Although RIOC president/CEO Shelton J. Haynes noted the “team’s” contributions, they mostly served as a buffer against community involvement.

They invited not a single resident as a speaker, failing even at drumming up enough word salad from RIOC officials for filling up the sixteen minutes needed to match up with the national moment of silence at 8:46.

Two speakers, Haynes and Public Safety chief Kevin Brown managed ten minutes of talk, including Brown’s reading the names of those who paid with their lives in the World Trade Center attack.

Six minutes short, at 8:40, at a loss for what to do, the organizers collapsed into “two minutes of silence” anyway. While the rest of the nation waited, RIOC rolled over into photo ops and self-congratulations.

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  Wednesday’s PSD blotter: two medical calls, a water leak, a custody reportNovember 12, 2026
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The Budget Knew Before the “Emergency”

RIOC anticipated a $7 million Steam Plant demolition for 2015. Nine years later, New York City used emergency authority to carry it out.

Theo Gobblevelt Sep 25, 2026

The demolition began on paper long before the City invoked emergency authority to carry it out. In RIOC’s fiscal 2013-14 budget, the Corporation set aside $7 million for fiscal 2015 for the complete demolition and cleanup of the Roosevelt Island Steam Plant. RIOC called that figure its worst-case scenario, meaning the State corporation might be left responsible for the entire cost.

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