RSS FeedThe Commercialization Of Local Government In DC?
Charter schools have been going strong in DC, and so have Business Improvement Districts (BID). The WaPo had a nice article on how BIDs have been “filling the gap” where local governments have failed residents and businesses. Six districts exist and seven others are currently under consideration.
Penn Quarter/Gallery Place is in the Downtown BID – the largest and oldest BID – that was created in 1997 when the MCI Center opened up.
The most interesting part of the article is the last three paragraphs that start with: The Downtown BID is weighing whether to seek a legal change that would allow it to also tax some residential properties.
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Comments
I wonder how that would work–would the residential property owners get to vote as a group on whether to be included, or would we get equal votes as (and be outnumbered by) the commerical property owners?
Ugh – I know some people’s co-op fees in NYC are really high b/c they are part of a BID and have to pay extra taxes/fees/whatever b/c of that.
wouldn’t the BID have to have some kind of governmental status to tax? DC’s income taxes are some of the highest state taxes in the United States and I’m not too interested in paying more.
I WILL not pay more taxes unless it is through the legal process (i.e. property taxes and income taxes) to pay an additonal tax is ludicrious and if passed I would fight the messure legally….but we should fight back preemptively. If we could organize around the grocery store effort, ceartainly we can around this. We should get a letter campaign (with buisness involved) to clearly state that we WILL not be paying any BID taxes!!!
Well, all I can say is that BID should have to do something for resudents before it can tax us. I mean, I’m sick of them doing things that help the commercial side but actually HURT the residential side. If they actually did anything, I’d be willing to pay for it. But that’s easy to say, since it will never happen (I mean, doing something for the residents).
Of course I don’t want to pay anything to the BID if I can prevent it, but I’m curious… what has the BID done to hurt the residents? They keep the streets clean, they support local events and transportation projects, their presence on the streets helps the neighborhood’s image, and they advertise downtown as a great place to live (which can only help our property values).
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no new taxes!