Response To RIRA President Slamming Maple Tree Group On RIOC Nominee Elections - Come See Discussion at Tomorrow 's RIRA Meeting

Image of June 2010 RIRA Meeting

After a summer layoff and big changes on Roosevelt Island including a new RIOC President, the Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) Common Council will be holding it's Monthly Meeting tomorrow night, September 15, at the Good Shepherd Community Center's Lower level beginning at 8 PM.

At some point during the RIRA meeting, perhaps the entire meeting, we can expect some RIRA members to express dissatisfaction with RIRA President Frank Farance. The reason for this dissatisfaction is due in whole, or part, to two recent columns Mr. Farance wrote for the Main Street WIRE and this blog in which he criticized the decision made by members of the Maple Tree Group to recommend that elections for nomination to the RIOC Board be held in November 2012 rather than November of 2010. Mr. Farance also criticized the process by which the Maple Tree Group arrived at it's decision.

Mr. Farance's columns are here - August 27 (item 10) and September 11 (Item 5). Please read them in order to understand the substance of this disagreement.

Several RIRA and Maple Tree Group members, some members overlap both groups, objected to Mr. Farance's comments. In fact, they took strong exception to put it mildly. I offered those who I knew objected an opportunity to present their views and they are below. A version of all these comments also appeared in the Main Street WIRE

Before we get to the critical comments concerning Mr. Farance's statements, here is an email message from Maple Tree Member and RIRA Government Relations Committee Chair Ashton Barfield to RIRA Council Members providing some background on the Maple Tree Group and explaining the RIOC Board Nominee election decision making process. A version of this message also appeared in the August 28 Main Street WIRE (PDF File) Page 12. From Ms. Barfield:

Dear fellow Common Council members,

In advance of our September 15 meeting, I'm writing to you, on behalf of the Maple Tree Group subcommittee of the Government Relations Committee, about RIOC Board elections. This is a long, complicated email, and I apologize for that, but we want to give you everything you need in order to understand the issues, and to be able to discuss them before, as well as during, the meeting.

BACKGROUND ON THE MAPLE TREE GROUP (MTG)

As most of you know, MTG has been working since 1997 with our successive Assemblymembers and State Senators (and met once with then-Governor Pataki) to have the members of the RIOC Board be residents, and be elected by the community. To the extent presently possible, those goals have been achieved: per the 2002 Open Spaces law, at least five Board members must be residents; and although the Governor still appoints the Board members, he now considers recommendations from the community based on our election results. The first elections were held in February 2008 (resulting in 4 of the top 6 vote-getters eventually being appointed) and May 2009 (resulting in the top 2 vote-getters eventually being appointed). MTG developed the election framework, produced the elections, and followed the progress of the winners through to appointment. MTG continues to work for legislation to guarantee direct election of the Board members; achieving this last step will be difficult, since the Governor will have to sign a bill reducing gubernatorial authority. (MTG has been a subcommittee of the Government Relations Committee (GRC) since 1999. The present membership is Ashton Barfield, David Bauer, Linda Heimer, Sherie Helstien, Matthew Katz, Dick Lutz, Nurit Marcus, and Joyce Mincheff.)

ELECTION CONSIDERATIONS AND OUR CONCLUSIONS

Over the past four months, MTG has been compiling and assessing information about RIOC Board election dates, appointment dates, tenure durations, and term-expiration dates, in order to arrive at what seems the most appropriate timing for the next RIOC election. The following is a presentation of the results of our deliberations, the rationales underlying our conclusions, and the pros and cons of the choices. (We included the three non-MTG members of GRC and Frank Farance in our discussions, but ultimately not in our vote, since they were less familiar with all the issues and since they will have the opportunity to express themselves fully with the rest of the Common Council. Their opinions were split on the only disputed issue, and their votes would not have changed the balance.)

1. Our first conclusion was that RIOC elections must be held in conjunction with RIRA elections, which are themselves held in conjunction with the even-year November federal and state elections. The rationale for these conjunctions is obvious: the turnout for the other elections optimizes the turnout for our local elections, and thereby optimizes the validity, for the community, of the voters' choices. Our vote was unanimous for this conclusion.

