Caty Simon of Poverty is Not a Crime posted an entry this morning regarding a lawsuit opposing Northampton's Business Improvement District or BID.
Read the full entry >>>>> Lawsuit poised to challenge the validity of the BID.
Some excerpts:
Alan Sheinman, David Passauit, and Eric Suher, three prominent Valley property owners and long time opponents of the Business Improvement District, are suing the city with the aim of making the council's decision of adopting the BID invalid and without effect. They feel strongly enough about this that they are running the lawsuit solely on their own funds, not wanting to be dependent on any funders–although, of course, additional donations are appreciated. They feel fairly confident about their success. Yesterday, I had lunch with Allan Sheinman at Florence's Side Street Cafe, the last in a series of conversations I've had with him about BID issues, and got a better picture of all these goings ons.
Sheinman told me that despite being a longtime Northamptonite, he's been planning to move to his property in Holyoke for a while now. "I have one foot out of this city, I could just opt out [of the BID] and leave, but these actions on the part of the city and the BID proponents are so egregious and offensive that I can't just sit still for them. This is a blatant power grab by the city and a small elite of business and property owners, a direct result of their aggrandizing urge for power." Sheinman explained to me that after three years the city will have a good deal of control over the BID board—and yet, because the BID is allowed to meet behind closed doors by law, without any institutional transparency or public accountability, the city can wield this power over municipal affairs without being hindered by the requirements of representative democracy.
Sheinman has quite a few political objections to the BID, expressed in his conversations with me and in the literature he's been handing out urging businesses to opt out, and in numerous interviews he and his fellow plaintiffs have given the article. He feels that the city and the Chamber of Commerce should offer basic maitenance of public property without requiring that businesses tithe to the powers that make up the BID–after all, that's how things operate in the majority of cities and townships across the nations, which do not have BIDS. And why should a tax paying businesses be denied these basic services if they opt out because their profit margin is too thin to afford the fees in the midst of a reccession? And in a time of economic depression, how does it make sense to force business and property owners to pay a tithe to the BID that represents 43% of their property taxes in order to receive basic services, something that will result in raised rents and thus raised prices, placing a further economic burden on all Northamptonites that live, work, shop, and own a business or property in downtown? And in this difficult economic situation, if a business or property does not opt out in time and fails to pay its fees, the BID can have a lien on that property. The BID can borrow money and buy property, and use it in competition with area businesses–so much for being an altruistic organization existing only to help area businesses and properties.
There is much more to the interview at the link posted above.
