For those who missed it, Wednesday night was the two hour community forum on the Downtown Improvement District. For some reason, the DID still doesn't sit well with many people, and Dora Boubolis organized the forum so people could learn more about the plan and discuss the issues.
Tom Franks was there and he more or less presented for the first hour, taking many questions along the way. He explained a lot of the plan in depth, and provided a lot of background. but although it was a lively and wide-ranging discussion, certain issues kept cropping up that didn't seem to go away.
Those issues were:
- the idea of a quasi-governmental organization operating privately while getting its operating costs from tax revenue, even if it is a special tax
- the idea of cost pass-through to renters and the impact that could have on downtown business and residential tenants
- the idea of cost pass-through to retail prices and the impact that could have on downtown
- the idea of BABB as the designated downtown organization having sole control over selection and implementation of downtown improvement projects
These were difficult issues to get your mind around, and in every instance, Tom and others had lengthy responses to questions about them. But the questions continued.
For Tom, it all comes down to BABB. As he describes it, BABB is the context for the DID. The DID is nothing but a funding mechanism. It is a tax district. It doesn't have a governing body. It just exists to raise money. BABB is the administrating body for the DID. The mission of BABB is to get and administer grant money to benefit downtown. Programs such as Pliny Park and other projects are paid for with grant money. As Tom points out, someone has to administer the grants.
He stresses that BABB is not a quasi governmental organization but an outside contractor that will be funded by a special tax assessment on property owners in the downtown district. The mission of BABB is to get grant money for projects to improve downtown. One project that Tom is especially proud of is the sprinkler systems they had installed in four downtown buildings, as well as the facades project. They also take credit for the River Garden and Strolling of the Heifers in their literature.
BABB is basically Tom Franks, as the sole employee, and a team of volunteer BABB members. The proceeds from the special assessment tax which is capped for now at $80,000, would go to fund BABB operations, covering salaries, office expenses, phone, internet, and the like. According to Tom, BABB's administrative costs at present are about $80,000.
When asked about accountability and representation, Tom said that BABB was the most accountable private organization imaginable, with a long series of hoops to go through annually for budget approval. As he describes it, the BABB working committees work on their own budgets, clear them through BABB's executive committee, and then submit them to the Selectboard. If the Selectboard approves, it goes to Town Meeting for final approval. For Tom, this is evidence of BABB's accountability. On representation, Tom's view is that since we vote for our Selectboard and Town Meeting reps, that's enough to constitute representation in the administration of the DID.
According to Tom, the idea to create a special assessment tax district to fund BABB got started in 2002. It seems that the few major donors of the first couple years were tired of footing the bill for BABB's continued operation, and the town had just kicked in the second of two $40,000 allocations. To the authors of this idea, the Downtown Improvement District, paid for by special assessment tax, was the best way to make it fair. As they see it, those who pay, benefit. And all downtown property owners have to pay.
Tom gave us an update on Monday's Selectboard/BABB ordinance work session. He said that the big change to the currently drafted ordinance was the removal of the DID oversight board. Instead, the Selectboard and BABB opted to go for a direct relationship between the Selectboard and BABB, without any intermediary oversight committee. Tom cited the example of Bennington, which this year voted to eliminate their own oversight board, saying it was cumbersome, unnecessary and tended to slow things down.
Again, the subject of representation on the board came up, and this time Tom was adamant that BABB could not subject its own internal processes to outside scrutiny. He reiterated points made earlier in the meeting that BABB determined its own membership, budget, bylaws, and work plans. In these areas, he said, BABB would and should not submit to intervention on the part of the town.
Another participant asked "Isn't this just a trojan horse for gentrification?" Tom said that some studies show that gentrification is good for everyone. But, he said, it's hard to see how gentrification could happen here.
In the second hour, Spoon made a slow-building but well-received speech about the town more than the DID. He said we had to get a grasp on what was happening, and then make sure that what we do in the future is what we want as laid out in the town plan. With regard to the DID, he said that the big issue for him was representation, which was reassuring to many. He also brought up accountability and said that we should be gathering data now so we'll have benchmarks to meaure against in coming years. Some of the issues he felt should be tracked included numbers of units of affordable housing, number of workers employed downtown, and the like. BABB currently has no metrics on the effectiveness of its work.
Throughout the meeting, the issue of renters continued to come up. A downtown resident explained at one point that a lot of the people live on Main Street because it's relatively cheap housing. If we improve the town to the point where these people can no longer afford to live here, he said, we'll lose a lot of the character of our downtown, not to mention depriving low income people of their homes.
Several other people spoke on behalf of business tenants, stressing that many downtown businesses operate on very tight margins and can't afford even marginal rent increases. As one shop owner said, the downtown business community is fragile and it wouldn't take much to close some of them.
Don Webster pointed out that renters are probably paying for BABB already, since some downtown property owners support BABB, and would be likely to pass through this expense if they could. However, he said, even if downtowners do pay higher rent and prices to support BABB, they're benefiting in the long run due to the improvements to downtown.
Finally, a town rep raised the issue of BABB's workplans, which are currently developed by BABB committees with relatively little input from the town. His suggestion was that BABB submit workplans as well as budgets to the town for approval each year, to allow the town to have some input into the projects BABB undertakes.
Overall, there seemed to be a lot of questions, and the answers from Tom were by any measure, frank. He isn't wild about the citizen participation piece and made it plain that other towns with DIDs do not have citizen participation. But, he said, Brattleboro is different, and so they are trying to accommodate this town's penchant for involvement.
It still isn't clear what form, if any, this participation will take. Designating board seats for certain constituencies has worked elsewhere, but it seems unlikely that BABB woud be open to that. So we shall see how the Selectboard addresses all these complex issues in the ordinance. Work on the ordinance is not completed, so there's still time to help shape the DID ordinance before the voting starts. You can learn more about BABB at their web site at www.brattleborovt.org.