2. Another conclusion was that we should seek regularization of the start/end dates of the RIOC Board terms. The term dates are inherent to the seats, not the incumbents -- the term dates aren't determined by the election dates or the appointment dates -- and although each term lasts four years, the start/end dates are all over the place. (See the attached grid of detailed data for current Board members and their seats.) As a result, although the candidates in the first RIOC election were theoretically running for four-year terms, in practice they were appointed to the remaining portions of the four-year terms of vacated seats: 1 year, 1.9 years, 2.6 years, and 3 years. We hope, through Assemblymember Kellner, to get the terms fixed so that they end uniformly in odd-numbered years, at an appropriate interval following RIOC elections in even-year Novembers. But this regularization will not happen soon, and so we must devise a workable interim system for the existing mess. No vote was needed/taken on this issue. (During the discussions, Frank Farance said that he's considering a referendum for the November RIRA election that would encourage RIOC and the Governor to establish a regular cycle.)

The attached grid, which I referenced above, will help you understand the factors that we've wrestled with. One thing that you need to keep in mind, while evaluating the various issues, is that candidates are not running for particular seats; a group of candidates is running for a group of seats. As the seat-terms expire, the Governor can do any number of things with our recommended winners: appoint all of the top vote-getters to the available seats in order of their votes; skip over some of the winners and appoint candidates with fewer votes (as happened to Frank Farance and Erin Feely-Nahem in 2008); or ignore some/all of them completely and appoint people who were not even candidates (and possibly aren't even residents).

Here's a summary version of the grid data that shows the durations of service, since appointment and since seat-term expiration, that will exist at election time in November 2010, 2012, and 2014. (Since members serve until replaced, an incumbent who doesn't run or isn't re-elected could continue in office past seat-term expiration until a newly-elected replacement is appointed.)

NOV 2010
2.3 yrs Christian -- expired for 0.4 yr
2.3 yrs Kalkin
2.3 yrs Kraut (plus 14 yrs, 6/94-6/08)
2.3 yrs Grimm (re-appointed without re-election after 1 year)
1.4 yrs Polivy
0.75 yrs Shinozaki (plus 4.4 yrs, 12/04-5/09)
0.75 yrs Smith

NOV 2012
4.3 yrs Christian -- expired for 2.4 yrs
4.3 yrs Kalkin -- expired for 1.3 yrs
4.3 yrs Kraut -- re-expired for 1.3 yrs
4.3 yrs Grimm (won't re-expire for 0.7 yr)
3.4 yrs Polivy -- expired for 0.8 yr
2.75 yrs Shinozaki
2.75 yrs Smith

NOV 2014
6.3 yrs Grimm -- re-expired for 1.3 yrs

5.4 yrs Polivy -- expired for 2.8 yrs
4.75 yrs Shinozaki -- re-expired for 1.3 yrs
4.75 yrs Smith -- expired for 1.3 yrs

3. The third conclusion that we eventually reached, by a 7-1 vote (see end of paragraph), was that 2010 is too soon for the next RIOC election (the earliest appointees having served only 2.3 years), that it should therefore take place in 2012, and that the seats to be filled then would be those of the four members appointed in 2008 (Christian, Kalkin, Kraut, Grimm). Subsequent elections would be every two years, with a three-four alternation of the seven resident seats to ensure that there would never be complete Board turnover following an election. Thus, the 2014 election would be for the seats of three members appointed in 2009-2010 (Polivy, Shinozaki, Smith). The 2016 election would be for the seats of the four members elected in 2012, and so on. Our vote on this conclusion was framed as 2012 versus 2010. Barfield, Bauer, Heimer, Helstien, Katz, Lutz, and Marcus voted for 2012; Mincheff voted for 2010.

As you can see from the attached grid and from the summary list above, there are numerous problems associated with fitting the seat-terms and tenures into the even-year-November framework (see section below). There is no simple choice. Some of the problems are the same whether the next election is in 2012 or in 2010. For the problems that are different, there are tradeoffs for each. (Unfortunately, some of the problems won't go away even in the very best scenario, of direct elections and regularized seat-term expirations.)

