The Pickle JarRIOC keeps its old records in brine and its old plans on the shelf. The one thing nobody thought to preserve was the engineer.
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Board of Directors met on October 22, 2026, at the Good Shepherd Community Center, and the evening began with a list of one. “Is Judy Berdy here?” Chair Designee Meghan Anderson asked. Ms. Berdy, the only resident signed up to speak, was not in the room. President B.J. Jones already knew why: “She said she may not come.” It was the only question all night he answered on the first try. I have always admired Judy Berdy. When I don’t show up to a meeting, they assume I’ve died; when Judy doesn’t show up, they assume she’s preparing a document. Lance A. Polivy, RIOC’s General Counsel and the “distant family member” of Director Howard Polivy, called the roll. Professor Lydia W. Tang was not yet at the table when her name was called, and someone answered for her: “She is here, just not here.” Little did I know that sentence would foreshadow someone else’s evening, a man who was not in the building at all. The first jar was sweet. Chief Financial Officer Dhruvika Patel Amin presented a three-year renewal with ADP, RIOC’s payroll company, at $315,797.91 for the term, with a 15 percent discount she had negotiated. I have been trying to get 15 percent off at Gristedes for years. Ms. Amin, if you’re reading this, I have a list. It passed 9 to 0, and the board had just bought three more years of a company whose entire job is to know who RIOC paid and how much. Hold on to that sentence. RIOC certainly didn’t.
Kept in BrineThe second item renewed what the resolution calls “financial records retention services”: Blackbaud keeps RIOC’s historical financial records “prior to 2018.” Ms. Amin negotiated the five-year price down from $164,000 to $48,483. She could get a discount on a lifeboat from the Titanic. RIOC is wonderful at preserving things, and now it can preserve them cheaply. Professor Tang asked how far back the brine went and was told, “Probably up to, it could go up to 2000.” Could. RIOC’s records are like my memory: everything from 2000 is in there somewhere, and nobody’s allowed to look. Ms. Anderson, without a breath between the two sentences, said, “Anybody else, questions? Is there a motion?” She asked for questions the way my doctor asks if I have any concerns: one foot already out the door. No space was left for anybody else. Every name on the roll answered yes. The Empty Drawer
For years there have been rumors, some might call them close to the source, hinted at by current and former senior staff, that several RIOC employees received substantial, questionable raises over the last decade. Theo Gobblevelt and I treat none of it as fact. No paper, no claim, which is exactly why the paper matters, and why RIOC treats it as a secret. On September 14, Theo asked RIOC for its salary rosters for 2015 through 2024. On October 21, the afternoon before this meeting, RIOC sent four of the ten years with one sentence: “Please note that under FOIL, an agency does not have to generate, compile, or recreate a document if it is past its retention schedule.” Past its retention schedule. At my age, I take that personally. Theo appealed the next morning, the morning of the meeting. That night the board voted to keep paying to preserve the years before 2018. Timing is everything, and RIOC has none. On November 4, in a letter signed by Lance A. Polivy as FOIL Appeals Officer, RIOC wrote that it “does not possess or maintain the historical Summary of Earnings records requested for calendar years 2015 through 2020.” Nobody said when those records stopped existing, who decided, or under which schedule. RIOC does have a schedule. It is posted on RIOC’s own website, dated March 1, 2017, and its payroll page keeps year-end payroll, “including detailed information necessary for salary verification for retirement and social security purposes,” for 55 years. A personal earnings record gets six. Fifty-five years is longer than RIOC has existed. The payroll was built to outlive the agency; it could not outlive Mr. Polivy’s letter. Either nobody at RIOC has read its own schedule, or the disposal schedule has been disposed of, too. And ADP, RIOC’s payroll processor since at least 2006, keeps this kind of record for a living. Does it still hold what RIOC says it no longer has? Under New York law, a record kept for an agency by its contractor is still the agency’s record, and RIOC’s letters never named the schedule that let the earlier years go. I do not know whether payroll is among what Blackbaud keeps. But 2015, 2016 and 2017 sit inside the window RIOC is paying to preserve, and they are also three of the years RIOC says it no longer has. On November 11, Theo asked by FOIL what Blackbaud holds and whether payroll is part of it. At RIOC’s recent pace, I expect an answer, or a non-answer, in about six months. After all these years, I have stopped calling things lies in print. I will only say that RIOC is paying good money to keep a drawer it swears is empty. A Bench With No One On ItThe third item was a pre-qualified panel of seven real estate advisory firms, on call while RIOC negotiates ground lease extensions and studies new development. I do not agree with Director Marc Jonas Block, and since I traced the downfall of the WIRE through its court filings and learned he was the attorney who brought its lawsuit against the Daily and its editor, David Stone, I am even less of a fan. Yet openness in an age of closed lips is good for this publication and good for the Island, and he does now show his perspective and ask questions. Now and then they lend a little support to the three women who hold RIOC to account. More often they are soft enough to let the administration protect itself. He asks questions the way a waiter asks if everything is all right