Update On Parking Spots Removed In Front Of PS/IS 217 - Bombastic RIRA President and Bunker Mentality RIOC President Square Off

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Yesterday, RIRA President Frank Farance sent a message to RIOC President Steve Shane objecting to the removal of 12 Main Street parking spaces in front of PS/IS 217 and the lack of communication between RIOC and the Roosevelt Island community prior to this action taking place as well as several other issues. After gathering the facts on the situation, Mr. Shane replied. Both messages are here.

Below is Mr. Farance's reply to Mr. Shane. Mr. Farance excerpts portions of Mr. Shane's response, in blue, and then responds in red.

Mr. Farance:
In your usual bombast, you have made assertions without bothering to call to find out what the issue may be before casting your aspersions about the competency or concerns of the RIOC personnel. No matter how you may have been conditioned, RIOC is not your enemy and is here trying to provide service to the residents of the Island as a public benefit corporation of the State of New York.

To Steve Shane:

For some reason, you like to frame this as strawman argument ("RIOC is the enemy of the residents") and then you get to knock it down. Again, I state: I don't believe RIOC is the enemy and we are working towards the benefit of the Island and its residents. Having said that, RIOC still does a terrible job communicating with the residents and stakeholders (as demonstrated here), RIOC still fails spectacularly with its operations and engineering, and RIOC's management is poor. Hopefully, you can see the distinction between dismissing the RIOC organization vs. criticism of RIOC's actions.

That having been said, the maintenance crew, reaching one of the long listed items for attention, painted the curb in front of the school yellow to indicate a "no parking" area and restored "no parking" signs to where they had previously been. You may remember that the signs which were mysteriously removed without RIOC's involvement had indicated no parking except for Board of Ed employees with placards. However, if there is no Board of Ed reason for keeping those spaces as "no parking", then they shall be returned to available street parking under the same rules as the rest of Main Street.

Bluntly, that's a bunch baloney. These spots have been parking spots for a very long time. I have photos going back to 2004 that demonstrate it so. I believe Geof Kerr did parking surveys in 2003 and 2004 (as reported in the WIRE) where the parking arrangement was the same.

And assuming your story were true, today you have "no stopping" (not just "no parking"), which means drop-off/pick-up would have always been illegal at PS/IS 217 (not true) and, likewise according to you logic, drop-offs would be illegal for the rest of schools in Manhattan (not the case).

Besides, if you really believed your story was true (I don't think you actually believe your own words), then your supposed logic ("missing no parking signs -- was always intended for no parking") would have arisen in RIOC's input to the Columbia study and Columbia would have excluded them (and noted them) in their presentation. But the Columbia study included those parking spots in their presentation of available street parking, i.e., I think you're just making up this supposed story of "missing signs".

In summary, your facts are incorrect and your story is self-contradicted.

... Public Safety was not involved in this matter at all. You may recall that the reason a Public Safety officer sits in the patrol car is at the loud request of residents so as to have a presence at the bottom of the ramp when and if a vehicle goes through the Stop sign. Being on foot doesn't give much hope to apprehending moving vehicles. Your opinions on appropriate deployment of public safety personnel are noted.

If Public Safety were doing a more effective job, the officer would be in the intersection directing traffic, which might have the preventive effect of increasing "public safety" and the flow of traffic. But your strategy (you'd rather a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention) just waits for the damage to happen and then hopes the Public Safety officer catches the offending driver. You defend the idea that the officer, at no additional cost, should be less effective than more effective. That's a bad strategy, and that's bad management -- really.

Increase in Motorgate revenue redounds to the benefit of all as it is part of RIOC's operating revenues which go into paying operating expenses. RIOC gets no part of ticket revenue as all tickets are adjudicated by the City, with a prior cut to the State by agreement between City and State. RIOC does get the meter revenue, so using your argument, why would it want to eliminate metered spaces?

As I pointed out, $3600 per parent per year in Motorgate revenues is much better than $0 for a 2-minute drop-off (i.e., *stopping*, not parking). Although I don't actually believe you've concocted such a scheme, Yes your new "no stopping" strategy increases Motorgate revenues and overshadows the relatively small meter revenue.

... As you know, the new lights at Motorgate are an experiment to see whether alternate fixtures with motion sensors would result in energy savings, BUT NOT AT THE COST OF PERCEIVED SAFETY. The engineers involved called for a specific type and arrangement. Your fulminating would discourage all experiments unless they were successful. Thank you for your "enlightened" commentary and we will attend to better illumination.

I don't discourage experimentation. As any engineer will tell you, some solutions don't require experimentation at all: an engineering model (or mathematics in this case) can tell you the experiment fails ... you don't need to actually build it to know it doesn't work. That's the kind of insight your Director of Engineering can give you. And if he can't give you that kind of insight, then he's (certifiably) not a good engineer and he's wasting (our) money on useless experiments.

I continue to believe that cooperative communication to resolve issues is better than the scorched earth diatribe throwing approach. I know that you think, by your explicit statement, that such an approach is the only way to get action. I have never refused your call or failed to pay attention to your issues, as I have similarly treated all other residents of the Island. Indeed, because of the presumed responsibility you have as the duly elected head of RIRA, I have accorded you even greater priority in the attention line. I believe you do neither yourself or your constituents any favors by the approach you have adopted.

Let's just recap: on one hand you eliminate a significant amount of street parking having significant impact on the community (**thousands** of residents) with no notice or review from the residents, the school, the parents, or other stakeholders, etc., and on the other hand you're upset that you didn't get to preview my E-mail before I sent it. Did I get that right?

And just to narrow the point here, yesterday Rosina Abramson held a Tea Party at Blackwell House on some early steps regarding the development of a master plan for a new Blackwell Park. Last month, she asked for agenda time at a RIRA Town Hall meeting, she involved the community, and there will be more steps this year: community involvement, getting feedback, all stakeholders (including RIOC) being informed -- an inclusive consensus-building approach on something that affects thousands of residents. Now compare that to your bunker mentality. See, it's not RIOC per se, it's the strategies and actions that executives (like yourself) choose.

Now that we've all acknowledged that the loss of parking is a bad idea, what is the timeframe in which you will be returning the parking spots back to metered parking?

Frank Farance
RIRA President