One Minute to Speak

This story begins not with a press release, but with a request.

The wind off the East River worries the mesh roof of the enclosure where tabbies nestle into straw and a gimpy Canada goose—wing belted in pale vet‑wrap—claims the warmest corner. Rossana Ceruzzi moves between crates in practiced hush, timing her breath to the rhythm of spooked heartbeats. She is a rehabilitator; language, when she uses it, is normally pitched for animal ears. Yet antibiotics are low, the surgery fund gone, and each overdue invoice presses harder than a paw in winter mud. So, after the evening feed, she opened RIOC’s web form—the one that promises islanders a single minute at the microphone—and typed out a last, slender plea. She clicked submit, wiped sardine oil from her palms, and told herself she would worry about speeches later.

Why Revisit a Meeting?

Following the release of the New York State Inspector General’s report on April 2nd, 2025 — which found that former RIOC President Shelton Haynes and General Counsel Gretchen Robinson had misused state funds — The Roosevelt Islander published an article summarizing the findings. In that piece, blogger Rick O’Connor noted the proximity between Ben Fhala’s resignation and the period under investigation, suggesting that Fhala’s visible public dissent might warrant a closer look.

Theo Gobblevelt—investigative writer for The Roosevelt Island Lighthouse—reached out to Fhala’s legal counsel. His legal team responded courteously to Theo, deferring all questions to his resignation letter. That should have closed the file, but Theo mistrusts tidy endings. He asked me to trade the letter for the video of Ben’s last board meeting — September, 19, 2025 —because a room sometimes remembers what a document omits. I pressed play, and before nine minutes had passed, the quiet began to speak.

---

The meeting began, as they always do, with a list.

Meghan Anderson, seated at the head of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation board table, read names aloud from her notepad — the public speakers who had requested, in advance, a minute to speak. Just a minute. The time was 5:49 p.m. The camera was rolling.

The first name she called was Rossana Ceruzzi.

Rossana is the kind of figure who exists quietly in a community until, suddenly, we realize everything fragile is resting on her shoulders. Rossana runs the Wildlife Freedom Foundation — a shoestring operation, built on the labor of volunteers who respond day and night to the calls we don’t hear: a bird injured by window glass, a kitten left behind, an opossum dazed in the road. She is, by license and temperament, a rehabilitator. A caretaker not just of animals, but of a kind of trust.

Meghan told her she had one minute. Rossana took eight.

In that span she laid out a year of erasure. A signed 2023 agreement—a modest $15,000 service contract to cover emergency animal care—sat honored only in memory. Verbal assurances from Haynes and Robinson to renew it had dissolved. From January onward, every x‑ray, antibiotic, and splint came out of the foundation’s pocket.

Not even a no had arrived.

She spoke clearly, but weariness rasped at the ends of every sentence. Since January, she said, the foundation had floated every vet bill on volunteers’ credit cards—an ungainly act of faith in a $40 million public corporation that had switched off a mere $15,000 and, by doing so, nearly silenced a refuge. She listed each unanswered email, each certified letter, and then her eyes settled on Director Howard Polivy.

Rossana’s gaze is practiced on creatures who cannot speak; it asks for nothing but permission to keep them alive. In that moment the board room felt suddenly too small for the question her eyes carried: What does a voice cost here? Polivy looked up, caught the weight of it, and let his own stare fall to his restless hands. Finger and thumb tapped an uneven measure against the lacquered table—answer enough.

The moment caught in the camera’s widening frame. Howard, looking down, fingers twitching. Lydia Tang, still and composed, absorbing every word. Fay Christian, nodding politely, her eyes elsewhere. Meghan, off screen, quiet.

It wasn’t just a funding request. It was the culmination of a year of invisibility.

When she finished, Rossana thanked the board and turned away. And for a moment, there was nothing. Not even a motion to respond.

He clicked his microphone.

“I'm sorry,” Ben said. The words landed softly, meant for Rossana yet aimed, by the tilt of his disappointed gaze, at Howard Polivy. Ben let the mic stay live a moment longer, as though inviting the board to echo him. No one did. He muted, lifted his glass, and silence pooled where answers should have been.

I caught myself wondering: was this glance the first draft of Ben’s departure? A wordless conversation seemed to flicker between Rossana’s steadiness, Ben’s bruised idealism, and Howard’s shuttered stare—history spoken in the space between breaths.

---

A Walk Among Ruins — or the Memory of One

I have not seen David Kraut in months—perhaps years, but who keeps the ledger anymore? Even so, on the night the meeting replay ended, his voice strolled beside me in a waking daydream along the river path. The Smallpox Hospital’s skeletal walls glowed under security lights, and in my mind we paused, as we always used to, where loose boards fence off the rubble. Beyond them, Southpoint Sanctuary’s lone lantern swung, and I heard David grunt his familiar, half‑amused disgust.

“Did you hear?” the imagined David asked, chin tilted toward the light. “CFO Amin dragged half the board down there—cooing over cats and geese.”

He produced, in this reverie, a folded motion slated for next month’s agenda: Public Purpose Funds — increase from $150,000 to $250,000. His thumb stabbed the paper. “A hundred‑grand sugar cube and not a murmur of dissent from Polivy or the chair.”

I reminded him—still speaking only inside my head—that fifteen thousand of that total would barely stitch a wing or spay a litter. David snorted. “People remember ribbon cuttings, Eleanor. They remember long lines on the tram. Feral cats? Geese in splints? The more attention we give those details, the more incompetent we all look. Our job is to keep eyes off the fine print.”

A wind off the river rattled the board, as if the plywood—and the quorum behind it—could hear him. The lantern beyond bobbed once, steadying itself against the gust, and my imagined companion dissolved into the dark.

---

Aftermath and Unanswered Questions

Some say the session marked a turning point. Others—speaking off the record—suggest something quieter was at play: that Rossana’s lapsed contract became a lever in campaigns to unseat Shelton Haynes and Gretchen Robinson. If so, the foundation was collateral in a contest far larger than it ever asked to join.

No memo records that tension, but the camera did. Rossana’s voice—her refusal to be erased—made it unignorable.

This was never about policy. It was about presence.

A woman entered a room that had ignored her for nearly a year and, in eight borrowed minutes, forced it to listen. Sometimes that is how silence begins to crack.

Not long after the meeting, RIOC quietly settled Rossana’s overdue invoices and honored the 2024 service agreement—one season only, no promise of renewal. Hoping for something steadier, the Wildlife Freedom Foundation sought $20,000 through RIOC’s Public Purpose Funds. The reply arrived: $5,000 awarded. It is a token foothold—enough for winter seed and splints, not enough for the work that spans a year. How the remaining dollars were divided—and who weighed the scales—remains cloaked for now; until those ledgers breathe daylight, the unanswered arithmetic hovers over the river.

If her minute moved you, lend a hand to the creatures still waiting in those lantern‑lit enclosures. Even the cost of a morning coffee buys antibiotics or straw. You can send whatever you can spare here.

This is a work of narrative storytelling inspired by real events. Some characters, dialogue, and scenes are imagined to convey broader truths and do not depict actual conversations or individuals.