PROBLEMS OF FITTING THE SEAT-TERMS AND TENURES INTO THE EVEN-YEAR-NOVEMBER FRAMEWORK

* VULNERABILITY -- Although the four members appointed in 2008 will have served only 2.3 years in November 2010, one of their seat-terms is now expired (May 2010), and two of the other three will expire in June 2011. (The fourth was re-appointed by the Governor in June 2009, when the seat-term expired after only one year's tenure.) Also, the member appointed in May 2009 (only 1.4 years of service in November 2010) will expire in December 2011. Since Board members continue to serve after seat-term expiration until replaced, there's no automatic vacancy created by the expiration, but there could be increased vulnerability to having the member replaced by gubernatorial whim prior to our next election. To protect against this, we are seeking State confirmation of the precedent established by our elections.

* OVER VERSUS UNDER -- If we wait until 2012, to avoid severely undershooting the four-year tenures that are premised in the elections (and preferable), we will overshoot by some months (indeterminate because of the numerous factors involved, such as the irreducible minimum of time for the State to vet non-incumbents, and unrelated delays by the Governor or the Senate, which must confirm the appointments). Most of us felt that, forced to choose, we would opt for extended tenures over foreshortened tenures, since the member's most productive years of service to the community will be after the initial adjustment and learning period. (It was also felt that 1.4 or 2.3 years in office was an insufficient basis for re-election evaluation.)

* STALE CANDIDATES AND LONG LAME-DUCK PERIODS -- If we were to have elections in 2010, to avoid the problems of expired terms and/or longer-than-four-year tenures, we would be holding elections for seats whose terms will not expire for 8-14 months (31 months for the reappointed member). If an incumbent is not re-elected (possibly because of an insufficient basis for evaluation), that person is still entitled to complete his/her term. There are several possible nightmare scenarios, including: an electee who is no longer able to serve by the time an incumbent's term expires; un-re-elected incumbents who leave their seats early, creating long vacancies while prospective members are vetted by the State (and possibly rejected, causing even longer vacancies and a crisis of how to fill the seats -- possibly with people who got fewer (too few?) votes, or with non-electees in disregard of our electoral process).

* INHERENT STRUCTURAL PROBLEM -- The hypothetical melodrama presented above in STALE CANDIDATES AND LONG LAME-DUCK PERIODS is an exaggerated version of an unavoidable problem: As noted in OVER VERSUS UNDER, after our elections, it will take time for the State to reappoint incumbents, and even more time to vet non-incumbents before appointing them (if at all). This vetting will be required even if we eventually get direct elections and regularized seat-terms, because Board members are appointed to a State governing body.

Again, sorry that this email is so long and so complicated, but as you can see, the issues are complicated, and their importance is such that they deserve your fully-informed and thoughtful consideration -- so that we can have an electoral system that serves our Island well over the years, as Board members come and go.

Looking forward to seeing you all in a few weeks, and hoping that you've had a wonderful summer,

Ashton Barfield

for the Maple Tree Group subcommittee

of the Government Relations Committee

Here's a link to the RIOC Directors term chart in the 10/28/10 Main Street WIRE

RIOC Directors Term CHART

Again, for reference, here are Mr. Farance's columns on subject - August 27 and September 11.

A version of the comments below in response to Mr. Farance also appeared in the September 11 Main Street WIRE (PDF File).

Here we go.

From Mathew Katz, former RIRA President, current RIRA Planning Committee Chair and current Candidate for RIRA President in the 2010 RIRA Elections:

My Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines a “whopper” as “a monstrous lie,” and that is what RIRA President, Frank Farance, has accused the Maple Tree Group of perpetrating in his August 28 RIRA Column. When you think of how long RIRA and MTG have worked together towards common goals, this is a sad thing. However, Frank has been using intemperate language regarding friends, allies and colleagues for almost two years now.

He declined to define what this lie might be, and so, we can’t respond. He accuses us of a “secret” meeting in which a vote on when to pursue a RIOC Board election was decided; a meeting that never took place. The debate among the RIOC Board elections core group has been long and involved, and conducted entirely by email, with the interested members of the Government Relations Committee (including Frank) included. The same August 28 WIRE issue in which Frank fulminates against our closed discussions, goes into several pages of detail on what the issues are, what data was analyzed and what our findings were. This material had been shared by email with the entire Common Council (well in advance of our next meeting on September 15, I might add) and the resident RIOC Board members, thus compounding the “secret.”

The central area of disagreement focuses on whether to hold RIOC Board elections this November or to wait until 2012. This is not a simple decision, and Ashton Barfield presented considerable discussion as to what criteria we considered to reach our 7 to 1 vote in favor of delaying until 2012.

Frank insists that he is on the MTG Committee, but in fact, has not participated in the decade-long rewriting of the legislation that created RIOC in 1984 nor has he participated in the 2007 work that devised and produced the first RIOC Board election. He notes, correctly, that he could not engage in our work while a candidate for the Board (he garnered the third highest vote count, but the Governor declined to appoint him), however, in the 26 months since the Board appointments resulting from that election, he has not participated in the well-documented work of the MTG Working Group or in the second election we organized for the community. Frank was a RIRA member during those years and, as RIRA President, was ex officio member of every RIRA committee, and could have included himself in our activities at any time.

MTG began in 1997 as noted in Ashton’s comprehensive article and at one time, boasted almost one hundred members. Our group has been whittled down over the years by weariness, attrition and frustration, leaving nine core members to accept the challenge of devising and producing RIOC Board elections without any guarantee that the Governor would appoint any of our choices. We recently solicited new members to bolster our group (including Frank) but withheld from them a vote on our deliberations until those folks had declared their commitment to the process. We believe that “decisions are made by those who show up.” At this writing, the current core group are the only shower uppers.

RIRA is not part of government and what influence we have is dependent upon our powers of persuasion. It is unfortunate that Frank has spent much of his term as president alienating many of those whose good will we must have to further our issues. When you are as powerless as any residents association is by definition, burning your bridges with the powerful is profoundly counter-productive. SPEAKING ONLY FOR MYSELF, I WISH that Frank would consider what is best for RIRA and for this community before indulging himself as he has.

Matthew Katz

RIOC Elections Working Group

Maple Tree Group

Chair, RIRA Planning Committee

RIRA President, 2000-2002, 2002-2004, 2006-2008

There's More!



From Roosevelt Island resident Vicki Feinmel:

Since I now proofread for The WIRE, I sometimes have to read columns that I would prefer not to read. One of these columns is The RIRA Column which I feel is not representative of RIRA but of it's President. Frank accuses the RIOC Board and the community, as a whole, of having double standards. So while we are on the subject of double standards, I found a letter that Frank wrote to the Common Council dated Sept. 30, 1999, complaining that the President's Column in The WIRE was "vitriolic and vituperative" and calls for a disclaimer on the top of the column and a review of the columns by the Vice President, the chair of the Communications Committee (who at the time happened to be Frank) and four other Council members.

When I read last issue's RIRA Column, I thought my head would explode, for the following reasons:

On this small island, you will always find many different opinions. People are very passionate about the issues they care about. Since we are neighbors and friends, we try to agree to disagree and respect each other. I found Frank's form of communication totally offensive, arrogant, disrespectful and his perception of reality is off. When Frank doesn't agree with an issue or process, he is accusatory and full of innuendo of wrong doing as he was when he discussed The RIOC Board, Maple Tree, the RFP for the Main Street Storefronts and the RIOC elections.

One must wonder if Frank has his own agenda. Is he resentful for not having been appointed to the RIOC Board? Could he want to see an early copy of the RFP because of his position on the Board of Island House (where many of the storefronts are located)? Could it be that Frank didn't drop out of Maple Tree because be became a RIOC Board candidate, in 2008, but rather because he had a hissyfit at a meeting when the group didn't agree with him on a particular issue?

Whatever the reason, where has he been the last 2 years? Could it be that the RIOC Board members didn't attend Farance's Town Hall Meeting due to not being notified rather than not being interested? For the record, only one storefront owner attended along with a sprinkling of RIRA members.

As much as I hate agreeing with Frank, I think he had it right in his 1999 letter. Let's put that disclaimer on top of his column and have the multiple review process put in place ASAP.

Is this the guy you want representing you? I sure don't.

From Maple Tree Group member Linda Heimer:

I surely wish there were a truth or fiction.com-type of web site for The RIRA Column! It would save me and others lots of time and effort spent to set the record straight. As a member of the Maple Tree Group (MTG), there is much I could say about RIRA President Frank Farance’s erroneous remarks regarding MTG in his last WIRE column (August 28), but I know others are addressing that section so I will confine my remarks to his erroneous or misleading statements elsewhere in his column.

FF (Farance remark) – ...Mr. Kalkin said that there was an immediate need for a RIOC president because some important decision needed to be made right away. No such event has happened since.
HR (Heimer response) – A. I spoke to RIOC Board member Jonathan Kalkin. He did not say decision, he said decisions. Big difference. An RFP for storefronts needed to be completed; privatization issues needed to be dealt with; retirement packages recently offered by the State might be accepted by RIOC employees and therefore restructuring of RIOC might have to be worked out; etc. Indeed, several major decisions have been made in the last few weeks.
B. Acting RIOC president Steve Chironis had publicly agreed to act in that position for no longer than 30 days.

FF – ...RIOC General Counsel, Ken Leitner...referred the questions...(re) what provisions, statutes, etc. prohibited the Board from discussing Shane’s firing to the Board Chair, read: there is no legal basis for the RIOC Board withholding the information.
HR – A. No one ever claimed there was a law against discussing Steve Shane’s departure from RIOC, just as there is no law preventing the media from disclosing their sources but they often choose not to for moral, ethical, and practical reasons. The public doesn’t always agree with this, but that’s the way it works.
B. The fact that Leitner referred Farance to the RIOC Chair doesn’t give him license to conjure up, as fact, whatever he wants as to the Board’s motives (also see privatization, storefronts, below). Whether you like or dislike the president of RIOC, the person in that position is hired and/or fired by the Board, not elected or appointed, and has the same right to privacy as any other State employee.

FF – As confirmed by Assemblymember Kellner, Shane’s firing involved friction with the Board over privatization (not really about storefronts).
HR – A. I spoke to Assemblymember Kellner. He claimed he never made this statement and that Farance misrepresented what was part of a long conversation. (Besides, Kellner was not in the executive session and would have been speculating as to why Mr. Shane left. Also, the very fact that the Board went into Executive Session during its June Board meeting implies they were handling something that could not be discussed in public.) Kellner told Farance that his guess was that “the Board was not happy with Shane because he was no longer executing what the Board wanted and was undermining them.”
B. What Kellner did say to Farance about privatization is, “You are sorely mistaken if you think that Steve Shane was your friend when it comes to privatization of Island House and Westview.” As evidence, Kellner told me that, “More movement has been made on privatization in the weeks since Shane’s departure than in the several months prior to it.”

FF – ...the CEO of Hewlett-Packard was fired by its board and their board chose to give an explanation. Why did they explain? Their board is elected by their shareholders, thus they need to explain their decisionmaking.
HR – A. I guess, once again, Farance is reading minds. Here’s a direct quote from the HP board’s press release:
“HP CEO Mark Hurd Resigns; CFO Cathie Lesjak Appointed Interim CEO...” Hurd then went on to explain why he resigned; the board did not.
B. They need to explain? What about the thousands of other public companies that do not explain, other than “He wanted to spend more time with his family?” The RIOC Board said they chose the route they did for ethical reasons, as stated above, and I choose to believe them. This is the first “elected” Board we have had and I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until and unless proven differently. Farance seems to want to look for every excuse to discredit
them before they barely get their feet wet.

