3rd Avenue BID – Everyone Not in Support
WOW. #SomethingIsNotRightHere
The 3rd Avenue Merchants have been meeting to make a Business Improvement District (BID), which is going to cost a lot of money. Some business owners are not happy about this and they made a website to explain what’s not right about the new bid. See here.
The person who made the site is an insider. How do we know? Because he/she registered the domain on September 10, 2018 – that’s long before most people knew about it (when Brannan gave the group $37,000 and the story was in the newspaper).
I knew this was going to happen because if people looked into the fees and what they are getting, it doesn’t add up!
They compared the 5th Avenue merchants costs – here. WOW 5th Avenue is wayyyy too dirty and should look A LOT better if they are using all of that money!
I’m surprised Councilman Brannan put the small business owners on 3rd Avenue in this position. They are taxed and nickel-ed and dime-d like crazy by the city. They don’t need another fee.
It’s sad Councilman Brannan isn’t hearing the merchants. One of them had to go take the time to buy the domain nobidon3rdave.com and build that site! That’s pretty serious that someone had to go THAT far to let people know what is going on! I imagine they are going to push this BID through…with or without the community’s support. If they really wanted people to support the BID, they wouldn’t be having the information meeting in July. They would have waited until after Summer vacation and had the meeting in mid-September.
I’m surprised Justin Brannan threw money at creating a BID when he knew that many merchants weren’t paying their dues. (This merchant says only 30% were paying the fee.) Either the store owners don’t find the merchants group to be beneficial or they don’t have the money to spare. Now Brannan and this “steering committee group” want to force them to pay by making them pay mor property tax….yikes!
Councilman Brannan will say that the steering committee worked on this for months…that’s how he pushed the bike lane through and overrode Community Board 10’s decision (See here).
It says that Senator Gounardes also has a representative on this committee, but we are unsure who it is….so Andrew Gounardes knows that a non-diverse steering committee exists.
The steering committee to the 3rd Avenue BID has problems that should have been addressed by now.
The steering committee stated that most properties are going to pay $895.00 a year. Why can’t the merchants get together and do this without the government? The government will see all of this money going into this Avenue and raise resident’s property taxes in the coming years….we all know how it works.
Why haven’t local papers reported about those opposed to the BID….because someone from the local papers is on the steering committee!
Hugs,
marlene
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