Things are so strange within RIOC’s orbit these days, predicting anything about the December board meeting was a lot of guesswork. But happily, with a short agenda, strangeness did not scatter into chaos. But one startling disclosure made it memorable.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Highlights From RIOC’s December 2023 Board Meeting
Note, you can watch a full recording of the December board meeting here.
Judy Berdy Steps Up
The public comment period passed with less anger and without a significant battle between board member Ben Fhala and Chief Counsel Gretchen Robinson. Lowering the heat between them was welcome.
But Judy Berdy, passionate as always, took the time to insist that RIOC get its act together and find a way to communicate with Roosevelt Islanders. With the permanent appointment of Mary Cunneen as COO on the agenda, Berdy emphasized that position.
The board looked on stone-faced as did President/CEO Shelton Haynes and Robinson. Robinson, in conflict with Fhala, barred interactions with speakers.
That changed, though, when pickleball enthusiast Vicki Feinmel stepped up, asking that the new courts be left open as long as the weather wasn’t wintery. Haynes, without a word of protest from Robinson, engaged in a friendly discussion with Feinmel. He even promised to get back to her after the meeting.
The Budget for the Next Fiscal Year
Under pressure to get a budget in place for merging with the state budget, the board zoomed through a brief presentation before unanimously approving a proposal built on a mix of reality and fiction.
They may have resolved the stinker issues behind closed doors beforehand because there was no discussion. Just “Yes” all around, which pretty much douses the spirit of Open Meetings legislation. But that’s never been a problem with this administration under Governor Hochul.
As the budget sits now, it relies on Tram revenue increasing by over 50% based largely on cramming even more tourists into Tram cabins that have often been overloaded.
There was no public accounting for the ten missing Public Safety Officers and where the money really goes. That may not be fiction, but it is a years-long mystery.
$160,000 for What?
Questions raised by Fhala over a contract led to a disclosure shedding light on the silly series of amateurish articles posted in support of Haynes, this year.
That contract, Fhala said, was for combatting negative press from The Daily as well as the Roosevelt Islander blog. He credited a whistleblower with the insight.
Asked to confirm the information, new CFO Dhruvika Patel Amin jumped to what’s emerging as RIOC’s goto dodge. “I defer to the chair,” she said, echoing Mary Cunneen’s efforts when questioned about her job qualifications in November.
The chair shut the discussion down. Apparently, stifling constitutionally protected free speech is more popular in private than in public at RIOC.
Some Thoughts
My initial reaction, after my name came up for the first time ever at the December board meeting, was simple.
Without investing more money than RIOC spends on Public Purpose Funds, Haynes could have more effectively gotten this done by doing a better job. Good work = fewer gripes. The math is simple.
Engaging with Roosevelt Islanders as freely as he does, say, with Leitner-POMA’s president or Congressman Jerry Nadler, would certainly dull any criticism.
But then, I thought, he could’ve saved a lot of dough easily. Realistically, if he’d given me half of that one-sixty, I’d have shut down my work and gone away. Hell, I find covering RIOC so distasteful, I’d have looked the other way for a third.
Alas, it’s too late, and here we are reporting on Haynes and Company still.
The Mary Cunneen Thing
Surprisingly, after going briefly into executive session, the board readily tabled the motion to make her appointment permanent. While we don’t know why or what caused the board to balk, we know that Cunneen’s original boss, then-President/CEO Susan Rosenthal told the Roosevelt Islander that she was not up to the task of managing people. And that, according to Rosenthal, Haynes then agreed with.
With the next board meeting not happening until February, this may effectively kill Cunneen’s chances. Even so, Haynes has paid her the full salary as Acting CFO for over a year already , which may lessen the pain.
The President’s Report
Haynes did a bit of self-promotion, mentioning the recent tree lighting and boasting that RIOC-sponsored events were better than ever – even though he never showed up for it.
Some – including The Daily – might disagree, but he has a right to his opinion, free speech and all that he doesn’t respect in others.
But there was a problem too, and it was a repeat problem, Announcing an award for some sort of water conservation for Southpoint Park, he patted Team RIOC as well as Langan on the bakc for the work.
What Haynes didn’t say was that former CFO John O’Reilly and Owners Representative LiRo oversaw the project’s development and completion. And the whole project was developed by his predecessor, Susan Rosenthal
These things repeatedly make Haynes look small and petty, making you wonder why he keeps making so many unforced errors.
And why Governor Hochul allows it.
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