To Our Remarkable Community:

On behalf of the Geier family of friends, we would like to thank everyone who assisted with and joined us in a most memorable service for Hallie.  From friends to strangers who felt moved to contribute to the effort, it seems people came from all corners on short notice to show how much they care: the friends at Good Shepherd Church, who helped set up and clean before and after the service; the merchants on Main Street, who provided goods and prayers; the press, who worked with utmost consideration for all of us; the children and adults, who brought food, flowers, and kind words.  Through your goodness that day, we confirmed many friendships and even made new ones.

Empathy materialized as a phenomenal force before our eyes.  It brought to light that even in our separate lives we are joined through a fundamental need to make our existence not for naught.  Death does serve a purpose: it causes us to stop and picture our lives for a moment so that we can look at where we are and where we are headed.

Let the Empathetic Spirit continue and motivate us to perform more great acts through life.

 

To the Editor:

In response to RIOC Board Chair Labate’s comment on the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) “not jelling,” I say this: You only need to look down the table at the next RIOC board meeting to see why “it’s a complete mess.”  If you want to know why a group is dysfunctional, look at its leader.  The only things not “jelling” are PSAC chair Patrick Stewart’s agenda and the PSAC members’ agenda.  In fact, the members of PSAC get along fine and continue to work together rather well on the Roosevelt Island Safety Committee (RISK) without Stewart.

Clearly, Stewart has his own agenda.  On February 23, nearly six months after RIOC President Herb Berman created PSAC (as a result of meeting with RISK), Stewart told us Berman would meet with us (which is what RISK wanted – a dialog) only after we either “created a Mission Statement or an Operations Plan for PSD,” the Public Safety Department. We had already completed Island-wide surveys of residents, organizations, merchants, tenant groups, etc., regarding PSD at the behest of Stewart.  Now this?  I was dumbfounded.  I’d followed Stewart’s direction with the surveys but this seemed to me to be designed to actually stall the dialogue process!  Besides, what did we know about creating a mission statement or an operations plan for a security organization?  Stewart actually e-mailed Matt Katz, Byron Gaspard, and myself an internet link where we could “learn about writing a mission statement!”  Are you kidding me?!  Isn’t it RIOC’s or PSD’s responsibility to handle this with some degree of expertise?  Surely, part of PSD Director James Fry’s salary, or Mr. Berman’s six-figure-plus salary goes toward handling this type of work.  This was a brilliant tactic by Stewart and/or Berman to keep PSAC members busy, and I mean busy, for a long time.

We had asked RIOC through Stewart repeatedly for a current mission statement and operations plan, but never received anything.  On March 11, I sent RIOC a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for a copy of PSD’s current operations plan, as well as all incident data for the last six months.  (We didn’t ask for a mission statement because Stewart had finally told us PSD didn’t have one.)  RIOC responded with a letter stating, “RIOC was considering my FOIL request” and “would notify me of a decision in 30 business days.”  Today is May 18 – 69 days later.  I have yet to hear back from, or receive anything, from RIOC.

So you see, Ms. Labate, RIOC is up to its old tricks, this time with the insidious involvement of resident Patrick Stewart and his sleight-of-hand.  I’d be more interested in attending PSAC meetings if Patrick Stewart were to “recuse” himself (as he’s prone to do) as the Chair of PSAC and let someone who is actually interested in progress replace him.