2021 Downtown District Annual General Meeting. (Photo: Quinte News)
Belleville’s Downtown District BIA has passed a budget for next year but it was far from a slam-dunk.
Several of the 22 voting members present at Wednesday’s Annual General Meeting protested the fact that they hadn’t been
able to receive exact details of the two budget options presented at least 10 days in advance.
Those members believed it wasn’t fair to expect a budget vote when people hadn’t had the chance to study the proposals.
The BIA executive maintained its budget process was exactly the same as it had been for several years.
A motion to have the budget vote delayed to a future date didn’t receive a seconder.
What followed was a basic lesson in economics with BIA Treasurer Lorne McDougall focusing on inflation and buying power.
The levy charged to property owners downtown has been $275,000 for the past three years and McDougall said that in the seven years since 2014 the BIA had lost over $40,000 in spending power due to inflation.
The board believed it was time to catch up and offered two levy options, one with a 10% increase and the other with a 15% increase.
McDougall said 15% would be the preferable option but all it would accomplish would be to bring the BIA’s buying power back to where it was in 2014.
Lorne McDougall. (Photo: Quinte News)
“Less than 15% is not feasible. We have to catch up. No organization can keep operating and thriving with less money year after year.”
A 15% levy increase would bring the amount the city collected on behalf of the BIA to $317,000, up from the current $275,000.
On a building worth $1 million the monthly increase would be $47.
Both McDougall and Board Chair Kathryn Brown stressed that the board had agonized over the decisions on budget increases as they were well aware of the pain many businesses had suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic but in the end decided the downtown could not continue its positive momentum unless it had more money to invest.
Both the 15% and 10% options were voted down.
After long and sometimes passionate discussion the members voted to accept a 7.5% increase to the levy which would bring it to around $296,000.
Treasurer McDougall resigned from the board after the meeting, saying the decision was a step backward.
“We’re already going to have to cut some programming even if we approved the 10% budget increase and if we don’t get any increase it basically kills our ability to get grant money.”
BIA board Chair Kathryn Brown said a 15% increase would have allowed the organization to have the same spending power it did back in 2014.
“I think to starve that organization, to continue to starve that organization, will only hurt everybody in the long run. The few have now just taken away things that we could have accomplished next year and in a very reasonable way.”
Kathryn Brown. (Photo: Quinte News)
Meanwhile Belleville Mayor Mitch Panciuk said the past three years have been great for the BIA and the Downtown District, pointing to the years before 2018 when there was discord on the board and within the membership and the organization didn’t have enough money or expertise to really make improvements for its members.
Panciuk says the downtown had come a long way since then and the city has invested millions in the downtown and stood ready to continue to provide support in the future as it was crucial for the prosperity of the community.
The mayor was not happy with the acrimony over the budget on display at the AGM, comparing it to the infighting that occurred in the years previous to 2018.
“When the going gets tough they turn their guns inward and they shoot at the organization. The BIA is not the problem with downtown Belleville. The BIA is actually the salvation and the path forward to making the downtown better.”
Despite the disagreements over the budget increase and process there was a lot of good news to share.
Some of the highlights of the 2021 Downtown District BIA’s Annual Report are as follows:
-78% of street level businesses were occupied
-there were 201 active businesses, up from 177 the year before, an increase of 13%
-38 units were vacant, down from 41 the year before
-of the 38 vacant units, 18 are chronically vacant, 12 are under renovation while eight are tenant-ready
-19 new businesses opened while one closed
-social media reach increased by 30%
-since the installation of free public Wi-Fi in April there was an average of 5,816 individual visitors to the downtown each week with
overall foot traffic up by 9%
-in the month of September a visitor and resident survey showed respondents rating the downtown an 8.4 out of 10
-63% of property owners were satisfied or very satisfied with the downtown as being a good place to invest
-85% of business owners were satisfied or very satisfied with the downtown as a place to run a business
-Welcoming Streets program, whereby BIA employee Sara Behring makes direct contact with the vulnerable population, estimated to have dropped the number of disturbance and mental health act charges laid by police significantly
See the entire annual report and strategic plan and vision here.
