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The Shadow of Reform

In the hush after the storm, two remained, charting a course through shadows, steadying the ship until the light could return.

Eleanor Rivers

Jun 27

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It ended not with a bang but with a smirk. The September 19th RIOC Board meeting had been long, unruly, and stitched together with procedural tangles. But by the final hour, something subtle broke the surface: laughter. Not the warm kind. The kind that slips out when someone wins and can no longer hide the satisfaction.

Directors Howard Polivy, Conway Ekpo, and Morris Peters chuckled quietly as Director Ben Fhala—tired, cornered, and no longer speaking—tried to thank Conway for his alternate perspective. Then came David Kraut’s final line: “Ben, your ship has sailed.” It wasn’t just a farewell. It was punctuation. Final. Clean. A disguised verdict.

The Vote That Broke the Pattern

The next item on the agenda should have been forgettable: a vote to approve an extension of the New York Community Trust (NYCT) contract and increase the Public Purpose Fund distribution. But it became something more.

Chief Financial Officer Dhruvika Patel Amin calmly outlined the plan: Increase the annual nonprofit pool from $150,000 to $250,000, while trimming NYCT’s administrative fee from $75,000 to $25,000. The numbers were simple. The politics were not.

Director Fay Christian voiced her concern about voting without reviewing the full budget. David, in a rare moment of transparency, questioned whether RIOC had the right to allocate its income to public purposes at all: “We’re not in the Public Purpose Fund business,” he said, waving his finger at the screen. Even after being reminded that the enabling act permits up to 3% of RIOC’s budget to be allocated this way, he offered a final, telling pivot: “I guess the only remaining question is: should we?”

Then, cutting through it all, came Dr. Michal L. Melamed.

“I’d rather spend our money on this than on ongoing legal costs and paying people who are not actually working.”

Soft voice. Surgical precision. There was a pause in the room, then a motion. Lydia Tang raised her hand. Ben seconded. The votes came in: Fay Christian was the lone dissenter. The audience clapped. Then, they voted again—to confirm that only $25,000 would go to NYCT administration. Fay held her no. The audience clapped again.

It wasn’t just a policy vote. It was a signal. Something had shifted.

Nine months would pass before the full board would finally be seated—long after that September night. But on June 23rd, new directors took their seats for the first time. Their arrival would mark the beginning of something still unknown, but long hoped for.

The Architects of Reform

Director Lydia W. Tang, Chair of the Governance Committee, reported. With the calm of someone who keeps better notes than her critics, she walked the board through months of work: meetings with legal counsel, revised bylaws sent to the Authorities Budget Office and the Committee on Open Government, procurement reforms, whistleblower protections, and governance improvements rooted in public feedback.

Around her, the room reacted—Anderson, Polivy, Peters looked exasperated. Fay Christian, once active, typed on her phone, her face unreadable. When Lydia thanked Fay for her committee participation and welcomed Conway Ekpo in her place, Fay didn’t flinch. She didn’t nod. She didn’t smile.

If Lydia was the architect of reform, then Dr. Michal Melamed was its instrument. Where Lydia laid out blueprints, Michal made the incisions. She questioned financial math when no one else did. She demanded clarity where others yielded to confusion—and she did it without grandstanding.

She also said the quiet part out loud: that money wasted on endless investigations and legal gymnastics could be redirected to help people who actually live here.

Together, they steadied the meeting’s course. Lydia with her documentation, Michal with her precision. In the confusion, their clarity became the compass.

And it will be them—Lydia and Michal—who hold the line from now until June 2025. The bylaws may have consumed much of the last year, but the work ahead is more than procedural. With the full board not yet seated, these two directors are the bridge—between what was and what could still be. They were ready for this moment. And we are grateful to them.

A Dream of David*

Last meeting, David and I had been speaking quietly about a woman with red hair—one of the few who had once asked the right questions. In this dream, she returned. Not in speech, but in posture: polite dissent that never tipped into action. David’s voice reached me through her.

"We’ve had a few over the years," he said, almost fondly. "Board members who wanted to make change. RIOC would lie to them, or simply wait them out. Most had full-time jobs, real obligations. By the time they’d voted a few times, they stopped questioning. They started following."

He nodded toward the red-haired woman, now seated silently at a long table.

"She never tried to reform," he continued. "She just didn’t want to be seen agreeing. Looked good in dissent, but never pushed."

Then his gaze shifted.

"Ben’s different. Lydia too. And the ones coming in behind them—they’re breaking the system. Not complaining about it. That’s why Albany sent their best to crush him. And they did. But these new members, they play by the rules. And that’s the threat."

He looked at me, not smiling.

"They’ll slow them down. But if they last long enough, they’ll unravel everything."

And just like that, the red-haired woman looked away. David folded his hands. The lights flickered like a vote count. And the dream ended.

The Light Left Behind

Ben Fhala didn’t storm out. He didn’t deliver a farewell speech. We can reasonably conclude he was asked to step out of executive session, following the same quiet process that Howard Polivy had modeled earlier—part of what now appears to have been a pre-planned move. Informants reported seeing Ben speaking with Dhruvika and Rossana outside during the session. The content of those conversations remains undocumented.

When he returned, the dynamic had changed. Ben was no longer a participant—he had become the subject. Chair Designee Meghan Anderson announced that three resolutions had been voted on, and none had passed.

But one thing was certain: Ben’s resignation letter, submitted shortly afterward, spoke volumes. It marked not just a departure but a setback for progress. The work Lydia and he had initiated remains unfinished. Over the past year, much of the Governance Committee’s energy was consumed by the bylaws. With the recent arrival of newly appointed board members, the promise of meaningful support for Lydia and Dr. Melamed feels newly possible.

Something else emerged: the sense that reform isn’t a person—it’s a current. And that current hasn’t dried up.

Lydia remains. Michal remains. And new board members, willing to engage, willing to ask real questions, have arrived.

At the June 23rd, 2025 meeting, the resolution to pass the bylaws finally passed—with a pile of pontification from Howard Polivy, the grace of Lydia Tang, and a bitter acceptance from Fay Christian. It marked more than a procedural shift. It signaled that structure can serve justice, not obstruct it. That process, in the right hands, can be a tool for repair.

The ship may have sailed, but another is being built, plank by plank, in the shadow of reform.

*This is a work of narrative storytelling inspired by real events. Some characters, dialogue, and scenes are imagined to convey broader truths and do not depict actual conversations or individuals.