News

Memo: Snowstorm

Weather reports are showing the first winter storm of the season heading our way, set to hit late Friday night / early Saturday morning. Management is making preparations:

FROM: Shulie Wollman
Re: Snowstorm

We continue to monitor the snowstorm approaching New York City Friday night into Saturday/Sunday. Please err on the side of caution and prepare for what might be a one – three day event. Current estimates have our area receiving 8 – 12” of snow, mixed with rain, sleet and wind.

We will have a full maintenance crew clearing snow, salting sidewalks, driveways and parking lots. Parking lot gates will remain open to allow access for plows. Please do not drive during this storm – estimates for wind gusts and blowing snow, even after precipitation ceases will make roads impassable.

Our boiler room will be staffed around the clock. If you have any problem, please contact us, but also be aware that unless you have an emergency we do not want to dispatch a staff person to your apartment for an issue that can be attended to at the beginning of next week.

Anyone with a bicycle chained to a street sign within our area should remove their property to an indoor location. Our trucks and snow removal equipment traverse the entire sidewalk surface and any bike left within this area risks significant damage.

Our numbers are below:

Maintenance: 212-677-5744
Boiler Room: 212-677-2767

Thank you and stay safe.

If you don’t already get email notices from management (very few, they’re not spammy at all), you can sign up here: http://coopvillage.coop/emailSignup.php

News

Big U gets bigger and U-ier

Lower Manhattan just landed another $176 million in federal funds for flood protection. This round of funding would go for proposed development from Battery Park City on the west to Montgomery Street on the east, linking up with the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project on the East River from Montgomery to 23rd Street.

Flood barriers will wrap all the way around lower Manhattan.
Flood barriers will wrap all the way around lower Manhattan.

Last year, the de Blasio administration pledged $100 million for downtown protection, and other city and state pledges of up to $15 million had already been made, bringing the funding for this second phase of flood barriers close to $300 million.

$335 million in federal funds is already allocated for the ESCRP. Preliminary designs for berms and flood walls have received public vetting, and the official scoping project is now underway that will lead to an official environmental review.

It’s clear the devastation of Sandy in 2012 woke up New Yorkers to the threat rising sea levels will have on the city. In the next decade, these large environmental projects will completely change our city’s relationship to the waterfront. East River Coop will have a front row seat to this transformation.

News

Inside account of Silver jury

Looking for the skinny on what it was like inside the Silver jury room, when not one but two jurors asked to be excused from the trial after closing arguments had already been made?

Reporter Zack Fink has a long read in City & State about Silver’s trial and conviction on seven counts of corruption, including comments from one juror who claims to have helped persuade the lone hold-out that Silver had committed crimes — and done so knowingly.

If you’re a fan of Law & Order, or fixated on our local political tragedy, you’ll want to read this article.

City-State-screenshot

News

Fate of Silver’s Assembly seat still unknown

Two news reports this week lay out the politics taking shape around the race to succeed Sheldon Silver, and the timing and logistics of succession.

First, Zack Fink from Capitol Tonight sketches out the possible dates that voters may get a chance to weigh in:

  • An April 18 special election would need to be called by Gov. Cuomo within the next couple weeks. Cuomo originally announced that date to coincide with the presidential primary, so that polling places could do double-duty and save some money, but apparently New York City’s Board of Elections may be unprepared to run a federal and state election on the same day.
  • A special election could be held on another date that polls will already be open, June 28, which is the primary for Congressional seats, though by then the legislative session will be over.
  • There could be no special election, in which case the seat will remain empty all year.

In the case of a special election, party officials will select their respective nominees. (As noted here last year, many of those party insiders are part of Grand Street’s establishment.)

Whether there is a special election or not, the Assembly seat will be up again during the regular fall cycle, with a primary in September and election day this year on November 8.

As for possible contenders, the Lo-Down reports on a “growing field of candidates … maneuvering to replace Sheldon Silver in Albany,” including Paul Newell, who ran an unsuccessful primary against Silver in 2008; Jenifer Rajkumar, who unsucessfully challenged city council member Margaret Chin in 2013; Gigi Li, the CB3 chairperson who unsuccessfully challenged Rajkumar for district leader in 2015; and John Bal, who lost to Silver in a 1986 primary.

Click through to the Lo-Down for more information about these and other potential candidates.

News

Thank you! (from Jim, Michael, Ted, Fath, Julian, and Mike)

We’d like to extend an overdue thank-you to those of you who supported our campaign for the board of directors and house committee earlier this month.

We’d also like to offer congratulations to the winners — Ellen Gentilviso, Richard Kenny, Tommy Schlanger, and John Sotomayor.

The experience we had talking with cooperators about the future of East River was immensely gratifying, and each of us enjoyed meeting new neighbors and engaging old friends.

In particular, there were dozens of volunteers who helped reach out to shareholders, and 120 of you whose public endorsement meant a great deal to us. Thank you!

The high turnout for this year’s election is enormously encouraging. We hope these conversations will continue, and that the negative accusations thrown against some of us in the closing week of the campaign will not discourage others from participating in the election process. A community like ours deserves a lively, open debate about the policies that guide us.

Cooperatively yours,

Jim Keenan
Michael Marino
Ted Pender
Faith Schreier
Julian Swearengin
Mike Turner

News

Board president stays classy

11 Comments
Happy holidays to the vast majority of you.
Happy holidays to the overwhelming majority of you.
Board president Gary Altman distributed a memo today in which he (a) thanks all board candidates for their participation, (b) congratulates the winners, (c) bemoans the lack of competition in the house committee election, and (d) lets slip that Enemies of the Coop have infiltrated the highest level of power at East River.

