Mark Roessler Photo

Date this photo of Northampton's downtown. Is it from 1998, during the city's glory days, or 2008 when the bottom fell out?

The past three Northampton City Council meetings have been full of heated testimony both for and against the proposed Business Improvement District (BID). If passed, downtown property owners hope the BID might return downtown to the prosperity it saw a decade ago.

Downtown property owners argue that if they band together and agree to make regular contributions (considered "fees," but the amount paid is based on the owner's property tax), the resulting pot of money would provide everyone with a brighter, safer and more profitable downtown. Flower beds, street sweeping and Christmas lights are all promised to be administered by a new, paid BID bureaucracy, at the discretion of a board chosen by BID members.

When not listening to the public debate on the BID at Council meetings, Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins is detailing the dire state of the city's projected budget. She is said to be considering significant cuts in staff and a tax override to save the city's imperiled schools.

Rather than a reaction to the current crisis, though, the Northampton BID plan is one that has been more than two years in the making. It was dreamed up in a time before the world's financial markets began to teeter and fall. As the city faces multi-million dollar deficits, the BID now seems like a relic even before its inception.

Still, the BID is a solution racing to be approved.

Toward the end of the first February meeting, Councilor Marianne LaBarge asked why the mayor was pushing for a quick vote on the BID. The mayor responded that a decision was needed before the Council started working on the budget in March, but she did not explain why the two topics could not be addressed simultaneously.

At the close of the public comment period during the last meeting, Councilor-at-Large Michael Bardsley recommended they not formally end public comment, as doing so would necessitate a Council vote with 45 days. Though several councilors said they had lingering questions and felt the public hadn't been properly informed, the Council ultimately voted 8 to 1 to close the hearing and start the clock ticking.

Bardsley cast the only dissenting vote. The Valley Advocate interviewed the councilor about the BID the day before that meeting.

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For his day job, Councilor Bardsley is a guidance counselor in Amherst, and he'd been spending his school vacation talking to people about the BID. Just before our interview, he came directly from several hours of meetings at Thornes Market, listening to the opinions of shopkeepers and property owners there. We first discussed whether or not there was a problem in Northampton's downtown that needed to be solved. He was convinced there was a problem, citing graffiti, dirty streets and a general lack of upkeep.

Michael Bardsley: Looking at it from the perspective of shop owners—not property owners—there's always been a perception that those businesses are much more economically vibrant than they actually are. I've known people who owned businesses downtown, and even during the good times, things have been fragile, and they've felt vulnerable. Increasingly, they feel they're in a situation where they have no choices because there's been a leadership vacuum for downtown. No one's stepping up for them. They've served in all these little committees, but it's not added up to any overall leadership.

Valley Advocate: So is the BID the solution?

MB: I'm on the fence. I see legitimacy in the concern that the BID would be an independent entity possibly shaping the image, the feel, the experience of downtown—more so than it ever has been by any one entity—and it's an entity where there's no public accountability. That's a concern.

Isn't the Chamber of Commerce supposed to fill that role?

I've heard from some of the BID proponents that if the BID comes through, they're signing up as members and withdrawing from the Chamber [of Commerce]. Being a regional Chamber with other interests, they can't put the resources and the time into downtown. So [shop owners] don't feel the leadership is there from the Chamber, nor will it come because their focus is so broad.

What about leadership from the city?

I have heard from a number of people for some time now a criticism of a lack of connection, a lack of visibility—and I'll be specific, it's from the mayor—with downtown. They don't see the mayor downtown, talking to people, being connected, at all. I've been hearing that for years, increasingly.

BID proponents tend to frame Northampton's decline as having happened in the last ten years. You were on the Council 10 years ago. What was happening then that's not happening now?

When I was the Ward Councilor for Ward Four—at that time it represented almost all of downtown—I did two things. One is, I formed a neighborhood association for people who lived downtown. There were a number of people who were very active, and it made some impact. They met with some of the city officials in the departments. They met with the police. [The neighborhood association] created some buyin from the residents, and connectedness. They had an opportunity to come up with concerns, and we had a chance to address them. But when I moved on to become councilor-at-large, that fell apart.

I also formed, at the urging of a handful of business owners, an ad hoc downtown committee. They had concerns about what was going on out on the streets. A lot of it was drug related, people hanging out downtown, treating it like a living room. The committee was made up of representative shop owners. The chief of police would come, somebody from Planning, a representative from the Department of Public Works, Janet Sheppard [the city solicitor] would come if I needed a legal opinion, someone from the mayor's office. I chaired it, and we did trouble shooting. We tried to solve problems and then try to get ahead of them. It was an ongoing forum.