as he walks away, assuming you nodded. Tonight he questioned a law firm’s place on the panel, then disclosed, “I’ve had litigation with Greenberg Traurig in the past,” and abstained. It was the most decisive thing I have seen him do at a board meeting. Ms. Melissa A. Wade asked, “I’m wondering why we didn’t have a discussion in REDAC about this.” RIOC’s committees are like my gym membership: no one worries I’ll ever use it, but it’s lovely to mention at parties. Mr. Jones started his word generator before he had found an answer. Word salad, his signature dish. I’ve eaten his dish for a year now and never once left full. The board, he said, had talked about “a real estate panel so we have a bench,” and because the panel “doesn’t incur cost and doesn’t involve a specific project,” REDAC would discuss the work later, “as opposed to setting up the panel itself.” It “doesn’t incur cost.” Neither does a credit card, on the day you sign up. The bill comes later. It passed 8 to 0, with Mr. Block abstaining. RIOC now has a bench. I know benches. You sit down meaning to rest a minute, and the next thing you know it’s 2031. Another BiteThe fourth item was a one-year Island-wide flood risk assessment by Arcadis of New York for $1,419,551.28. Chief Operating Officer Mary C. Cunneen, never a natural speaker, presented it with a warmth I have watched her work toward for years, looking up at the room as she spoke. Ms. Cunneen has found her way to outshine the CEO and, I would argue, the polished Lance A. Polivy, who read his introduction of the real estate panel off his script without looking up long enough to show his emotional range. Arcadis stood out, she said, for “the depth of the bench of their team.” Arcadis has a bench. RIOC, it turned out, has an empty seat. Professor Tang took a bite. “I’d like to talk to Alvaro and see what his engineering perspective on this is.” She meant Alvaro Santamaria. “Is he here? He’s not here.” She asked for the engineer the way I ask for my reading glasses: certain they were here a minute ago. Mr. Jones answered with strategy instead of a name, then leaned over to whisper to Ms. Anderson. Ms. Anderson’s eyes rose toward Professor Tang with the expression of a woman who has just bitten into a very sour pickle and is being offered a second bite. She went on: “We built up an in-house engineering department for this very reason, and I’m very disappointed.” Morris Peters, the Budget Director’s designee, offered, “Isn’t that what the evaluation panel did? Isn’t that their exact role?” She answered, “No, we had an in-house engineer. What’s going on?” And a little later, “We had multiple engineers as far as we were informed.” Mr. Jones said, “I think if we want to talk about personnel issues, we should talk about that in another venue.” Professor Tang pressed on. An outside firm’s perspective, she warned, would be “We want to make money off of RIOC.” Ms. Cunneen mentioned that “the last one that was done was in 2001 by the Army Corps of Engineers.” Twenty-five years on a shelf. Ms. Wade raised the price. “I mean, 1.4 million is a lot for just information and a plan.” For that money, I would want the plan to come with a few bricks. Professor Tang added, “now we don’t even have Alvaro here or any engineer here, and that is unacceptable to me as a board member.” Ms. Anderson closed the subject with “All right, so your recommendation to hire an engineer is heard.” Heard is what the jar says to the lid. Mr. Block’s question came next, soft and leading, and there was no doubt where it led. “Just for clarification, because there was an allegation that Arcadis would just be seeking to provide a assessment for them to make money.” Professor Tang’s warning had become an allegation, and the floor was laid out for Mr. Jones to knock it down. He did not take the cue. He talked through phases and funding streams and never arrived at the point he had been handed. Ms. Anderson’s mouth tightened further, and Mr. Block turned to his phone. I would never call anyone a puppet in print, but even a puppet master winces when the puppet misses its cue. Dr. Michal L. Melamed, kind and patient as she always is, offered a sentence I am saving for another day: “RIOC is known for doing planning for a million dollars, and then it doesn’t actually get built ever.” It passed 6 to 3. Dr. Melamed, Professor Tang and Ms. Wade voted no. I want to be honest about my hero. In September she asked whether outside firms were “what we were trying not to do anymore,” then voted yes on that panel, as she did on tonight’s real estate panel. It saddens me, because no one describes the problem more clearly. Even heroes have to taste a few pickles before they learn to spit. On this one she held, and she was not alone. A dream, which is only a dream. That night I found myself in RIOC’s pantry. There were jars of old ledgers and a tall dusty one marked 2001 ARMY CORPS, still sealed. A fresh jar marked ARCADIS 2027 was being lowered into place, very reasonably priced. At the end of the shelf sat one clean, empty jar with a neat label: ENGINEER. I asked who had eaten it. A voice from the next aisle said personnel matters were discussed in another venue. I woke before I found the venue. In about a year, a report will arrive at RIOC describing how water reaches the Island and where it settles, along the seawall and into the basements. It will go on the shelf beside the 2001 study. Unless something changes, nobody in the building will be a licensed engineer able to open it and say, as Professor Tang put it, “This doesn’t look right.” This newsletter travels best hand to hand. If you know someone who would read this all the way through, they are probably who it is for. Pass it along. RIOC already has enough sealed jars. Subscribe for free to receive updates on new posts and support our work.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment