RIRA Reaffirms Roosevelt Island Public Purpose Funds Allocation - Decision Now Up To RIOC
Meeting of April 7 RIRA Public Purpose Funds Subcommittee RIRA President Frank Farance sends the following message to RIOC President Steve Shane and the Roosevelt Island community regarding RIRA's recommendation to the RIOC Board of Directors for allocation of Public Purpose Funds.
On April 7, 2009, as directed by the RIRA Common Council, the RIRA PPG committee met again to reconsider the PPG allocations. Below, please find the meeting report.Below is the report of the meeting and approved resolution.
On April 8-9, the RIRA Common Council balloted the resolution (see below). The resolution was approved by a vote of 20 (approve), 1 (disapprove), 3 (abstain).
Below, please find the RIRA resolution regarding our approval of the PPG allocations. Note that the PPG allocation amounts are the same as the prior RIRA allocation.
RIRA quickly addressed this concern (approximately 7 days) and RIRA requests that RIOC quickly approve the funding because some applicants (Island Kids, Life Frames) need their funding no later than May 1, 2009 to successfully start their 2009 program.
***Without RIOC's immediate funding, this would have a negative impact on approximately one thousand Island residents (250+ for Island Kids, 700+ for Life Frames.***
Finally, it was disappointing that Mr. Stewart, the Chair of the Governance Committee, did not attend the RIRA Common Council nor the RIRA PPG meeting. I received no response from our invitation to the RIRA PPG meeting. Clearly Mr. Stewart has keen interest in the RIRA process and it is unfortunate that he was unable to directly observe the committee's work.
Please let me know when RIOC is scheduling a board meeting to approve the PPG monies. Thanks.
MEETING REPORTA subsequent email message indicated that Mr. Stewart was out of town for the RIRA Public Purpose subcommittee meeting. Mr. Kalkin, another RIOC Governance Committee member was in attendance.
1. Meeting started approximately 8:15 PM and ended approximately 9:30 PM.
2. Meeting was attended by Frank Farance (chair), Steve Marcus, Margie Smith, Erin Feely-Nahem, and Phoebe Flynn.
3. The RIOC Board, PPG applicants, and the public were permitted to observe, but not participate in the committee discussions concerning the allocations of funds. (There were some general questions about what the RIRA PPG committee would be doing in this meeting.)
4. Each member asserted that they have no conflicting relationship (employee, owner, officer, director) with any of the applicants.
5. The committee took the action to reconsider the PPG allocations.
6. The committee discussed each application, if there was any new information, and its scoring according to the established criteria. The committee discussed the relative merits comparing the high-, medium-, and low- ranking applications.
7. The committee arrived at the following allocations:
$0 Child School
$36,000 Island Kids
$20,000 Life Frames
$0 Orphans International
$10,000 RICLA
$4,000 RI Day Nursery
$25,000 RI Disabled Association
5,000 RI Seniors Association
with the following rationale:
- The applications were scored based upon the established criteria.
- Some proposals (Child School, Orphans International) were excluded because they did not provide significant direct benefit to Roosevelt Island residents.
- The highest ranked proposals (Island Kids, RI Disabled Association, RI Seniors Association) were considered first and given highest priority in their funding.
- The next highest ranked proposals (Life Frames, RICLA) were considered and given second priority in funding.
- The remaining proposals (RI Day Nursery) were considered and given third priority in funding.
-----------------------------------------------
APPROVED RIRA RESOLUTION
Whereas the RIRA Common Council has received information concerning an appearance of conflict of interest within the discussions of the RIRA PPG committee and PPG applicants;
Whereas the RIRA Common Council took immediate action and asked the RIRA PPG committee to reconsider its allocations of PPG funds with a committee composed of members having no conflicting (employee, owner, officer, director) relationship with PPG applicants;
Whereas the RIRA PPG committee reconsidered the allocation of funds and provided rationale for its decision-making;
Resolved, the RIRA Common Council recommends to RIOC the following PPG allocations for 2009: Child School $0, Island Kids $36,000, Life Frames $20,000, Orphans International $0, RICLA $10,000, RI Day Nursery $4,000, RI Disabled Association $25,000, RI Seniors Association $5,000; with the following rationale: (1) the applications were scored based upon the established criteria; (2) some proposals (Child School, Orphans International) were excluded because they did not provide significant direct benefit to Roosevelt Island residents; (3) the highest ranked proposals (Island Kids, RI Disabled Association, RI Seniors Association) were considered first and given highest priority in their funding; (4) the next highest ranked proposals (Life Frames, RICLA) were considered and given second priority in funding; (5) the remaining proposals (RI Day Nursery) were considered and given third priority in funding.