These were efforts to provide some dialogue and to provide a forum for people to have a say in what was going on, and they predated [Mayor Mary] Clare [Higgins]. That was in the Mary Ford regime. When Clare came in, I shifted from Ward Four to at-large. Both of those efforts were disbanded. The rational for disbanding the ad hoc committee was that Clare had just created this new position of economic development [currently filled by Teri Anderson], and that's who was going to take care of downtown. End of discussion.

There has been a lack of leadership. The mayor needs to take responsibility, and the economic development person does not seem well connected downtown. I don't think most people know who their ward councilors are.

What could a neighborhood association and a business committee do about issues such as panhandling, which the current BID cited as a problem?

At one time panhandlers was an issue that was raised, and we were told in no uncertain terms by the city solicitor and by the police chief that you couldn't do anything about it. It was protected under the freedom of speech. So I was a little bit surprised to see how that changed, with them coming back supporting [the recent solicitation ordinance]. It was a complete turnaround. That discussion hasn't been had on the Council yet.

Recently Northampton Redoubt blogger Daryl LaFleur proposed that the BID question be put to a referendum. Your reaction?

Something like the BID calls for a nonbinding override. I think that's healthy for the community, because it generates a discussion. Whether or not the logistics are there, or if there's the time to make it happen, I don't know. But I think there's merit to the idea. One of the problems with the BID is that only bits and pieces [of information] are getting out there, and there hasn't been an opportunity for an in-depth, overall look at it, or discussion.

And you don't think the public comment period at the Council meetings is sufficient?

One of the drawbacks to the public hearings is that people get up, present their opinion, and there's no give or take. It's one of the things we've been talking about on the Best Practices committee. Unfortunately, the whole BID thing has kind of avoided some of the Best Practices. There hasn't been a public forum to discuss it, and the fact that the public hearing is in the middle of a City Council meeting makes it even more difficult. It's not conducive to having a good dialogue or any good thinking.

And yet, even without sufficient public dialogue, there seems to be a real push to get the BID voted on and enacted...

I get the Chamber mailings. Unfortunately, they pile up with my other mail, and I open them when I get a chance. So some time in the last couple of weeks, I opened the December mailing. In the front, there was this little box talking about the BID. It said the BID was going to be submitted with the petition, they got the signatures, and it gave a timeline, and it said it would be going before the Council. And it said [laughs] the Council will be voting on this at the end of February.

And it was like: how could the Chamber know what our timeline was going to be? It's like it's already been decided for us. And that's been the tone we've gotten from [some of the BID proponents], saying that you need to vote on this and adopt this in a set amount of time. It's almost like they don't want to have a continued discussion because it will affect the outcome.

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The BID seems like a solution looking for a problem to solve.

Rather than trying to find agreement about what's wrong with downtown, proponents of the BID have leap-frogged to arguing why the BID is the only panacea. But even if it is the right match for what ails Northampton now, if approved, the BID will be taking public dollars and services for long after the current administration has thrown in the towel. When the economy finally finds its footing, the public will still have no say over how those funds are spent.

Proponents describe the BID as essentially a cooperative purchasing arrangement providing leverage in negotiating prices. But unlike a simple agreement between like-minded business people to share costs, a BID is empowered by law. In addition to group purchasing, a BID can handle its own security and parking enforcement on public streets and sidewalks (Springfield has used BID funds for surveillance cameras). Once a property owner opts in, he can't opt out until either his business folds or the BID itself dissolves. Further, a BID can put a lien on a property if its owner is unable to pay the dues.

A BID is also unlike a typical business agreement in that nonprofits, such as Smith College, and more importantly the city itself, will be included, though they don't pay property tax. Northampton Mayor Higgins has negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the BID proponents, detailing what the city will pay in lieu of the typical dues. Should the Council vote to approve the plan, the city will be committed to spending at least $85,000 annually, plus providing in-kind services such as police and purchasing a street sweeper. Smith has yet to negotiate such an agreement.

Perhaps, rather than creating a new bureaucracy and further diminishing the public's representation in the city's downtown, BID proponents should look more carefully back at those halcyon days from a decade ago to determine what was so golden about them and where the city went wrong.