FF – Mr. Kalkin continues to be unresponsive to questions about the RFP (Request for Proposals re storefronts). Mr. Kalkin and his committee members did not come to the RIRA Town Meeting in June to discuss this.
HR – According to Kalkin, Farance asked him if he would come to a meeting, that Farance would set up, to discuss the RFP with storefront owners and RIRA members because they were all very concerned about the RFP. Kalkin agreed but asked him not to set it up in a given week because he would be away and also because the committee meetings on the RFP had not been completed. Farance agreed and then set it up for the very time Kalkin asked him not to, gave
him less than 24 hours notice, and then criticized Kalkin for not attending. Only a handful of the 33 members of RIRA showed up and only one storefront owner. For some reason, Farance left that fact out of his column. Either most were not really as concerned as he claimed, or Farance didn’t advertise it sufficiently/appropriately.

FF – “All the records of (Kalkin’s) meetings have been removed from the RIOC website... we have no records of the committee meetings, so supporting documents, and a committee that refuses to answer questions or participate in community meetings.”
HR – A. There were four RIOC Real Estate Committee meetings specifically regarding the RFP, including some where it was examined line by line. They were open to the public and posted on the RIOC website. According to RIOC’s Mike Moreo, webcasts of committee meetings are posted for 30 days before being removed. After that, they are archived for 90 days (usually longer) and can be obtained through a FOIL request. If Farance were genuinely interested in the RFP, he would have at least attended one of the meetings or listened to the webcast rather than waiting until the bottom of the ninth to step up and then accuse the Board of being secretive.
B. The RFP and supporting documents are currently available to the public.

FF – We’ve asked for a copy of the RFP to review it prior to posting... but Mr. Kalkin refuses to have community input. Opaque, arbitrary, capricious.
HR – According to Kalkin, Farance asked for a copy of the RFP a few days before it was to be made public. Has Farance never heard of the term “full disclosure?” Did he mention, in his column, that he is on the Island House (IH) Board and that IH is a potential bidder for the storefronts in their building? Because they would have an unfair advantage, no potential bidder is exclusively allowed to see a final draft copy of an RFP they might bid on. In fact, the Board could have been sued had they given an advance copy to Farance that was not available to the public. I am sure he knows this, yet Farance uses this common and reasonable practice to unjustifiably criticize the Real Estate Committee and Mr. Kalkin who have worked very hard to get us the storefronts we have desperately needed for a very long time.

FF – ...Opaque, arbitrary, and capricious.
HR – Judging from all his misleading statements (not limited to the ones discussed here), it is my opinion that Mr. Farance is the one who is often “opaque, arbitrary, and capricious!” I don’t pretend to be able to read minds, like Farance, but I can predict Farance’s behavior with a good degree of certainty. Because it is his M.O., I am quite sure he will respond to every criticism and critique in the letters challenging his column, in his next column, and he
will be delighted to have the last word which will, very likely, include more distortions of reality. It saddens me to have to write this letter but it seems Farance is more interested in unjustifiably tearing down the hard work of groups, such as MTG and the RIOC Board, every chance he gets, instead of showing a united front to the powers that be (State, City,
DHCR, etc.) which can help us attain the goals the majority of us have (as stated in elections, referenda,
surveys, etc.) for our Island. I certainly hope that the next RIRA president will be more skilled at diplomacy and use the RIRA Column in a more responsible way. If you agree, let your voice be heard in the November RIRA elections.

Linda Heimer
RIOC Elections Working Group
Maple Tree Group
RIRA VP/Government Relations 1998-2000

From Ashton Barfield identified below:

Although I am a member of the Maple Tree Group (MTG) subcommittee of the RIRA Government Relations Committee (GRC), and the chair of GRC, I'm writing as an individual rather than as the representative of either group.

My letter concerns the August 28 RIRA Column, section 10, about MTG's discussions and conclusions regarding the best timing for the next RIOC Board elections. Unfortunately, that section contains a number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations about our processes, actions, and motives.

