That’s right. RIOC is stinking up my home, but to their credit, it’s not because they dislike me. They definitely do, but it’s just gross incompetence, not revenge.
By David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
RIOC Is Stinking Up My Home
Usually, you needn’t look far in finding fault with how the state agency runs things. A stroll up Main Street or along a promenade delivers easy examples.
But this close is ridiculous.
Saturday morning, the smell of rotting garbage, plenty of it, filled our hall. We’re fifty feet from the AVAC room, and the stench was sickening.
We thought, wrongly, that one of our neighbors left food in the room instead of sending it down the chute. But when I checked, there was nothing like that.
So, after letting our concierge know, I talked with one of the maintenance guys. All over Roosevelt Island, they’re not just reliable, they know about everything going on.
A sad fact…
The culprit wasn’t our neighbor or, really, anyone living on Roosevelt Island.
It was RIOC.
“The should’ve cleaned out the chutes before they shut down for repair,” he said.
Without notice, RIOC shut down AVAC service for several buildings, enabling repair work, but they carelessly did it without clearing the system out first. Raw waste was left in the unventilated tubes to ferment for however long the repairs take.
“It’s gonna get worse,” the maintenance guy said, “when it’s ninety degrees, next week.”
And he was right. It blossomed in the heat, making nose-holding in our hallway mandatory.
While building workers sprayed fragrance over the stench stinking up my home, the result was predictable: Frankenstein in a prom dress.
But without RIOC’s cooperation, the available cures are few, and of course, cooperation from RIOC is a rare and wonderful thing.
Emphasis on rare.
When will RIOC stop stinking up my home…?
All of us make mistakes, as I used to tell my customers when I was in the service business. But what differentiates one operation from another is how they manage the miscues.
With RIOC, an element is missing from this formula. That is, to fix a mistake, you first must admit you made one.
And RIOC, like their Albany boss and Donald Trump, never makes a mistake, not one they’ll ever admit, anyway.
From the drawn out mishandling of water leading to shutting down all Island fountains through tearing up Southpoint without due diligence on known toxic wastes to taking away valuable parking spots so the boss doesn’t have to walk too far, RIOC’s at least consistent.
They have never been wrong, and for that reason, I expect RIOC will continue stinking up my home for as long as they like.
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AVAC Is Working. The Model Is What’s Aging.
Roosevelt Island’s AVAC system is often discussed as if it were either a miracle or a menace. In truth, it is neither. It is functioning infrastructure that has reached a point in its lifecycle where how it is maintained matters as much as whether it exists at all.
