Boondoggle:
- Work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value.
- A public project of questionable merit that typically involves political patronage and graft.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
“Public” Benefit Corporation?
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) was created in 1984 by the State of New York as a public benefit corporation with a mission to plan, design, develop, operate, and maintain Roosevelt Island. With a focus on innovative and environmentally friendly solutions, RIOC is committed to providing services that enhance the island’s residential community. RIOC manages the two-mile long island’s roads, parks, buildings, a sports facility, and public transportation, including the iconic Roosevelt Island Tramway. Additionally, RIOC operates a Public Safety Department that helps maintain a safe and secure environment for residents, employees, business owners, and visitors.
Mission Statement, The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation
RIOC’s Mission Statement reads well. The goals and responsibilities are clear enough, but the trouble is in the stew this recipe has allowed because in reality it doesn’t obligate anyone to anything. There aren’t any checkpoints, guardrails or elections.
The words ring hollower too when when you follow from “RIOC is committed to providing services that enhance the island’s residential community.” Is that really what they do?
When you then look at what “RIOC manages…”, the problem is clear. Every single item suffers serious flaws. Roosevelt Island’s roads, for example, compete for worst in the nation, and the fleet of Red Buses – i.e. public transportation – have broken down into a state of near collapse. A required five buses can claim only two.
But seen from another angle – inside the state operated agency – there’s great success. Take a gander at the payroll and the up to 50% benefit package that goes with it. Obviously, it’s someone’s “benefit corporation,” but it ain’t the public.
Comparing the Boondoggle
As a rationale for its continued existence, RIOC claims that the city and state provide minimal services for Roosevelt Island. RIOC fills in the rest. But the upshot is that Roosevelt Islanders pay the same taxes as everyone else in New York City and are entitled to the same services as, say, Gramercy Park or Forest Hills.
While this truth undermines the fanciful fiction justifying RIOC’s existence, there are other ways of looking at it. In fairness, we picked a downstate New York village with a nearly identical population – 12,000 – for comparison.
Babylon also sits on a waterfront and calls itself the “Jewel on the Bay.” They elect a mayor, a deputy mayor and paid trustees that manage the village. It has a theatre, parks and even a golf course.
Mayor Mary E. Adams publishes her telephone number and email address on their homepage website, but there’s something else about Adams. She successfully serves her village with an annual compensation of $15,000.
Roosevelt Island unelected “mayor,” President/CEO Shelton J. Haynes pulls down $243,074.29 for roughly the same work. In fact, everyone on RIOC’s roughly 130-member payroll earns at least double what Adams gets.
Yet the Village of Babylon thrives on an annual budget of $13.1 million. Compare with RIOC’s $40 million plus. It’s a boondoggle, plain and simple, and someone is benefitting.
Reality Check
RIOC’s poor performing roster includes four employees receiving over $200,000 per year. No results justify anything like that nor do any real world needs as the Village of Babylon shows.
Of course, there are differences, and payroll alone can’t account for all of RIOC’s excesses.
Special Services
RIOC does some things that are exceptional and run up the tabb.
- The Roosevelt Island Tramway
- Free Red Buses
- The AVAC waste collection system
Altogether, these services bump up RIOC’s budget by under $10 million, still leaving it double relative to Babylon. And each has major challenges insufficiently addressed.
The Contractors, Legal Fees and Professional Services
Even though RIOC sports a long roster of employees and a startlingly bloated payroll, it farms out a lot of work. Leitner-POMA rakes in over $5 million for running the Tram, and the multi-million dollar annual payout for legal services mainly proves that idle hands get into a lot of expensive mischief. To the tune of over $1 million, RIOC pays LiRo for the loosely defined role of “Owner’s Representative” on infrastructure work.
The Passive Public Safety Department
Public Safety, RIOC’s single most costly department at $4 million plus, allegedly provides services we already pay for in New York City taxes. With no less than four people paid over $100,000 per year, PSD is budgeted for 50 total employees, although it not only never reaches that number but also never explains where the unspent funds go.
Despite fabulous claims to the contrary, PSD has little impact on crime. Statistics actually show that the department is largely a Lost & Found and parking violations operation. Its own reports say its most frequent activity is escorting EMS vehicles as if that’s even necessary.
In Context: The Lumpy Swollen Boondoggle
By the numbers, RIOC collects over $3,400 each year from every man, woman and child on Roosevelt Island. RIOC receives virtually no outside income, not a dime from the state that rules over it with an iron hand, depending solely on funds gathered on Roosevelt Island.
A passthrough restricts residents control and even awareness of how they pay for everything RIOC does. Residential building owners collect a virtual RIOC Tax as part of rents, then forks it over to RIOC. RIOC executives sometime argue that a local advantage is that all the money collected stays on Roosevelt Island.
Disregarding the fact that the collections are excessive, the distribution goes mostly to vendors and employees not based on Roosevelt Island.
We know that similar villages – like Babylon – routinely do more with much less. Elections probably make the most difference. Every other local government in New York has them, but Roosevelt Islanders don’t. That lets the doors swing wide open for this public boondoggle.
RIOC primarily serves and benefits itself, its friends in real estate and contractors, not the community. Although it wasn’t like that in the beginning, the forces corrupting so much else in New York relentlessly tore away at the “City of Tomorrow.”
Finally…
It’ll take some heroic efforts, some good luck and political good graces, but the Roosevelt Island community can still rescue what’s left of the dream and maybe even reverse some damages.
The city and state are currently negotiating an extension of the lease that turns Roosevelt Island over to New York – and make it a boondoggle. Residents can work to stop that until and unless serious changes are made. First and foremost, bring in fair elections in a democratic process. Second, dissolve RIOC and replace it with responsible, open and accountable management.
There’s time if there’s the will.
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.
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