On Monday, April 13, three plaintiffs–downtown property owners Alan Scheinman, David Pesuit, and Eric Suher, filed suit against the City of Northampton in Hampshire Superior Court, seeking declaration that the Northampton Business Improvement District (BID) was created in violation of state law. Amherst-based attorney Alan Seewald is representing the three.
A BID is a special taxation district formed to provide supplemental services to a commercial district. BID formation in the commonwealth is regulated by M.G.L. Chapter 40O, and requires a petition drive, a delineated map, a public hearing process, a city council vote, and independent oversight on the part of local government. The city council voted on March 6 to approve the creation of a Business Improvement District for downtown Northampton, granting validity to the BID petition. The petition drive was spearheaded by the Downtown Steering Committee of the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, a committee headed by former restaurant owner Dan Yacuzzo. Chapter 40O requires that the city of Northampton independently verify that any petition to form a BID meets both the substantive and procedural requirements of Chapter 40O.
The suit alleges a number of procedural violations on the part of the city: first, that that the property owners' signatures collected on BID assent forms do not meet the standard of signatures to a petition. "Assenting signatures were gathered long before the BID petition was even drafted," Scheinman told the Advocate. The suit alleges that notice of the public hearing was published inappropriately by BID petitioners, and not by city government; and that the second published notice of the public hearing did not meet the standard of providing fourteen days notice.
The plaintiffs claim that the city failed to check signatures to see that each was the rightful property owner; and that where property was owned by more than one person, to check that each owner had signed, and that where property was owned by an entity other than a person, that the signator had the right to sign.
The suit alleges that the city failed to reject illegible signatures, and failed to calculate independently of the BID petitioners whether the signatures met the legal requirement that the petition contain "the signatures of the owners of at least fifty-one percent of the assessed valuation of all real property owners within the proposed BID and sixty percent of the real property owners."
Finally, the plaintiffs contend that the city, following the lead of BID petitioners, improperly used a one-parcel-one-assent standard instead of a one-owner-one assent standard in determining that sixty percent of the real property owners within the proposed BID had signed assent.
The plaintiffs seek an order that the BID was not validly established, and that any actions taken by the city to establish the BID are null and void and of no legal effect. The suit also asks the court to issue an injunction ordering the city of Northampton not to deem that the BID has been established, not to commence or continue the operations of the District, to remove from the official records of the city any reference to the establishment of the BID, and to give legal notice that the "purported creation of said District has been ruled null and void and of no legal effect."
Downtown property owners have until April 21 to "opt out" of BID membership. BID opponents have charged that BID fees will be equal to a 43-percent boost in property taxes for commercial property owners in the district.
