Speaking of BIDs, resident participation, and the Community Benefits District alternative

The Post has an article about Business Improvement Districts (BID) being proposed for NoMa and the West End (towards Georgetown). See "2 New Improvement Districts in the Works."

Recently, the Washington Business Journal had a long piece about the effort to create a BID in the area around the coming Washington Nationals stadium in Southeast DC. See "DC baseball district prompts bid for a BID." Interestingly, both the proposed NoMA and Stadium BIDs take geography that the Capitol Hill BID had been counting on in their long term expansion plans.

Business Improvement Districts are private nonprofit associations of property owners and tenants that are created through a vote reaching a certain level of assessed value and a certain number of properties represented in the proposed BID geography.

They are managed by a board of directors, usually made up of property owners and commercial tenants. BIDs are authorized by City Council, which allows BIDs to assess (tax) commercial properties within the BID geography, and to use the money for various commercial district maintenance and marketing activities. Most BIDs spend the bulk of their revenue on clean and safe activities. Each BID is able to set its own level of assessment.

From the Post article:

Owners of more than 51 percent of the assessed property value and 25 percent of the individual, taxable commercial properties in a targeted district must sign petitions agreeing to the tax. Once those requirements are met, even property owners who didn't agree to the tax are required to pay it.

Because of their impact on public spaces, almost a kind of privatization, I think there needs to be a way to ensure some public participation in some way, in the oversight and deliberations of a BID. Public spaces do belong to all the citizens of the District of Columbia, not merely the abutting property owners.

Given the previous entry about the article, "The Mediocre Mile" and how economic forces are leading to a degradation of the quality of the built environment in the city generally, and in the Central Business District specifically, perhaps it is too dangerous to give business interests even more unfettered power to set the agenda and vision for these areas.

Perhaps ANCs should be able to appoint representatives to BID boards.

The representatives shouldn't necessarily be ANC Commissioners, but there needs to be some way to open up this process somehow. (Note: I don't think it would be easy to have a citizens position on a BID board, and advocate for quality like a "lone wolf." But it needs to be done. Of course, the citizen representative would need a good dose of training.)

Don't get me wrong. I favor BID activities generally, even though I prefer how San Diego does it. Most BIDs there use the Main Street model to organize and implement their activities. By using the Main Street Approach, residents are engaged in the process, from the beginning, in an active and ongoing fashion. (The North Park Main Street program in San Diego is a national award winner; Adams Avenue Business Association is interesting too, with Spring and Fall Music Festivals, and a focus on the arts.)

That's not the way it works in the traditional BID model. (Although there are exceptions. I think that the Center City BID in Philadelphia, which is no question, a traditional BID in terms of its organizational structure and control by developers, is pathbreaking in terms of its broad focus on all aspects of revitalization of the core of the city.)

Awhile back, Frozen Tropics listed some resources on BIDs in the entry, "BIDs and Main Street, What are They?" Also the current issue of the journal Next American City has some stories about BIDs, including this online resource, "WEB EXCLUSIVE: Business Improvement Districts (BIDs): Changing the Faces of Cities."
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Note that Baltimore has an alternate format, called a "Community Benefits District," which focuses more on neighborhoods, including both residential property and that of neighborhood commercial districts. There are two CBDs in Baltimore, Charles Village and Midtown.

I think it's a great concept, but it can be problematic, at least it is in Baltimore. You can get a core group of virulent anti-tax folks who challenge each and every activity of the organization, at least in Charles Village. This creates a lot of "noise" and ends up forcing the organization, one with a limited number of staff and mostly volunteer, to waste a lot of time and energy constanting responding to the nay-sayers.

Still, I think it's a good alternative for neighborhood commercial districts, would be a good way to fund Main Street commercial district revitalization programs, and would allow for the creation and management of Main Street programs in a manner that ensures resident participation, and because of the tax assessment model, would require a more open process for electing Board Members.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco has recently introduced CBDs, apparently in part to ensure resident participation. See "Five more areas vote to form Community Benefits Districts Neighborhoods will tax themselves to improve themselves." From the article:

A community benefits district is similar to a business improvement district. The money is raised through property taxes and then spent by a board comprising property owners, merchants and residents. The districts expire after 15 years. BIDs typically expire after five years and usually comprise only business owners. "CBDs are the BIDs of the 21st century," said Marco Li Mandri, a San Diego consultant who helped usher in San Francisco's community benefits districts. (Marco runs the Little Italy BID-Main Street program in San Diego.)

...Opponents of Community Benefits Districts charge that such districts favor wealthier neighborhoods, because only the wealthy can afford to tax themselves.

Promoters say the new Tenderloin district is proof otherwise. Property owners, including such diverse interests as the Hilton hotel, St. Anthony's and the federal government, joined forces with homeless advocates and residents to create the district. "Just because people are poor doesn't mean they like living in squalor," said attorney Elaine Zamora, who helped establish the Tenderloin district. "If Union Square can have something like this, why not the Tenderloin?"

Another argument against the districts is that the city should be providing those services. ...

In the Castro, a busy residential neighborhood that also attracts millions of tourists, the new district is much needed, merchants say. "When you have clean, safe, inviting streets, it's going to make people want to spend their time and dollars," said Paul Moffett, owner of P.O. Plus on Castro who, along with accountant Herb Cohn and Supervisor Bevan Dufty, helped create the new district. "How can you not want something that will make the neighborhood prettier?"

District organizers hope to hire local youth to do the sidewalk cleaning and other jobs, so that the money would stay in the district.

This article from the San Francisco Examiner, "Property owners see pluses of community benefit districts," is a more recent discussion of CBD developments in San Francisco.

Also see, "What is a CBD?," from the Greater Nob Hill CBD in San Francisco.
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DC also has a BID "alternative," called a Community Services District (CSD). But it merely allows you to assess unimproved land. This was done to create a proto-BID in the Mount Vernon Area of the city. But there aren't enough office buildings yet to generate the amount of money ordinarily required. Using the word "community" to describe such an organization is somewhat of a misnomer.

Index Keywords: business-improvement-districts