Roosevelt Island Still Without President and VP Of Operations - RIOC Govenance Committee Meeting Today To Discuss

 Image Of RIOC Directors December 20 Q&A On Management Upheaval

The Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Governance Committee is meeting today. According to RIOC:

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that a meeting of the Governance Committee of the RIOC Board of Directors will be held on Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 5:30 p.m. at the RIOC administrative office, 591 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, New York.

AGENDA

Discussion of Procedures for Board Ratifications and Board Meetings;

Discussion of Open RIOC Staff Positions; and

Any Other Committee Business That May be Brought Before the Committee.

As reported in this December 21 post:

Among the topics discussed at last night's Question and Answer session between Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) resident Directors and members of the community were the recent management upheavals at RIOC with the unexplained departures of former President Leslie Torres and former Vice President of Operations Fernando Martinez.

Residents expressed concern about the lack of management running Roosevelt Island.

RIOC Director David Kraut said that there was an upcoming RIOC Governance Committee meeting that will address executive staff issues.

RIOC Director Margie Smith was more forthcoming expressing frustration because:

... We're in a tough position ... we hear things in Executive Session that we can't say to anybody...

and that Governor Cuomo is:

... very much in control of what's going on, he's now looking at Public Authorities...

adding:

... we see Leslie resigning, we see Fernando resigning. We don't know if there was something behind the resignation or they chose to resign. They didn't share that information with us. there's not much we can do about it

and:

... we're trying to get those positions filled ... we're trying to keep this place running to the degree we can...

Video of the discussion about RIOC management is available here.

Will we learn anything new about the future of Roosevelt Island management tonight?

Stay tuned.

An audio web cast of the meeting will be made available by RIOC soon thereafter.

UPDATE 11:15 PM - Nothing new was learned at tonight's Governance Committee meeting about the selection of new RIOC President and Vice President of Operations except it is more clear than ever that the Governor's office wants to make the decision and the RIOC Directors are unsure of how to proceed.

The RIOC Directors are caught between their independent fiduciary obligations under the Public Authorities Act to the Corporation which gives them the right to hire/fire the President and Vice President and NY State political power considerations which may force them to defer to the patronage wishes of Governor Cuomo.

At the conclusion of tonight's discussion, the RIOC Governance Committee Directors decided to draft a letter, subject to approval by the full RIOC Board, to the NY State Authorities Budget Office seeking direction on how to proceed with selecting a new President and Vice President.

Here's what happened. Watch the whole video to see how decisions, or, lack of decisions, get made on who picks the top executives governing Roosevelt Island.



Will have more on this soon.