Altman’s non sequitur send-off:

“The overwhelming majority of the Board of Directors remain committed to always working tirelessly to build up, and never tear down, our cooperative.”

Who exactly are the board members Altman has identified as cooperative vandals? He’s too classy to name names; the policy he prefers is innuendo.

I’m going to go waaaay out on a limb here and suggest that Altman took exception to a letter distributed last month by board members Lee Berman and Peter Herb, “Even directors are kept in the dark.” In that letter, Berman and Herb spoke out about how the overwhelming majority of directors — that is, all nine beside them — have enabled some irresponsible operational habits: monthly financial reports are not provided regularly; the budget, three months late, is approved with no discussion; and major policy shifts are passed with back-of-the-envelope analysis.

Those are specific charges, with which I assume Altman disagrees — if so, I’d like to hear him refute them on their merits and not resort to thinly veiled attacks on the character and motives of Berman and Herb.

Let’s look at the bigger picture here. There are 5,000 people living at East River, and not all of us agree on every single thing. We don’t have to, no one should expect us to. What we should expect is that those disagreements happen with as much adult-sized integrity as we can muster, using respectful words to soften our provocations. Challenging questions incite discussion, not riot; wanting to build the coop up in a different way is not the same as wanting to tear it down.

News

Satirist attacks!!

3 Comments

Good Sunday morning everyone. Did you wake up to this same fake Cooperatively Yours letter on your floor that I did? I’m not sure who’s got an axe to grind and time on their hands, but it’s actually kind of funny:

“There are many issues facing us and we must meet these with brazen emotion and a myopic mass focus to ensure nothing changes our aggregated indignation.”

“I don’t want to be sensationalistic or provocative, but do you really want our buildings to be taken over by food-delivery people carrying assault rifles? We need better security now!”

“What we need right now is real-time GPS monitoring of all the management and maintenance personnel. How many times have you impatiently waited for maintenance to come while your faucet kept dripping? How often have you wondered what management really does all day?”

Sounds like someone’s already preparing for our 2016 coop election. But why would directors not also get GPS monitoring? Why not every new shareholder? I’ll take this set of proposals as just a first draft …

News

Next up for East River storm surge project: public comments tonight at Bard H.S.

Extent of flooding during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Extent of flooding during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

There’s a public meeting tonight for the next phase of the design process for the huge project that’s going to re-make our waterfront:

Thursday, December 3rd
Presentation at 7:00 P.M.
Bard High School Early College
525 East Houston Street

This meeting is called a public scoping, which means the public gets to comment on a draft scope of work document that will then influence the environmental impact review that will have to be done on a project like this. That draft scope of work document is long and dense and can be found online here.

If you can’t make it in person tonight, you can also email comments to escr@parks.nyc.gov.

News

Incumbent slate wins big in board election

46 Comments

Counting the ballots and proxies concluded just under an hour ago, and the winners are Ellen Gentilviso, Richard Kenny, John Sotomayor, and Tommy Schlanger.

Turnout was strong again, comparable to last year, around 950 shareholders. Winners picked up between 526 and 572 votes; the Cooperatively Yours slate came in well behind, with 356 – 380 votes.

All four house committee candidates won by unanimous consent at the annual meeting and votes for those seats were not tallied.

Update: There were some additional general proxy ballots discovered Thursday morning that had not been counted Wednesday night. They did not change the outcome, though the total votes that should be posted today will be a higher than the numbers above.

News

Anonymous smears are an insult to you as much as they are to us

7 Comments

Dear Neighbors,

The unsigned letter distributed throughout the coop since Thanksgiving is more than an attempt to damage our campaign — it’s a challenge to your conscience.

The authors of this attack want you to be afraid, or confused, or disgusted. Ask yourself, is this the best argument they can make for why the incumbents should be returned to office again? And, if it is, why not sign their names? To ask the question is to answer it.

We will not be intimidated by slander, and neither should you.

  • Jim Keenan and Mike Turner are real estate professionals, and both agreed to and signed an unprecedented conflict of interest statement written by East River’s corporate counsel.
  • Mike does not list with AirBnB or any other service and has never sublet his apt.
  • Jim’s issue with Stuy Town is a private matter with his family and has no bearing on the coop.

Our campaign has been based on policy disagreements, not personal ones.

  • We believe the current board majority is increasing our debt at a dangerous rate. The coop now owes $25,000,000 — that’s a $15,000 maintenance increase for each of you that the board just hasn’t told you about yet.
  • We want security taken more seriously. Last week’s rape at the East River bandshell is a wake-up call to repair broken locks, security cameras, and lights around our property, and to crack down on deliverymen who keep keys to the coop.
  • We think the recent change in sublease policy will dramatically reduce our income as owners are encouraged to rent instead of sell. The policy needs to be reexamined.

Do not let yourself be manipulated by anonymous smears. Vote to reaffirm the guiding principles of cooperative living.

Cooperatively yours,

James Keenan
Faith Schreier
Julian Swearengin
Mike Turner

P.S. It’s not too late to counter hateful anonymous attacks with open-minded, respectful policy-making. You can still vote! Come to the annual meeting on Tuesday at 7:30 pm, or return a general proxy to one of us or our delegates before then.