Here's what we're thinking about. Have an opinion you'd like to post here? Contact the editor: davestone13@gmail.com. We'll consider it.
03/13/2018 - 16:46
Updated 2 years ago
A friend with a close up view of RIOC, the state agency controlled by Governor Andrew Cuomo in the style of an absentee feudal lord, scanned RIOC's proposed 2018 budget and wondered aloud, "Have you heard the expression, 'spending like a drunken sailor?'” In the immediate shadow of President Trump's grandiose military parade proposal, he mused over doing one that might give everyone a good, long - very long, actually - look at what RIOC's been doing with the figurative buckets of cash sitting around 591 Main Street.
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03/02/2018 - 10:15
Updated 2 years ago
Harsher language was called for to describe what happened last evening, the night when RIOC's executives and State handlers showed their disdain for Roosevelt Island residents with a raw contempt not seen since the hellish reign of Jerome Blue. An obscenity laced headline stuck in my head all night, but this morning, I did what RIOC was unable to do when they crushed the Roosevelt Island Youth Program, led for 22 years by Charlie DeFino - I put the kids first. I knew they'd be reading, trying to understand what outsiders did to hurt them.
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02/28/2018 - 09:13
With an existential crisis facing the Roosevelt Island Youth Program, a group of concerned parents makes an appeal as a vote that will mean life or death for the program is set for Thursday's RIOC Board Meeting. We are publishing the full text of their outreach without editing, except for graphic features we cannot duplicate.
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02/23/2018 - 15:08
Stung by public protests over the Public Safety Department's handling of crime reports, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation released a open letter in response. We are publishing it in full, without editing.
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02/04/2018 - 10:53
Updated 2 years 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.
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01/26/2018 - 10:24
Updated 2 years 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.
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01/18/2018 - 09:44
Updated 3 years 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.
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01/16/2018 - 10:07
Updated 3 years 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.
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01/05/2018 - 10:29
Updated 3 years 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.
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12/20/2017 - 18:09
Updated 3 years 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.
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Khalil Bendib / OtherWords.org
Reset Conspiracy theories seem to meet psychological needs and can be almost impossible to eradicate. One remedy: Keep them from taking root in the first place. By Greg Miller 1.14.2021 Assorted Ideas, Large & Small The United States of America was founded on a conspiracy theory. In the […]
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. This story originally appeared in ProPublica. by Alec MacGillis/ProPublica The man’s smartphone camera pans the crowd on the east side of the U.S. Capitol. It’s smaller […]
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