HPD told the CAG there was no projected start date and that five business days’ notice would be given. Work on the eastern smokestack began six days later.
This official behavior is hard to understand because the officials seem to gain nothing. Maybe the evil is as mundane as simple laziness and the absence of oversight. New York City government is a blundering, rolling ball of yarn without controls, built out of decades of bureaucratic expansion and self-protection. It's a mess that needs a complete rebuild, if anyone ever has the cojones to do it.
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That said, imitating a broken record again, I have to ask, Where the hell is Julie Menin? We elected her to represent Roosevelt Island with city government, but finding Waldo would be easier. I doubt you'll get much action until you can get Julie to knock off the Kristi Noam routine and do the work.
Whether it's mundane inertia or something more arranged, the outcome is the same: residents left without verified protections while the work moves forward. A handful of locals are left fighting for timely answers that the bureaucracy rarely provides, because it does not answer to the public, and the elected too often see no point in stepping up against whatever invisible powers prefer the process run smoothly and quickly.
Lisa’s question in Eleanor’s piece remains the deepest and bravest one asked publicly: why is the public paying to clear the ground for what looks like private use by an unnamed real estate interest?
Hudson-Related steers Roosevelt Island development. That accelerated after CEO Charlene Indelicato kept some controls on them while she was in office. After that, the company got whatever it wanted and that certainly includes control over the Steam Plant site. That does not excuse bad behavior by city officials, but it's all in the same mixing bowl and will be so until enough residents push back hard. Keep stirring unrest with spoonfuls of truth.
This official behavior is hard to understand because the officials seem to gain nothing. Maybe the evil is as mundane as simple laziness and the absence of oversight. New York City government is a blundering, rolling ball of yarn without controls, built out of decades of bureaucratic expansion and self-protection. It's a mess that needs a complete rebuild, if anyone ever has the cojones to do it.
.
That said, imitating a broken record again, I have to ask, Where the hell is Julie Menin? We elected her to represent Roosevelt Island with city government, but finding Waldo would be easier. I doubt you'll get much action until you can get Julie to knock off the Kristi Noam routine and do the work.
Whether it's mundane inertia or something more arranged, the outcome is the same: residents left without verified protections while the work moves forward. A handful of locals are left fighting for timely answers that the bureaucracy rarely provides, because it does not answer to the public, and the elected too often see no point in stepping up against whatever invisible powers prefer the process run smoothly and quickly.
Lisa’s question in Eleanor’s piece remains the deepest and bravest one asked publicly: why is the public paying to clear the ground for what looks like private use by an unnamed real estate interest?
The record stays silent. The pattern does not.
Hudson-Related steers Roosevelt Island development. That accelerated after CEO Charlene Indelicato kept some controls on them while she was in office. After that, the company got whatever it wanted and that certainly includes control over the Steam Plant site. That does not excuse bad behavior by city officials, but it's all in the same mixing bowl and will be so until enough residents push back hard. Keep stirring unrest with spoonfuls of truth.
We've entered an era where lying is ordinary and expected and without consequence. I wonder what comes next.