Fortunately, many of the problems were already addressed by your inclusion, in the same WIRE issue, of the subcommittee report that MTG sent to the Common Council on Thursday, August 26. (As you know, that MTG text was finalized long before you received the RIRA Column and, when I was proofreading the rest of the issue, I deliberately did not look at the RIRA Column, so that there could be no valid charge of privileged access.)

To set the public record straight about the rest of the inaccuracies and misrepresentations, here is an overview of the events and circumstances that preceded the MTG report.

Triggered by Frank Farance's March 16 email to MTG that Steve Shane had asked him about the pending expiration of Fay Christian's term, MTG began what turned out to be a 5-month quest for the data that appear in the report's chart -- whose accuracy was/is essential to any discussions and conclusions about the appropriate timing for the next election.

(The membership of MTG at the time had been stable for the past 3 years, starting with the 2007 pre-election activities, except for Margie Smith's resignation after her January 2010 appointment to the RIOC Board. Of the other 8 "core" members, 7 are indeed 13-year veterans of all the hard work for self-governance. Although I was briefly a member after the 1997 founding, I didn't become active again until the election opportunity emerged in 2007.)

Even before the beginning of this summer's election analysis, we were including the 3 non-MTG members of RIRA's Government Relations Committee in other discussions, so that they could at least become familiar with the issues, and comment on them, and -- we hoped -- become involved enough to join MTG formally.(Note that we didn't need to have any meetings during our election evaluation -- we were able to conduct it entirely by email, which made the discussions more inclusive and more thorough.)

On July 7, Frank Farance asked to be included in the discussions, and we welcomed his participation. (He framed it as his rejoining MTG, after having had to resign before the February 2008 (first) RIOC election because he was a candidate. However, he never sought to rejoin later in 2008, after he was skipped over by the Governor for Board appointment -- despite getting more votes than two candidates who were eventually appointed -- and so had never been part of the 3 years of election work.)

By July 17, I had enough confidence in the accuracy of the chart's data that I could distribute the first lengthy assessment of the RIOC-election-scheduling problems.

On Aug 4, following comments from most "core" MTG members (and only one of the "non-core" 4, Ellen Polivy), I sent a second lengthy assessment, incorporating everyone's input. Once again, only Ellen responded from the "non-core" 4. (Frank had said nothing thus far.)

On Aug 10, with time dwindling fast, I urged that we decide which approach seemed better -- 2012 or 2010. As everyone chimed in (except for 2 "non-core" people), the apparent trend was 7-1 for 2012 among the "core," and 1-1 among the "non-core" who had been heard from.

At this point, some "core" members expressed concern -- in the first emails that didn't include the entire group of 12 -- that people who hadn't experienced all the election issues, and work, of the past 3 years (not the whole 13 years, which was never a criterion), who might not fully understand the present concerns, and who had barely participated (if at all) in the present discussions, were going to have votes of equal weight. This expression of concern was a matter of principle: the vote would still favor 2012 by at least 7-5, even if all 4 of the "non-core" were to vote for 2010 (which was already not the case).

There followed a lot of discussion among the "core" about our preference for the more inclusive approach. One proposal was to offer the vote to those "non-core" people who opted to join MTG formally, including a verbal commitment to be fully involved going forward. Ultimately, 2 "core" members were uncomfortable with even this variation, and so the vote was taken among only the 8. Regardless of which side we were on, most of us felt that no net injustice was done because, as members of Common Council, the 4 "non-core" people would have full opportunity to express themselves verbally (again) in the almost-three weeks before the September 15 meeting, and then both verbally and by voting during the meeting.

On August 18, we communicated to the 4 "non-core" people that the voting had been conducted, why it had been limited to the "core" members, why we felt that the "non-core" people weren't being deprived of anything, and, after I checked to make sure that no one in the "core" had thought the vote was confidential, what the individual votes were in the 7-1 decision.

So, there you have the sinister, secret machinations of this MTG cabal that seeks to rule Roosevelt Island... Truly, the last thing that we want is to restrict our active ranks. We would love to have more members, to share the work and the responsibilities!

No doubt about it - tomorrow's RIRA meeting will be interesting!