Standing on a street corner in downtown Northampton soon, there’s a good chance you’ll see one of two mythical, money-eating creatures.
You’ll have to look closely to make a positive ID. Both will have their hands out, promising good things for only a small, but hopefully regular, contribution. Both will be accused of misrepresenting what compels them to beg.
The trick to telling them apart is that one creature, the elusive Aggressive Northampton Panhandler, will be asking for spare change to feed themselves or a habit, or for a bus ticket home. The other mythical beast, the proposed Northampton Business Improvement District (BID), will be looking for a monthly payment from downtown property owners, based on the assessed value of their property, to fund upkeep, special events, security, and marketing for a large swath of the city’s center. The panhandler typically approaches funding sources directly, while the BID sends letters to the building owners, detailing its finances and letting them know what extra they’ll be paying monthly.
Reports on the precise nature of an attack from an aggressive panhandler have never been substantiated (the non-aggressive variety let people pass, maybe feeling a tad guilty, but generally unharmed), but property owners within the business district who do not opt out within 30 days of receiving their letter will get regular letters forever after requiring liberal injections of cold, hard cash.
If the City Council approves the BID request, which it may vote on as early as its next meeting on February 19, it will also be approving a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Mayor Clare Higgins and the BID organizers on what the city will contribute. Though the city is not a business and doesn’t pay taxes itself (it levies them, of course), the MOU makes the city a member, and public properties are included within the district served by the BID.
Most importantly though, in lieu of the city paying dues, the MOU commits Northampton’s taxpayers to at least $85,000 annually, with a list of other possible “in kind” contributions. While individual businesses can opt out, resident taxpayers only have the Council’s vote to protect them from the BID beast.
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Opening the Northampton City Council meeting last week, Mayor Higgins read a letter written by herself, director of economic development Teri Anderson, and Police Chief Russell Sienkiewicz. They were asking that their solicitation (formerly “panhandling”) ordinance be tabled indefinitely. No apologies or regrets; they tucked their tails because the debate got heated. Too “polarized,” they called it. They didn’t want disapproval over the ordinance to get in the way of approving the BID.
But even with the panhandling ordinance tabled, in his opening remarks to the Council, BID organizer Dan Yacuzzo still spoke of the panhandlers. Keeping downtown clean and safe are key to his platform promoting the BID, and a chorus of other longtime business owners, including realtor Pat Goggins and Mansour Ghalibaf, owner of the Hotel Northampton, emphatically assured the Council that their downtown is getting more and more unsafe by the day. (You might not see it yourself, living and working here, but returning visitors mention it often, Ghalibaf said.)
Yacuzzo maintains the aggressive panhandlers aren’t just fantasy—he’s seen them; as someone who has spent two years and thousands of his own dollars trying to make a BID a reality, he hopes soon to witness the birth of one in Northampton.
Long-time owner of the East Side Grill, Yacuzzo was also a previous chair of the Planning Board. He sold the successful business last year and is now a restaurant consultant. Though he no longer owns property within the proposed district, he sees a BID as the only thing that can save his downtown from becoming a dangerous dump.
In an interview with the Advocate the morning after the Council meeting, Yacuzzo rejected the accusations other local business owners like Eric Suher had made the night before, describing the BID’s dues system as draconian and unfair. Property owners who are hesitant about or against joining the BID can opt out, Yacuzzo explained, and they’re always welcome to join later. They can also be selective about which of their properties participate, he said, recognizing the BID benefits wouldn’t be equally advantageous to all properties.
He also disagreed with the Smith student who had addressed the Council after he did the night before. Gerilyn Hubbe charged that the school’s dealings with the BID organizers had happened while students were away on break. Smith students didn’t want their campus part of a business district, she declared, and Northampton was more important to them than just a place to shop. She was concerned about the budget allocated for “safety” and feared the BID would employ private police. She promised to organize a resistance.
Yacuzzo told the Advocate he felt the criticism was unwarranted. He and Ruth Constantine, Smith’s Vice President for Finance and Administration, had been in negotiations for nearly a year, but they have still not decided on Smith’s in-kind contribution. He added that it’s not at all unusual for colleges and universities to be part of a local BID, and said there would be no “rent-a-cops.” The percentage allocated for safety in the BID budget mostly reflects an in-kind contribution from the city for a beat cop to patrol downtown. Yacuzzo said the extra police officer was the first item the city had agreed to provide in the MOU.
Given that city government is typically responsible for a town’s cleanliness and safety, and an election will be held this year, Yacuzzo laughed off a suggestion that perhaps, instead of creating a new paid bureaucracy, he run for mayor. The BID, as he saw it, was not in competition with the city, but simply afforded members a seat at the decisionmaking table.
During the Council meeting, he also laughed when it was suggested that he might be angling for the position of chair on the BID committee. In his subsequent interview with the Advocate, he initially explained that, since he didn’t own downtown property, he’d most likely consider being a BID committee member at-large. Toward the end of the interview, though, he allowed that if no one else stepped forward, he’d consider chairing the committee on a limited basis.
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Yacuzzo said he hadn’t imagined there would be opposition to the BID. How could a big pot of money to improve downtown be anything but a good idea? Once people understand the truth, he said, he’s confident the BID will become a reality.
There is no need for imagination, though, to determine what might happen with a BID, should it be created. Yacuzzo and several of the key players involved with the proposed BID also sit on the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), the group that oversees the development on Hospital Hill. More than $22 million in taxpayer money has been spent on the hill, but little of what the group initially planned has ever come to fruition.
Less than a year before the BID was first presented to the City Council, the CAC unanimously voted to abandon long-held, oft-promised plans for the creation of a village—a mix of retail, commercial and residential property—on the hill. Early last year, CAC voted to allow defense contractor Kollmorgen to relocate to a site previously designated for use as an “incubator” for new, small businesses. At the time, Joe Blumenthal, CAC member and BID advocate, said there would be time for public input later. To date, the public has not been asked for input.
Last December, the CAC passed a plan, endorsed by the mayor, to add up to a hundred additional houses to the development. Over the course of several months, the group was unable to agree on a plan for the site, but nevertheless approved the additional housing; though many CAC members noted that the extra housing units would further limit the chance to mix the site with commercial property, the housing plan still passed.
Although Blumenthal voted against the extra housing and CAC member Bruce Fogel, a local lawyer who also represents the proposed BID, abstained, it is worth noting that both of them, as well as Yacuzzo, were simultaneously negotiating with the chair of the CAC, Mayor Higgins, over the city’s financing of the BID—an apparent conflict of interest.
Yacuzzo disagreed, saying that what happened on Hospital Hill has nothing to do with what is being proposed downtown.
