call attention to another transportation issue.  The good news is that this issue can be completely resolved by the good people of Roosevelt Island without any assistance from RIOC.  Here it is: I have noticed that people exiting the F train are using very poor etiquette regarding the elevator that goes to street level.  There is a perpetual stampede into the elevator which ends when about five people too many stuff themselves in before the doors close.  Over and over, I see people who need the elevator most be shoved aside by the overzealous and able-bodied.  

Common sense tells me that the disabled, elderly, parents with strollers, and those carrying heavy packages should be accommodated first.  They should not be forced to wait for the next elevator.  To those able-bodied and responsible, I pose a question: Are you so lazy and ill-mannered that you cannot stand on a moving escalator?

 
 
To ConEd and RIOC:

I am corresponding with you in reference to the street lights (lamp posts that are down) issue on Roosevelt Island.  I have lived here 25 years, and there’s never been as many outages.  At night the area by the Lighthouse is pitch black; maybe it’s all the digging that has occurred recently, but frankly that’s not a very good excuse for the people that live here.

We are a very busy community, teenagers who have busy lives and do come home in these dark streets, seniors who are unable to navigate in the dark, who feel imprisoned in their homes once the sun goes down, folks who run – even visitors from Manhattan and Queens who like to run around the Island.  Are you waiting for something horrible to happen in order to fix this grave problem?

I am addressing ConEd because RIOC explained that it’s a cable problem ConEd has to repair.  The people of Roosevelt Island would love to be able to walk our beautiful streets in the evenings.

Please dispatch a crew to take care of and resolve this issue in a timely manner.

 
 

To RIOC President Herb Berman:

As a person who has seen 60-plus years of life, I am grateful to those programs that helped me in my days of being a young person.  I lived a half-mile from Roosevelt Island in Astoria and, to this day, I can still remember playing in Rainey Park and looking across the river and thinking, What a great place for kids to play.  Of course, I was looking at the Island before the bridge.  I am a better person due to the likes of the Long Island City YMCA under Frank Tampone, the Boys Club of Queens, the Police Athletic League under Mr. Ganz, a great man who helped many a kid and, last but not least, playing for Astoria Projects Basketball under Coach Curtis, an African-American friend.  I was the only white kid on the team, but you know it molded me in accepting people of color as equals, along with my religious upbringing and a Godly mother who knew right from wrong and loved her children by telling us kids that God loves all people and we need to love everything God loves and have respect for all.  I plead with you to go out of your way to see that the youth of our beautiful Island are served with dignity and a great place for them to learn life lessons as I did.  If I can be of any help, let me know.

 
 
To the Editor:
 
I am very impressed with the Roosevelt Island Living Library and Think Park Master Plan developed by Bonnie Ora Sherk and Life Frames, Inc., for Southpoint, which seems as timely as it is prophetic.

The idea of a “United Nations” was based on President Roosevelt’s vision of a postwar world and the need for new mechanisms for cooperation and conflict resolution if the world were to avoid another global catastrophe of the World War II variety.  The United Nations Charter itself was based on his Four Freedoms.  As such, the UN can be considered as an expression of a U.S. value system.

Next year will be the United Nation’s 60th anniversary, and I can’t think of a more fitting tribute to the Roosevelt legacy than the Living Library plans for Roosevelt Island – a “Living Legacy”– especially as the UN works its way through a very difficult transition, where its very future is at stake.  I also envision very creative year-long opportunities and festivities for local and global communities that would include New York’s Sister Cities and other places in the world, and mark the anniversary of the UN, while simultaneously launching the long-term proposed Living Library transformations of Southpoint.

As I review the Roosevelt Island Living Library and Think Park plans, I can imagine the following:

• A World Headquarters for Global Civil Society, which has been one of the most significant developments since the founding of the organization.  It could literally become a kind of “We the Peoples Center.”
• Opportunities to link, programmatically and electronically, this Roosevelt Island Living Library with the San Francisco Living Libraries for UN World Environment Day, also in 2005, which is being held in SF, where the UN Charter was signed.
• A World Gathering Place
• A World Stage
• A world-class World Conference Center.  The UN is now space-deficient.  All its facilities are strained.  Besides, its conference facilities are quite dated for this kind of world.  We need larger conferee facilities and A Living Library provides an answer.
• Office space for the growing number of nongovernmental organizations, many of which lack places to “hang their hats” while in New York.
• The World Gardens
• The World Cuisine Center with periodic World Food Festivals
• A World Room which would be accessible to the public and where UN events could be simulcast
• The World Health and Nutrition Agro/Ecology Gardens and Greenhouses

I can envisage also a water-taxi system which would run continuously and which would provide another link to Manhattan.

I encourage the community of Roosevelt Island, and the City and State, to move forward with this exciting and relevant plan.

Dr. Noel J. Brown
President and CEO, Friends of the United Nations
Former Regional Director, United Nations Environment Program

 
To Firefighter John Connolly:

I read in The WIRE about the Firefighters’ gift of a carillon and had a few thoughts: It reminded me of the band music Trellis provides outside on summer weekend evenings.  Most of the time I like it, but the summer I was studying for the bar exam I found it really annoying.  Still, the community voted in favor of it, so we have it.

It also reminded me of our four years living in downtown Toronto near St. James Cathedral’s bell tower, which rang every 15 minutes on the quarter hour from 6:00 a.m. until midnight.  We became obsessed with getting enough sleep during the six hours it wasn’t ringing.  I lobbied successfully to get the Church to change the bell tower hours to 7:00 a.m. through 11:00 and was better rested as a result.

Bottom line: I like a Carillon in concept, but I think those of us who live right next to the church and who moved here when there was no Carillon should have some say about its schedule.  I would welcome a trial period.

 
 
To the Editor:

I just want to come back to the old issue of ground pork meat at Gristede’s.  It looks like it was an “accident” when I was able to purchase that item a while back, after my complaint to The WIRE.  Therefore I wish to withdraw my thanks addressed to them.  If you look at the meat section, you always see the ground beef packages on display, but never ground pork.
I still wish to have that, and I believe many Island residents agree with me.

 

To the Community:

A few weeks ago the Roosevelt Island Residents Association had a very successful and fun 50’s Sock Hop as a fundraiser.  I would like to thank the following for continuing to support the Roosevelt Island Residents Association:

Representative Carolyn Maloney
Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation
Roosevelt Island Housing Management Corporation
Rivercross Tenants Corporation
Manhattan Park
Roosevelt Island Chamber of Commerce
Gristede’s

The evening would not have been successful without the help of these people: Bubu Arya, Charlene Dumé, D.J. Mike, Erin Feely-Naham, Byron Gaspard, Sherie Helstien, Island Girls Project, Matt Katz, Ruth Kolins, Jim Luce, Dick Lutz, Nurit Marcus, Julie Palermo, George Reither, and Margie Smith.