NYS Threatens Huge Tax Hike For Island's Mitchell-Lamas

2 • The Main Street WIRE, Sat., Nov. 17, 2007
It is Time
Published by The Main Street WIRE TM
©2007 Unisource2000 Inc.
531 Main St. #413, NYC10044
The Editorial Page
Many residents of Island House, Westview, and Rivercross
came here, to a Roosevelt Island that New York State had made
barely livable, to create a new community, on the strength of a
New York State promise that they would, one day in a distant
future, be the full-rights owners of their apartments.
In the years since, they have succeeded in their part of the
deal, creating a wonderful community on the strength of the
minds and hearts they brought to the task. But also, in the
years since, they have seen the State offer incredible sweetheart
deals to deep-pockets developers who have grown wealthy
on the State’s near giveaway of extraordinarily valuable land
where apartments now rent and sell at embarrassingly high
prices. They have given the State of New York pained forbearance
while bunglers have come here to manage their community
badly – given the task simply because they were someone’s
buddy, political hanger-on, or partner in something slightly
less than honorable.
Now, that distant future has arrived, and under the law,
those pioneer residents are entitled to treatment equal to that
given to tenants and resident owners in other Mitchell-Lama
buildings across the City and State.
But the Spitzer administration is saying, “No, wait longer...
the promise didn’t really count here. Wait into perpetuity for
what you were promised.”
It is time for that to stop. It’s time, now, for New York
State to keep its promises to those who created community
here. It is, quite simply, time for New York State to honor the
deal it made so many years ago, and let Rivercross go private
without restrictions, and let the tenants of Westview and Island
House strike the best deal they can with the buildings’
owners, and collect their reward of full-rights homeownership.
It’s called equal treatment under the law.
And it is time.
DL
A comment on the news:
If The WIRE were the Daily News... ...this would be our page 1 today.
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Saturday, November 17, 2007
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Troop 59, and members of the Island Girls Project.
Letters deadline for December 1 issue: Tuesday, November 27
After deadline, letters are considered on a space-available basis.
Vol. 28, No. 6
GO TO HELL
Spitzer Spitzer Administration Sends a a
Screw You to Pioneer Pioneer Residents
EDIT EDIT EDITORIAL
EDIT EDIT ORIAL
It’s time for the Spitzer Administration ESDC – gets to pull the trigger.
to start listening to the people of Roosevelt The immediate background of all this is
Island.
reported elsewhere in this issue The of Main
Not only has the Division of HousingStreet
WIRE. The further background is tha
and Community Renewal (DHCR) beenthree
organizations representing the reside
dragging its feet on resident-developed plans of Westview, Island House, and Rivercros
for the Mitchell-Lama buildings here, have presented fully workable plans for full
imposing the impractical and impossible in arights
resident ownership to DHCR, while
Big Stall, but now the Empire State DHCR has responded only with vagu
Development Corporation (ESDC) wants to suggestions that funds might be foun
hit the Island’s “affordable” buildings with somewhere to make the repairs necessary
full-scale property taxes.
keep their apartments both liveable an
If this Eliot Spitzer Administration’s affordable forever.
“coordinated housing policy,” it’s a really bad Last week’s total screw-up by ESDC, a
joke, tragically misguided. While one unitloose-cannon
left hand apparently unawa
of State government is calling for long-termof
the policies of the loose-cannon right han
affordability at the likely expense of long- DHCR, demonstrates conclusively that, onc
term occupy-ability, another has set out to again, the people living in the housing hav
destroy present-day affordability. “We havea
much better idea of how to take it into th
to destroy Roosevelt Island to save it,” they future than does any bureaucracy.
seem to be saying, with the only remaining It’s time for the Spitzer Administration to
question being which agency – DHCR or start listening to the people of Roosevelt Island
The Spitzer Administration’s Great Tractor-Pull
To the Editor:
It’s a surprise to see so many
politicians endorsing the Kahn proposal
for our Island. No one I
know who lives here supports it.
And Monday, an endorsement on
the editorial page of The New York
Times. What’s going on!?
