Chinatown Business Improvement District Hearing
Thursday, May 26 at 10 a.m. the Finance Committee of City Council will be hearing resolution #0819-2011 to form a Chinatown Business Improvement District. This is the last public hearing on the formation of the Chinatown BID.
250 Broadway 16th Floor, NYC NY 10007.
Councilmember Chin’s Well Oiled Machine
The progenitor of the ”BID," The Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation, or CPLDC, was founded by Councilmember Margaret Chin with public funds earmarked for 9/11 recovery.
That organization rose from yet another of Margaret Chin’s groups called Rebuild Chinatown Initiative (RCI) which was formed while Chin was still at Asian Americans For Equality where she was Deputy Executive Director under Christopher Kui who tried unsuccessfully to form a BID in 2002.
RCI produced a guidebook and a wish list in 2004 of ideas to help Chinatown recover post 9/11 and among other ideas it promoted the opening of big box stores in Chinatown such as Home Depot, the upzoning of Canal Street and the formation of a Chinatown B.I.D.
A seven million dollar clean "sweep"
With $7.1 million spent on consultants, contractors, and top heavy administration of the Chinatown Partnership, many feel that it was simply an exercise in wasting money. Storeowners still sweep their own sidewalks despite the presence of the ten men and women working for the private contractor Block By Block hired by CPLDC. Record high storefront vacancies over the last ten years in the core of Chinatown are a testament that CPLDC has not increased business to any measurable degree despite claims to the contrary.
A BID tied to politics, is there any other kind?
Much of Chin’s fourth campaign run for City Council was packed with BID propaganda designed to promote a BID as Chinatown’s new entity which would once and for all time give Chinatown a “seat at the table” of City Government, a phrase Executive Director of CPLDC Wellington Chen is fond of using. This seat invariably would consist of members of Chin’s own cadre of bankers, lawyers and real estate moguls who backed her campaign. This so-called absence of political representation came as a surprise to long established family associations and political clubs that had open and frequent dialogue with all the elected officials in some cases for decades. Some actively backed Asian candidates such as John Liu and P.J. Kim, as well as supported Asians for judgeships in New York. Were they not seated at the “right” table then?
Chinatown Partnership’s Pay to Play
As the Chinatown BID wound its way from one community board to the next, it got the rubber stamp of approval. This stamp was well inked and at the ready before the first CPLDC representative spoke, and why not? The folks who promote BIDs and the paid directors of each are not only given unlimited time at the BID hearings they often are members of the community boards and/or sit on committees that issue approval with months to prepare their colleagues to vote their way.
In contrast, business and property owners are allowed to speak for a brief three minutes each to oppose the BID and state the reasons why they want out. Testimony is more often than not, as was my case in front of one board in particular, constantly interrupted by pro-BID committee members wishing to diminish particularly pointed criticism of the BID.
The finance committee hearing on Thursday marks the beginning of a thirty-day period from which time property owners within the BID district can file a formal objection. Placing obstacles in front of objectors to BIDs seems to be a favored tactic by the City as evidenced recently by a neighbor in SoHo who complained that it was impossible to locate an “official objection form” anywhere online. He later learned, after writing to the Counsel of the Finance Committee of City Council that the form must be picked up in person at the City Clerk’s office at Centre Street, but with Chinatown volunteers at the ready the Civic Center Residents Coalition made the form available online – click here to print or download.
Another obstacle is to schedule a hearing on the Thursday before Memorial Day Weekend, and giving the public only 12 days notice! Is this the wheels of City Hall grinding inefficiently, or is this another conveniently placed obstacle designed to squash Chinatown BID opposition?
Sign Here
The BID objection form must be notarized and accompanied by a deed if filed by a property owner. Business owners are also encouraged to file objections as these objections are also reviewed by City Council. However, only property owner’s objections are counted toward the needed 51% or more needed to defeat a BID’s formation.
Pro-BID Bias is Undemocratic
As a foreshadowing of things to come the objection forms reviewed by the City Clerk and then City Council must be notarized and accompanied with a deed. On the other hand approval ballots produced by CPLDC which are submitted to the City Council and community boards do NOT require any such checks and balances to ensure authenticity.
The CPLDC, Margaret Chin, and The Chinatown Chamber of Commerce have bragged loudly that Chinatown has approved the BID by a whopping 97%. This begs the question: 97% of what? Does anyone really know what “approval” means if there is no requirement to authenticate a signature of approval? And why is there no time limit to approve a BID, only to opt out of one?
At every Community Board meeting I have been to, the CPLDC dramatically plunks down two large binders in front of committee members and declares that these are the ballots showing approval of the Chinatown BID. Community Board members leaf through pages as if looking for a number in the phone book and after three flicks of the wrist they push the binders aside without a care or concern over the authenticity of the ballots.
In speaking to members of community boards and elected officials off the record no one can recall a BID ever receiving such a high approval, much less one that is to be the largest ever in New York history.
Nevertheless an army of intrepid business and property owners, including yours truly, soldier on door-to-door getting notarized signatures representing those wishing to opt out of what is possibly the least democratic entity that currently exists in New York City, BIDs.
