Opinion

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Kids celebrate Roosevelt Island Youth Program SACC Registration, allowing expanded programing.

Youth Center Inquiry Devolves Into Character Assassination

02/17/2018 - 17:59 Updated 42 weeks ago

It's taken RIOC over a year and a half to figure out who should run the Roosevelt Island Youth Center, but the State agency needed less than a day to find a law firm, Bond Shoeneck & King, headquartered, not in New York, but in Syracuse, to act as a venomous conduit for personal attacks on Youth Program Executive Director Charlie DeFino.

Roosevelt Island & RIOC, a Bad Marriage Gets Worse

02/10/2018 - 10:02 Updated 43 weeks ago

Two events this week show, in no uncertain terms, how far we’ve drifted from Roosevelt Island’s original vision — the City of Tomorrow, now a Land of the Lost with memories stitching it together.

Artwork at the Motorgate Gallery... Will cheap parking attract shoppers, diners and theatre goers to Main Street?

RIOC's New Low in Cluelessness: Merchant Parking Validation Program

02/04/2018 - 10:53 Updated 44 weeks ago

"It’s about to get a little easier for Roosevelt Island visitors with cars to patronage Main Street’s shops, restaurants, delis and theatre," reads RIOC's February 2nd press release. Okay, so they probably meant "patronize," not "patronage" - Hint: patronage isn't a verb - but otherwise, it was right on the money. But the real news is how dazzlingly ill-conceived this gem is.

Chair Alex Valella, second from left, listens to speakers on both sides of the Youth Center conflict.

Clueless Cuomo Appointee Aggravates Community Tensions

01/26/2018 - 10:24 Updated 44 weeks ago

In most disputes, figures involved choose to take the high or the low road, sometimes a blend of both. But confronted with a tense community, its anger fueled by racial and class divisions on Roosevelt Island, RIOC Board Chair Alex Valella stunned a packed audience at last night's Board Meeting by choosing "none of the above," hustling out of 8 River Road as if being pursued by ghosts. RIOC scored yet another failure in leadership certain to aggravate harsh feelings and deepen scars while the interests of local children increasingly risk becoming collateral damage.

PTA Drags RI Parents' Network Into the Toilet But Refuses to Flush

01/18/2018 - 09:44 Updated 46 weeks ago

Opinion: For those of us who grew up believing that Parent Teacher Associations have better things to do, the shock from last year's antics hadn't faded before PS/IS 217 PTA's flawed leadership took another miserable turn, again twisting the RI Parents' Network into a self-serving cesspool. Unwilling to accept a favored vendor's losing out in a fair contest for rights to manage the Youth Center, PTA President Erin Olavesen publicly announced a plan to derail an award to the Roosevelt Island Youth Program. What followed is a disgrace to the community. Again.

New From RIOC: Map & Self-Guided Tour of Roosevelt Island That Isn't

01/16/2018 - 10:07 Updated 47 weeks ago

Early this month, local resident and marketing consultant Janet Falk discovered something in a visit to Sportspark: a Roosevelt Island NYC Map and Self-Guided Tour produced by RIOC. There has been no public announcement and copies were not provided to the Historical Society's Visitor Center. We can only hope it was a limited printing - very limited - of a brochure, riddled with errors, that gives every indication that it was composed by someone unfamiliar with Roosevelt Island.

Is Roosevelt Island still a community or an investment opportunity?

2017, A Year When RIOC Screwed Tenants and Cuddled (Some) Landlords

01/05/2018 - 10:29 Updated 48 weeks ago

Opinion: The surprising thing, when RIOC turned a cold shoulder to tenants, this year, was how openly it was done. Same thing with handing out special favors to landlords Hudson Related and Grenadier/Manhattan Park. You don’t have to decipher their motives or guess at why the State agency enjoys immunity from this behavior — or thinks it does — to recognize the damages.

Cross Purposes: RIOC's Messy Attempt to Connect with Residents

12/20/2017 - 18:09 Updated 50 weeks ago

In her President's Report, the segment which for all intents wraps up each RIOC Board Meeting, President/CEO Susan Rosenthal made a curious announcement. RIOC is hiring a "public information officer" to improve communications with the community. But that covers only half of the problem, and then, there was something else that contradicted any RIOC good intentions, just five minutes later.

About RIOC’s Stingy, Broken Public Purpose Funds

12/08/2017 - 10:12 Updated 1 year ago

As I begin writing, I don’t know what the Common Council’s Public Purpose Fund Committee will recommend in grants before passing them on to RIOC. What I do know is that not a dime will go to our seniors. That alone should awaken RIOC to the fact that this system is not just stingy, but badly broken.

Main Street WIRE copies, unread, untouched after two weeks

What We Know About the WIRE Warsing Complaint

11/30/2017 - 18:18 Updated 1 year ago

I haven't seen the complaint Main Street WIRE attorney Marc Jonas Block filed against me and the Daily in Supreme Court. Others have, including other local media. Word spread around Roosevelt Island. From what I've learned, I'm disgusted by some of it but, also, puzzled over why an attorney would chose to build a community crushing case on a tapestry of misinformation.