Approved by RIRA on April 9, 2009.
Read More!
Orphans International and the Roosevelt Island Day Nursery sent the following message to Roosevelt Islander Blog prior to the meeting.
From Orphans International:
Orphans International has for many years been a place of volunteering and service for the residents of Roosevelt Island. Recently this has increased as Island residents became aware of the many college interns coming to Roosevelt Island for OIWW jobs training. At the present time 5 RI teens are doing office work at OIWW to meet their school's requirements for community service. The NY courts have assigned 2 people to do work for us to complete court ordered community service. Over 200 people have applied for summer internships here, but only 23 will be chosen. Many RI residents asked how they could be chosen for our positions, so we decided to offer evening classes.Because of the large number of professionals who visit our computer lab (all donated) OI has started offering classes in support of job hunters. The first 2 classes attracted 7 students each. RI residents searching for jobs will receive help researching possible job sites, preparing a resume, learning to "get through" to potential employers and practice with their interview.The opportunity to learn to use many new programs is very attractive to people looking for work in this competitive job market. OIWW asked for RIRA funds to cover our utility bills for our space at 559 Main.If we receive it we can consider increasing our jobs training activity at the office, and know that we are not having to take money our of the orphans mouths to do it.
And Roosevelt Island Day Nursery:
... In regards to the criteria, "Proportion of recipients who are residents of Roosevelt Island," all of the families who received financial aid for this year, do live on Roosevelt Island. Our tuitions for this year are $10,275-$14,525 plus an additional fee for afterschool....
27 comments :
How were the funds divvied up in the previous year? Did the RIDN get more money then? If so I understand how they are upset about this, especially if RI Kids (used to be a rival to the RIDN and seems to be becoming one again under the new management) is getting 8 times the money.
Usually RIDN got around $25K for scholarships, which they supplemented with fund raising. When my child went there, about 30% of the school received financial aid, because the school is committed to trying to serve all islanders.
So, the RIDN got a major cut due to a new formula (that was probably unannounced before the application deadline), then Nikki attended the session when RIDN was interviewed and she even asked questions, RI Kids got 100% of the monies, RIDN got like 15%. And the RIRA does not think that this is a problem? Really? I don't really care about the RIDN but I must defend them here.
I stayed away from commenting on any of this but I feel that a few things need to be said, so here it is.
First of all, Island Kids and RIDN are not rivals. Island Kids provides enrichement programs (45 minute classes to children infants to 4 years) and a summer camp for children aged 5-13. RIDN is a nursery school. Parents are not deciding between one or the other. Some are sending their kids to both RIDN and Island Kids enrichment classes. I regularly recommend the Day Nursery to families who want a longer program and I think RIDN does the same for us. So to classify the two organizations as rivals is inaccurate.
I resent that my name keeps coming as the "conflict of interest" that lead RIDN to receive a small percentage of the funds. I was not the only party in attendance at the first meeting who had an affiliation with an applicant organization, and recieved full funding, and I find it suspicious that I was the only one named as having influenced the vote.
The other part that was left out, was that the process was done over without input from anyone, including myself, that had an affiliation with an applicant organization. RIRA came to the same conclusion. I think it was quite obvious that the RIRA public purpose committee had there own very strong opinions, based on the new formula, and that my input had nothing to do with the allocations. But since so many opinions are fueled by hatred for RIRA, RIOC and other political BS, this fact probably won't mean much to you.
Lastly, I took over Island Kids in 2006, at a time when there was a very real possibility that the organization would close its doors. I have worked in the non profit sector for 15 years and had the experience and vision, along with a Board of Directors to make this work. It has worked and we have a very successful program that meets the needs of approximatley 300 Island children and families per year.
