BID petition deadline today

SANDPOINT — The eight-page roster of downtown businesses in Rich Curtis’ hand is stenciled with numbers, highlighted with yellow and orange markers, and dimpled from use.

It is also inaccurate, Curtis said. Therefore the many markings.

He has crossed out and highlighted names of businesses that have closed, moved or been replaced, and has scratched out or updated telephone numbers.

Curtis is among a group of downtown business owners circulating a petition to get rid of a tax meant as a financial tool to promote and market Sandpoint’s downtown.

The roster is the template he and other critics of the downtown business district (BID) use to contact business owners.

Although business owners are required to register with the city, registration is not enforced, causing rifts in the city’s accounting and a business roster that is out of date.

The petition must be delivered to the city today, but the process has become sticky because approximately 10 percent of the businesses on the list no longer exist, or they are named twice, Curtis said.

In addition, the city requires not 51 percent of business owners to sign, but business owners using 51 percent of business space in the district must be against the BID and its tax before the city considers dissolving it, he said.

“We seem to have the majority of the people who don’t want the BID,” Curtis said. “Unfortunately it is not based on one vote per business, we have to have 51 percent of the square footage.”

That means the signatures of owners from a half-dozen, small, downtown businesses will not weigh as much as one signature from Safeway, which is located in the district, he said.

Despite a failed petition drive last year, the initiative to kill the BID was resurrected in 2010 by Curtis, who owns Exit Realty on First Avenue, and two other downtown business owners including Bonner County Commissioner Cornel Rasor, who owns Army Surplus, and Chris Parks, owner of Misty Mountain Furniture.

The men argue that the money business owners pay through the BID does not bring a financial return to their businesses.

Approximately $900,000 has been generated by the BID in the decade of its existence. The money is misspent, Curtis said, with more than half used for administrative tasks.

Supporters of the BID counter that many events and amenities downtown are paid with BID money. The tax money supports the Downtown Business Association and is responsible for keeping the downtown area viable. It pays for aesthetic improvements that draw people to Sandpoint, for marketing the downtown area and for organizing many popular events.

In addition, the DSBA represents business interests at City Hall and has earned the respect of the council, supporters contend.

The association uses its Web site at www.downtownsandpoint.com to update members and, more recently, to rally against the petition drive.

“We have been talking to businesses within the BID to see if they have questions and to correct misinformation,” Chris Bessler, owner of Keokee Publishing and DSBA president, said. “We’re trying to be active. We put on a public forum, have had Op-Ed pieces, we did a radio show and have responded on blogs and our Web site.”

Although opponents of the BID say they are not against the DSBA, the organization would probably dissolve without the financial support, Bessler said.

If the petition drive is successful, it will ham-string the association, he said.

 “If it passes, the DSBA is not going to be viable,” he said.

But the roadblocks to gathering enough signatures are imposing. Any defunct business that is crossed off the city’s list of registered businesses changes the square-foot equation, therefore changing the number of signatures required to unseat the BID.

The men plan to go door-to-door in their effort to gather more signatures before the Friday afternoon deadline.

“Either the majority of the people want the BID and feel the DSBA is doing a great job, or they don’t,” Curtis said. “It’s a democracy. It’s a majority vote.”