What do you like about downtown? What needs fixing? Backers of a special tax district want your input | WXXI News
Reproduced from WXXI NEWS
The first details of a controversial proposal to create a special downtown improvement district are now expected no earlier than June under organizers’ revised schedule. The initial draft plan would start answering some of the basic questions – like where, what and how -- surrounding the concept.
“I would say this summer,” said Galin Brooks, executive director for the Rochester Downtown Partnership, which is spearheading the effort. “But we have June as the second public meeting where we hope to have some draft of the district plan available for review and input and feedback.”
The upcoming public meetings, as well as office hours, walking meetings or “walkshops” and other measures to gather citizen input were announced Wednesday, as planning moved into the formal community engagement phase.
The next office hours are noon to 2 p.m. Thursday at the Bausch and Lomb Library on South Avenue. The first public meeting is set for late March.
The idea of a BID has faced opposition led by some in the arts community since the push began last summer. Under a BID, property owners agree to tax themselves to pay for additional or expanded services. Critics say such entities lack transparency and accountability. Locally, though, the district boundaries and how the BID will function, its governance structure, and what services it will provide, all have yet to be determined. Community input will no doubt inform those decisions.
But there remains uncertainty – including from BID formation committee member and City Council Vice President Mary Lupien – about who will be the arbiter when it comes to crafting the draft plan.
“Do we vote?” she said of the committee. “Does RDDC?”
The Rochester Downtown Development Corp. staffs the public-private group that is advocating for the BID. While the exact process for drafting the BID has yet to be determined, Brooks said consensus from each is the goal, with all of it shaped by community input.
The upcoming public input sessions, including pop-up events expected to draw large, diverse crowds, "are really intended to target different segments of the community and make sure that their voices are heard, their needs, their perceptions are understood in informing the development of the district plan,” Brooks said.
The partnership had set an optimistic goal of crafting a draft plan by May. Though it’s now likely to come later, Brooks said the goal remains to assemble a plan – and the needed support of downtown stakeholders -- that City Council could approve by next summer.
“We are still within that window,” she said. “We would be looking to potentially have a supported by petition, district plan, go to the council at the start of 2024.”
Lupien has little doubt the administration and a majority of her City Council colleagues will sign off.
“Some people were given the false impression of whether or not we are (studying if we will do a BID),” she said of this study period. “It’s what will the draft BID look like.”
That has left a still-skeptical Lupien hoping to, as she put it, “get the best BID we can get, that doesn’t do harm.”
