This week, the February RIOC News hit the internet with print versions available along Main Street. Roosevelt Islanders pay for it and rightfully assume their money is well spent. For the first time since its revival, the newsletter shows signs it might get there. Or not.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Best Foot Forward
Coming out of a dark period in RIOC history, interim leaders, Dhruvika Patel Amin, RIOC Chief Financial Officer, and Gerrald Ellis, RIOC Deputy Counsel, took a giant step in reopening community conversations.
On the first page, they confess, “This appointment is a massive responsibility that we do not take lightly, but one we are proud to undertake for this community and for our RIOC team.”
They follow, setting the newsletter‘s tone, with goals and promises of transparency and gaining the public’s trust. They do it with considerable elegance, and Roosevelt Islanders could hardly ask for more.
A fresh start matches up with what just about everyone wants, bringing a two-sides approach closer to a unified one.
But much that followed failed to pass the meh scale in achievement. Old habits die hard.
“Roosevelt Island News,” It Says
But it isn’t that. It’s RIOC news, and that’s exactly what it should be, direct talk with the community it serves.
Aside from that misrepresentation, it “borrows” from our eight-year-old title in what may be an attempt to snatch internet search results. Whatever the reason, it’s inappropriate and should be changed.
Unfortunately, our request that the editors evolve the title into something more honest and accurate was met with a whatever-style response. Essentially, we’ve done this for months under prior management, and we may keep doing it if we want.
Not exactly the about-face promised, but more of the longstanding “We never get it wrong” approach.
Some RIOC News: The Plus Side
Blurbs about Sportspark, at the Youth Center and Public Safety Department awards put a genuine face on RIOC’s work. Information about the Tikkit System for registering and resolving community concerns was helpful but failed to explain how anyone can access it.
And good luck finding anything about it on the desperately-in-need-of-help corporate website. That along with many toothachingly out-of-date pages highlighting historic sites reinforces the sense that RIOC’s not fully plugged in yet.
One welcome item is a Community Leaders piece featuring Frank Farance.
With decades of Roosevelt Island history to pick from, Farance takes an informative walk down memory lane. He reinvents crucial elements of it, though, maybe mending fences and smoothing over rough surfaces. But that’s for politicians, not leaders.
Perhaps the gravest offense is laying a bandaid over the Residents Association’s near-fatal wounds. He accepts the premise, “You were recently elected head of the RooseveltIsland Residents Association,” as if it actually happened.
But RIRA’s last election was in 2018, over five years ago, and Farance lost a bid for a seat on the Common Council from Island House. As of today, he’s the last man standing in a ball of spaghetti consisting of egos and individual agendas.
Farance is smart. He knows what’s needed and how to fix it, but will he? This was not a good start.
And the Ugly
RIOC News for February repeats its history of painfully bunched-together paragraphs so long and disjointed that even their mothers cringe. It’s internet malpractice, but what makes it worse is the messy content.
In an Employee Spotlight segment, a focus on Youth Center Director Ana Christina Medina swerves off the road into promotion mode. We want to learn more, but after a painfully long introductory paragraph about Medina, it’s almost all blurb.
A blurb that won’t be read that is because it’s built on excruciatingly long blocks of text that jam five and six legitimate paragraphs into one unlawful pile of sludge.
Medina deserves better, and the Youth Center would be better served separately.
Finally…
Some of RIOC News is interesting enough to recommend reading but prepare yourself to skim through the stodgy blocks that get lost within the beefy tangles of themselves. But there’s plenty of improvement from the extreme narcissism that poisoned the past.
Let’s hope for more progress in March.
The Emergency Was Always Underground
The steam plant and the steam tunnel were never two problems. They were one system. They were only separated later, when separating them made development easier and responsibility harder to pin down.
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