Last evening’s RIOC board meeting was fraught with malingering disagreements and official bullying, but there was good news. Let’s look at that first.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
The End of the Palace of Versailles Bike Ramp
Delivering the best good news of the night, right on the heels of unsightly bickering, Acting COO Mary Cunneen recommended terminating the contract for the Palace of Versailles Bike Ramp. RIOC has a more mundane title for it, but here at The Daily, we re-dubbed it appropriately.
The bike ramp was part of a proposed $15 million boondoggle that would have sent two wheelers across active car and truck lanes for the first time. It would also require uprooting a healthy grove of crabapple trees that are among Roosevelt Island’s earliest spring blossoms.
“It was a bad project,” one RIOC manager charitably observed. “Over designed.”
The Palace of Versailles Bike Ramp was championed by former projects manager Prince Shah and brainlessly nodded along by RIOC’s pathetic board of enablers… er, directors. With Shah gone, no one took up the cause, and the board, just as meekly, let it die.
In one more instance, the board showed that it has no values or guiding principals. But they go along to get along with whatever Team Hochul sings, a tune as erratic as they are. Congestion pricing anyone?
Oh, and for the record, there was no stated reason. There weren’t working on it anymore; so, it hit the trashcan. Just last year, they did not resist moving ahead with it. But with no Prince Shah, no Palace of Versailles Bike Ramp.
More Good News
Communications and Community Relations Director Bryant Daniels scored the second of two well-handled proposals. Daniels submitted a request for approval for this years holiday decorations, mostly oriented around the popular annual tree lighting event.
The good news? The award did not go to Neave, the company that’s handled increasingly terrible decorations, without bidding, for several years. The law bid came from Bright Works, a vendor carefully vetted by RIOC staff.
Daniels calmly handled a question about the possibility of RIOC doing the job or at least part of it itself. The project was more complex than it appears on the surface, and internal staffing is already stretched thin.
The board voted its approval before going back to infighting and bullying led by budget office surrogate Morris Peters.
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