When RIOC convenes its June 2024 board meeting tonight at 5:30, it will report fiscal performance over the past year – and a foundation for the future. There is, however, more at stake.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
RIOC June 2024 Board Meeting
The agenda for RIOC‘s June 2024 board meeting is chock full of items regarding the state agency’s fiscal performance over the past year.
For most of us, this stuff can be pretty dry, but there’s plenty to look for, including clues as to whether interim management is dealing with years of financial carnage.
The Tram operation, for example, has been irritatingly over-crowded, forcing residents out, but it’s also a money loser – a double hit for local taxpayers.
Red buses are, by design, out of pocket expenses for RIOC, but Motorgate revenue pays for it, also by design. Is that revenue sufficient? Is anything left over for other operations?
We should also look for clues about Sportspark. Millions went into refurbishing it, but user fees are too low. The center bleeds red ink, and the reports should indicate how much.
Important But Not on the Agenda
If things stay just as they are, the June 2024 board meeting marks the closing days of Deputy General Counsel Gerrald Ellis’s time at RIOC. Along with Chief Financial Officer Dhruvika Patel Amin, Ellis formed the Interim Leadership at RIOC following CEO Shelton Haynes’s suspension.
Although we have not always been in agreement with Ellis, he and and Amin brought Roosevelt Island the most open and responsive governance in anyone’s memory. Important note: We and the RIOC team should not always be in agreement. Conflict yields change and growth on both fronts.
Writing that Ellis and Amin have been a badly needed breath of fresh air hardly covers it. New vigor pulsed through all ranks at RIOC. Improvements, from beautification to constituent services, outpaced anything from the past.
Roosevelt Islanders, including Judy Berdy, have reached out to Governor Hochul’s team, asking that it retain Ellis. Many would like to see him replace Shelton Haynes as Chief Executive Officer, given the significant changes over just six months.
The Daily endorses those efforts, but given the past, we have little hope that Hochul, represented on the board by chair RuthAnne Visnauskas, will do the right thing. Rarely have they in the past, and the forces of politics and patronage usually overrule wisdom or common sense.
That’s New York folks… but don’t give up just yet. Things have been brewing.
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.