I think President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was a great
President. He’s already memorialized
by the FDR Drive and the
name of our Island. We haven’t forgotten
him.
The Kahn Memorial resembles
the prow of a sunken battleship.
It’s as lyrical as a cinder block.
Times have changed. Islanders
have voted for a natural setting, a
garden of native plants, not a Soviet-style
cementarium.
We the people of Roosevelt Island
have a right and a responsibility
to shape development on our
Island. This is being foisted on us
for reasons we don’t know in opposition
to our wishes. How about
standing up and saying so?
Bill Sinclair
Letters
Letters
To the Editor:
The idea of a second tram
(Mogens Petersen letter, Nov. 3)
from the northern part of the Island
to the Upper East Side of Manhattan
should be seriously considered.
If there are too many obstacles
(government, real estate, etc.), has
anybody ever considered a second
tram that moves people from
Roosevelt Island to Queensboro
Plaza, where you can catch the N/
W/7 trains, or Queens Plaza, where
you can catch the E/G/R/V trains?
Once there, subway connections
can take you to any part of the City.
A second tram to the Upper East
Side would put passengers on the
4/5/6 train or the future 2nd Avenue
subway, somewhere uptown.
Maybe we can even get a 2-for-1
discount price on the new proposed
Tram system.
Even a rush-hour shuttle bus
across the red bridge to the Broadway
or 36th Avenue stations in
Long Island City would relieve
some of the pressure.
Kurt Wittman
To the Editor:
We have been living with the current bus route and, while it’s good
that the bus stops in front of the subway, there is still room for improvement
at the Tram end of the ride. Our quick turnaround was taken away
some time ago by the building construction, and I was thinking that our
current route, around the block, was only temporary, but I was recently
informed there are no plans to go back to the old turnaround, since the
new building will be in the way.
In the meantime, we get on the bus and go for a minute-long, joyless
ride around the block, with the sole purpose of facing in the right direction.
I would like to save myself and my fellow passenger that New
York Minute. (It’s really a minute and a half). If you multiply that by
the number of passengers, then we are wasting a lot of time. We are
tired at the end of the day, we are all running late. We want to get home
and have dinner. Fortunately, I have discovered a shortcut (see diagram
below). I only wish I had thought of it sooner when they were redoing
the lawn for the Roosevelt Island welcoming kiosk, but: Would it be
possible to build a road that gently goes around the green in front of the
Tram? People would board the bus in the same spot as they do now, and
then it would circle the green and we would be on our way. That would
save us all a lot of time.
With the construction of all the new buildings, why not have one more
piece of construction work, a new road? At least this construction will
not be contributing to more congestion on the Island.
Neal Weissman
MAIN STREET
CROSS-ISLAND ROAD
TRAM
To the Editor:
The WIRE’s headline, Rivercross
Plans Departure From Mitchell-
Lama Without Extension of Its
Ground Lease, is misleading. The
article itself makes clear that this
is simply a proposal of a committee
of residents who have labored
long and hard to come up with a
plan, but the headline makes it
seem that the proposal has been
adopted by the governing bodies
of the Rivercross coop. That is not
the case.
The Rivercross Board of Directors
will need to study the proposal
for its legality and financial feasibility,
as well as determine, after
due diligence and review, whether
it serves the best interests of all
shareholders. Any plan to leave
Mitchell-Lama would then require
a two-thirds vote of Rivercross’s
360 tenant-shareholder units to
begin a long process that starts with
the filing of a “notice of intent”
with the State. Thereafter, disclosure
documents must be prepared
outlining the plan and its risks,
which must be accepted for filing
by the Attorney General’s office.
Public meetings of shareholders
and officials must take place. Upon
review by legal counsel, consents
may have to be obtained from the
State and Rivercross’s mortgage
lender to proceed without violating
its ground lease, mortgage, and
other obligations. Thus, the
committee’s proposal is just that:
a proposal. Whether it will become
the “Rivercross Plan” after study,
deliberation, consents, votes, and
other procedures are undertaken,
remains to be determined.
Robert Chira
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