Full disclosure: this story affects where I work. Some self-interest may be on display, even in trying to be fair to the issue.
We have found ourselves here on West 5th Avenue drawn into a campaign to introduce a new business improvement association (BIA) to guide a sprawling, somewhat diverse commercial and industrial district that has been defined as Creekside.
The campaign is instructive on how a BIA can emerge – well-intentioned but not with a consensus – and how difficult it is to stop a proposal before it takes hold. It is also illustrative of how businesses find BIAs necessary in this day and age to tackle their challenges when local government doesn’t.
Arguably the most problematic element of the process, though, involves the presence of a negative option as a BIA establishes. Remember the negative option – the idea that angered Canadians when Rogers Communications tried to charge customers for new channels without their permission?
Even though some jurisdictions have banned the practice, it lives on in the process of creating a BIA. In fact, it is more onerous: you can’t opt out alone. You and a majority of prospective members have to express opposition within 30 days of being notified – or it proceeds.
Not surprisingly, what has the dander up of businesses that don’t see a BIA’s value for them is that they can’t stop the imposition of a tax unless the majority is with them.
The City of Vancouver facilitates the process, but it’s provincially legislated overall and requires the creation of a non-profit society once someone decides it’s time for a BIA. Once someone has done so – presumably with like-minded support – the city provides the names of property owners and tenants in that district. A budget is created and a proposal goes before council – in Creekside’s case, in late February.
To head it off, more than half of the owners representing more than half of the value of the parcels of land in the district have to object.
If a majority doesn’t? Here comes that negative option: you’re assumed to be in favour, and council imposes a special levy annually with your property taxes. It’s not massive – between $0.30 and $0.91 per $1,000 in assessed property value, depending on the BIA, averaging $0.57 – but the funds add up.
Approximately $11.7 million is collected from about 7,200 businesses and disbursed to the city’s 24 BIAs to promote and market business, beautify and signify districts and improve community safety.
Each commercial property is taxed in proportion to its total taxable value in the district. In the case of Creekside, its proposed budget is about $2.3 million over five years – about $0.23 per $1,000 in assessed value or about 1.32% of property taxes.
Ray Lam, the executive director of the Creekside Economic Development Association behind the proposal, notes that businesses were canvassed last year and information was supplied in two rounds of mail and a mixture of emails, door-to-door visits and phone calls. About two-thirds liked the idea. A group that opposes the BIA was furnished with the same information to make its case.
But the evident challenge in this case is the district’s divergent land use. The Creekside BIA would run from Olympic Village up to West Broadway and from Cambie over to Main, with a couple of blocks along Cambie between 7th and Broadway out of the mix because of their initial opposition.
One would be hard-pressed to find common cause in the range of businesses away from the arteries of Cambie, Main and West Broadway and the retail district of Olympic Village.
Lam says the broad district was designed to create a large enough catchment area and sufficient critical mass to adequately finance the BIA’s services.
All that being said, process is important. It’s understandable that opponents feel at a disadvantage when the onus is on them to express en masse to prevent a new levy.
Sometimes you don’t like the government that’s elected, and sometimes you’re in a club that’s not your choice. A BIA can be like that, too. •
Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver Media Group and vice-president of Glacier Media.