A successful program, whether it be Island Kids or another organization, will automatically create competition when it comes to funding. All grants, scholarships etc are competitive, even more so with Public Purpose funds which were never competitive until last year. Island Kids has been passed over by Jessica Lappin's office three times. My response was "what do we need to do better" (public relations, program etc) that would make us more likely to recieve those funds. The same goes for the custom made space that the RIDN received in the River walk building. Island Kids was in the running for that space as well. But we lost and RIDN won. That's just the way it goes in the non profit world and I wish them much success on that endeavor.
The wrong response by the "loser" in these situations is to scapegoat another organization. It makes the accusing organization look desperate. I will never apoligize for recieving the PP allocation. With $36,ooo we are able to provide full and partial scholarships to 12 out of 30 children a week who attend our camp. RIOC will be voting on this on Wednesday and it is my sincere hope that this will not be dragged out any longer.
Nikki Leopold
Exectuive Director
Island Kids, Inc.
P.S.: If you are going to use use someone else's name in your post, that paints that person in a negative light, have the guts to post your name. That way the person can address your concerns directly.
I am a little confused about Farance's comment in the current WIRE about the pay raise the RIDN gave its employees. What does that have to do with anything?
The 4% pay raise given to the staff of the RIDN, a non-profit licensed nursery school, by its board, composed of parents of current students, has nothing to do with anything.
Mr. Farance may consider the staff overpaid or he may feel that they should subsidize scholarship funds for their students by never getting a raise and thereby be eligible for a larger subsidy from RIOC.
The staff of RIDN does spend quite a bit of unpaid personal time on fund raisers for the school.
A licensed nursery school is something that should be available to all children on RI. We should be trying to raise more funds so that can become a reality. Lower funding for RIDN will not punish the staff for their 4% raise; it will only deprive some number of RI kids on the edges of attendance there.
I thought so. But why would he say such things in the WIRE then? He had a good argument going about the formula the RIRA used etc. etc. but then he had to make a comment about the pay raise which leaves the readers (at least this one here) with the suspicion that there is indeed more behind the decisions on how to allocate the monies than just some formula that takes into account how many families are served by the organization. This is crazy! Amateurs playing politicians maybe?
No need to be suspicious. In his article in the Wire Frank Farance stated that Margie Smith explained to a RIOC board member that RIDN did not get the money they requested because "they" had just given themselves "generous" 4% pay raises and then immediately asked for public funds to cover the tab. In making that statement she seemed to be speaking for all those who voted so it seems to be the policy going forward.
No head teacher at RIDN makes as much as $50,000 and all have at least a masters degree. They don't own the RIDN they just work there.
Maybe they should have been warned that a 4% raise is too "generous" and that they should have refused it since they didn't in fact give it to themselves. It was voted on by the board of RIDN and none of the staff is on that board.
If there is a formula and acceptable pay raises is part of it what percentage pay raise is allowed if a raise is ever allowed? Would 3% have been fine, 2% ?
And was RIDN aware of this hazard before making their request? Were they warned not to accept "generous" wage hikes? They then could have factored this into their decision.
After all maybe they would have made this sacrificed for their kids. I know they sacrifice a lot already.
I am sure of one thing. The RIDN board did not sinisterly give the staff a 4% raise and then go to cover it with public money as was insinuated by Frank Farances article.
There is something wrong here and it seems to be an attitude that the RIDN is some kind of rich niche for profit entity that does not deserve the support of the community it has served for many years.
Your missing the point. The RIDN proposal was a really poor proposal -- that's the main reason they were ranked low. The 4% raises was just one of several negative aspects of their proposal.
Thus, the higher ranked proposals get a higher share of funds requested, the low ranked proposals get less of a share. It is as simple as that.
Frank Farance
RIRA President
Frank, but you had to explicitly point out the pay raise in your article in the WIRE. That alone comes across that it had more importance than "just one of the several negative aspects". Maybe you didn't mean it.
I covered the some of the other negative aspects of the RI Day Nursery and other PPG applicants in my prior WIRE column. My comments were reporting on some interactions at our April 7 PPG subcommittee meeting (in this case between Margie Smith and RIOC Board Member Fay Christian) which had not been reported previously.
Could you let us know who you are?
Frank Farance
RIRA President
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