This is my last column as RIRA president. Technically, as you read this page, I have assumed my new title as past-president, a post of comparable importance to a steering wheel on a billy goat. The Common Council now belongs to the Class of 2004 under the leadership of Steve Marcus and Margie Smith, and I hope you will support them. However, as I write this, I do so with the authority you gave me two years ago by electing me your president.

I wrote my first column for the November 17, 2000 issue and, at that time, said, "In future columns.I will use this 'bully pulpit' to report on meetings of the Common Council as well as my interactions with the Island, City and State officials, and organizations that affect our lives. Will my writing be biased, opinionated and subjective? Y'betcha!" I think that I may safely say that I satisfied these self-imposed requirements. While the communication between RIOC and the community has certainly improved during the past year, I believe that my successor would be remiss not to use this avenue of communication, the RIRA Column in The Main Street WIRE, especially in an environment of tight-lipped landlords and developers. However, I would urge caution; printer's ink is highly addictive!

I would be negligent if I did not thank my editor and my friend, Dick Lutz, for the opportunity to fill this rag with my blather over the last four years. He and his crack crew of proofreaders have repaired my spelling mistakes and gently steered my tenuous grasp of grammar, and without ever attempting to impact the ideas expressed here. What you have read has been mine and mine alone, and I'll happily take the bravos and brickbats. By providing and maintaining a high-quality newspaper on Roosevelt Island, Dick has underscored and justified our claim that we are a discrete small town within the heart of the Metropolis, entitled to and capable of a say in our administration and our future. I know full well the sacrifices Dick has made to sustain this newspaper and my respect knows no bounds. Nor should yours.

While I'm in a thankful mood, I must thank George Reither and Mark Chipman, Election Committee and Nominations Committee chairs respectively, for producing a world-class and irrefutable election. And a big bravo! to Joyce Mincheff and the volunteers who worked for weeks prior to Election Day, as well as sixteen hours at the school on November 2, to mount this Herculean effort.

A RIOC Director asked me if I thought the sturm und drang of two terms as president and eight years on the Common Council was worth it. I told him that the work was unremitting, the confrontations often unpleasant, the successes few and far between, and the failures frustrating, and that I wouldn't trade the last four years for anything. Had I not ruffled some feathers and possibly made some enemies, I wouldn't have been doing my job. During the first RIRA debate in 2000, a prescient questioner asked me how much time I would devote to the task. Ruffled, I answered, "As much time as it takes." Little did I know how many hours every week that would entail!

I've been privileged to work with a group of smart, selfless, energetic, innovative, imaginative, and dedicated people on the Common Council and in the community who have transformed the Residents Association and the quality of life on Roosevelt Island. You know who you are. I've always felt that RIRA wasn't about the Council meetings, the constitution, or the motions and resolutions - it was always about the work. Some people were always available to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty; others never volunteered their time, and they know who they are.

Finally I want to thank you for your kind words, your feedback on Island issues and on my column, and for caring about Roosevelt Island. I still don't understand how a planned community, so carefully designed for social equality, economic diversity, and architectural excellence could be so screwed up politically, but it is. If this Roosevelt Island community is to survive without being gentrified into oblivion, we will all have to do a great deal of caring, paying attention, and working to make a difference.

I've given my Bartlett's Familiar Quotations a workout over the last four years, but I'll end with a quote from another source, Ron Chernow's excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton. Upon leaving the office of Secretary of the Treasury in 1795, Hamilton said:

"Congratulate me, my good friends, for I am no longer a public man."