In my April 17 column I spoke of an extraordinary task that RIRA was undertaking to create a new constitution for our organization and also bylaws that could be modified to respond to the current needs of the Common Council.  Heretofore, the stand-alone constitution could only be changed through a cumbersome process requiring a two-thirds majority vote by the Council and a simple majority from a quorum of 100 RIRA members at a Town Meeting.  This was so daunting an exercise that the constitution hadn’t been successfully amended since 1991.

Well, we’ve done it!  At the May 5 meeting, the Common Council gave a two-thirds majority vote to both the modified constitution and the new bylaws that had been written, debated, and recommended to them by a constitutional committee chaired by First Vice President Steve Marcus.  The next and final step belongs to you, the members of RIRA.  A quorum of 100 voting RIRA members must ratify the new constitution at a Town Meeting.  A failure to obtain a quorum will require the final vote to return to the Common Council.  The present constitution requires us to provide 30 days notice of a Town Meeting with copies of the new constitution made available at least 20 days prior.  This issue of The Main Street WIRE will begin that process with official notification and reproduction of the new rules.  Additional signage and additional copies of the new constitution and bylaws will be provided at the Library, at other Island locations, and on demand.  This is your opportunity to learn how your Residents Association functions and to play a crucial role in its future.  The Town Meeting has been called for Tuesday, June 15, at 8:00 p.m. in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd.  Please be there, well-versed in the details of these two new documents, and ready to ratify them.

The reason for the exercise was in the practical application of the old constitution.  In many ways, it was ambiguous and even contradictory.  Also, RIRA’s needs and practices have changed in the decades since the constitution was penned, and this essential rulebook had simply not kept up with the times.  In addition, the law of unintended consequences had reared its ugly head by virtue of constitutional requirements that made our jobs as volunteers and civic leaders harder than necessary.  To increase our effectiveness, we needed a user-friendly set of rules.

Three years ago, shortly after I was elected to my first term as RIRA president, I asked the Common Council to consider about a dozen amendments to the constitution.  My timing and methodology were faulty; that Council, Class of 2000, could not agree on appropriate language and a six-month effort came to naught.  Steve realized that, without the separate bylaws that most small societies use, the constitution would remain cumbersome.  And, here we are!

Steve Marcus convened a series of committee meetings in March and April with additional debate conducted online.  It has been a fascinating and exhausting process and one that I wouldn’t have missed for anything.  My thanks to the Council Members who made it happen, especially Doris Speer, Esq., Karen and Patrick Stewart, Mark Chipman, Lynn Chambers, Nurit Marcus, Sherie Helstien, Margie Smith, Vicki Feinmel, Frank Farance, Kasha Edelman, Deirdre Breslin, Byron and Margaret Gaspard, Joan Christianson, and James Whalen.  And thanks to the Common Council, Class of 2002, that endorsed this committee’s work with their vote of confidence.

While we’re on the subject of the law of unintended consequences, you may recall my discussion of the Island’s Dark Water film experience in my last column.  I’ve been in touch with Lauri Pitkus, location manager for Platzer Productions.  She has not been able to confirm our discussions of special screenings of Dark Water or other films for Island residents, but we are pursuing that possibility.  However, she offered me a check for $2,000 to be applied to your RIRA general treasury and has already made good on her promise!  This generous gift will help defray the costs of the free breakfast on Roosevelt Island Day, the required notifications and publicity for the constitutional Town Meeting, and the many other civic and social events that RIRA intends to provide the community.  We must have made a good impression on the film folk; Ms. Pitkus intends to revisit us on Roosevelt Island Day and to bring her kids.  Should you run into her on June 12, please thank her for supporting your Residents Association.

I read with interest, as I’m sure you did, the account in the May 1 WIRE of the exchange between resident RIOC Board members, David Kraut and Patrick Stewart on the question of the privatization of Island House and Westview.  I won’t address the legal and ethical considerations of a Board member’s recusing himself on matters involving his own building because of a potential conflict of interest.  I’m not conversant with New York State’s requirements on these issues, and each of us must act according to his own lights.

I must take exception to Director Stewart’s statement, “If it’s a building-specific issue, which in this case is the privatization of these buildings, which I live in, then I have to take myself out of it, and hope to God that my representatives in RIRA will speak for me and speak to RIOC for me, because that’s what democracy is about.”  In my seven years on the Common Council I’ve never known RIRA to discuss intra-building issues, much less speak to RIOC about them.  Each of the Mitchell-Lama residential complexes here has a tenants association, committee, task force or owners’ board to speak to their specific concerns.

RIRA’s Housing Committee has addressed the concerns of tenants but has deliberately chosen to leave each building to speak and act on its own behalf.  Last spring RIRA mounted a major lobbying effort in Albany to advocate for legislation that would apply the rent-stabilization laws to developments like ours, occupied after 1974 and coming out of Mitchell-Lama protection.  That bill failed because of upstate interests hostile to New York City.  We will continue to advocate for Roosevelt Island’s housing concerns, so central to our survival as a planned community, while deferring to the expertise and special interests of each building’s leadership.

One thing is clear: RIOC and the RIOC Board of Directors will have a role to play in determining the ground leases with the individual building owners that will or will not make privatization possible.  Should the State law passed in September 2002 requiring a majority of residents on the RIOC Board finally be put into practice, this can only benefit the residents. And each resident Board member will need to search his soul to consider whether a vote to save his neighbor’s apartment is inappropriate if it saves his own apartment as well.

Has the sound of whooshing steam from the new Keyspan II plant made you crazy the last two weekends?  I’ve been on the phone with April Dubison, Keyspan’s Community Development Director, asking for an accounting and some kind of heads-up before our Sunday-night sleep is destroyed.  The resolution of this irritating problem is coming from another source, however.

RIRA is a component of an umbrella group called CHOKE. (Coalition Helping Organize a Kleaner Environment).  CHOKE president Tony Gigantiello called me earlier this week to comment on the amount of protest this noise pollution has engendered in western Queens. Through this organization, and as a result of the threat of demonstrations, Keyspan has promised to limit the testing of the new turbine steam-ejector systems to weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.  In addition, they intend to install mufflers or silencers on the offending equipment by mid-May.  We know about the squeaky wheel and its effect on greasing potential here on Roosevelt Island, and my hat’s off to Tony and CHOKE.  Way to go, guys!