City Commission passes BID resolution
The current Business Improvement Committee (BIC) wants to become a Business Improvement District (BID) and the City Commission is all for it. A resolution was passed seconds ago (all in favor) to have Dave Collins, executive director, proceed with the plan.
This has been Dave's baby for a long time. It would allow the Grove to manage itself and provide services that the City does not provide or provide well. The City manager agreed to maintain the baseline services. Now a vote is needed by the various business owners to allow this self governance (to add and enhance services). The Grove will then decide what they want and need -- more police? more lighting? more garbage pick up? more marketing? This would all be in the hands of the Grove, not the City.
It is the next best thing to breaking away from Miami officially.
The BID is also known as a "self-taxing district." The current BIC is an advisory committee. The BID would actually govern itself with a governing body and staff. It will have an annual budget, based on a business plan. The plan could be modified on an annual basis.
The BID will not include Village West at this point and just cover the Central Business area. Stuart Sorg stood up and was concerned that the Bird Avenue area and Village West is left out of the first phase. But the Commissioners were all totally in favor and now the process starts. It is now up to the business owners to decide if they want this.
"This is a step in the right direction," said Comm. Joe Sanchez.
The first change you would see is cleanliness -- the Grove would be spotless according to Dave Collins. Marketing would be the second biggest difference and of course police officers would be on the street immediately, walking an old-fashioned beat, according to Dave.
But again, this is a long tedious process that starts today. Dave and his group now have to convince over 100 landlords and over 200 businesses to tax themselves and govern themselves.
posted by Tom Falco at 3:10 PM
YOU MAY NOT LIFT THE PHOTOS & TEXT. IT'S COPYRIGHTED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. YOU CAN HOWEVER SHARE A STORY ON SOCIAL MEDIA BY USING THE LINKS HERE.
For linking to this one story, just click on the time it was posted & just this story will open for sharing - only through social media. Not copying and pasting.
5 Comments:
Sounds like good news although Id emphasize marketing #1. Need to use the Burn Notice hook while we still can...
This is a really BAD idea! Dave Collins with more power? More taxes! I guess they have to pay for the black boxes somehow
A few facts might be helpful here before Anon 7:04 rallies the nut jobs to rail against Dave Collins and the "black boxes".
The concept of Business Improvement Districts has been around since the 1970s and there are now more than 1500 nationwide. In general, they amount to self-assessment districts which raise incremental funds within the district to augment baseline services provided by the municipality. By and large, the concept has been hugely successful in the areas where it has been tried. Coral Gables has one for the Miracle Mile area; Miami has none for the entire city. The BID, if approved by the property owners (not the tenant businesses), would be governed by an appointed board. Dave Collins, should he elect to put up with the on-going crap that managing such an enterprise entails, would have no powers beyond carrying out the directives of said board. This is a good deal for Coconut Grove and a golden opportunity to turn around the business environment of the Village Center. It is also an open invitation for congenital naysayers to hold forth and bitch and moan about the very problems that this effort strives to solve.
As a current graduate student of city planning, I have a more academic perspective on BIDs, after having completed a semester long project with the City of Philadelphia, where there are 15 different BIDs. I only have one salient point, and that is that thorough financial analysis should go into deciding whether the BID is viable in the grove, by comparing a proposed budget with the potential revenue that can be collected.
And the clincher is, simply because a BID is formed, even though the majority of property owners might have supported it, does not mean there won't be delinquent property owners who don't pay their assessment, thus messing up the whole budget. So there also needs to be a good enforcement system in place.
Just my thoughts.
Benji
benji,
Your concern about a "thorough financial analysis" for the proposed BID has been fully addressed. Over the past several months, the BIC has put together detailed budgets and proposed assessment schedules, all of which have been exhaustively reviewed in publicly noticed meetings with the full BIC. Further, the assessments, should the BID be enacted, will be subject to the same enforcement procedures as normal ad valorem taxes, including liens for non-payment. If indeed you have an interest in the BID process, you should make yourself known to the BIC office (in Mayfair next to the Arts Festival office) and try to attend one or more meetings of the BIC.
Post a Comment
<< Home