The downtown improvement district in Kansas City, Kan., was shrunk, losing its western side, at a Unified Government Commission meeting on June 30.
The action was approved by the UG Commission after some business owners on the west side of the district spoke against renewing it at a public hearing the month before. Some of the business owners said they felt they didn’t get enough services. The public hearing also heard from other business owners in favor of keeping it the same.
At the June 30 meeting, Downtown SSMID Chairman Lynn Kuluva said the advisory board supported keeping the downtown Self-Supported Municipal Improvement District’s boundaries as they had been. Each business in the district is taxed for the SSMID, and those dollars help fund efforts to clean up and provide security for the downtown area.
Kuluva said the business owners on the west side had complained about some things not related to the SSMID, including their property taxes, high appraisals, lack of code enforcement and other items the SSMID had nothing to do with. He said they also complained about overnight crime, where vehicles and property were broken into overnight.
However, the downtown district’s mission is to help visitors feel safe when they are shopping and dining downtown, and the group’s mission does not have anything to do with reducing overnight crime.
He said the downtown improvement district agrees that the burden should not be placed on small business persons. He said most of the revenue of the SSMID comes from big business and banks downtown, the BPU, Boilermakers and Unified Government. He added if one removed the 12 highest appraised parcels from the SSMID, the average cost would be $182.11 per year, or about $15 a month. In almost two-thirds of the parcels, the assessment is less than $100 a month.
He also said there have been cleaning and security staff regularly assigned to the west side of the district. He added that the cleaning contractors were changed from last year.
When the downtown Healthy Campus becomes a reality, there will be considerable development between 10th Street to 18th Street, Kuluva said. New businesses that move in, in the future, may wonder why no one is picking up trash and getting rid of weeds in that area, he added.
Kuluva also said the district had not been able to do as good a job cleaning the downtown area as it had hoped to. In 2008-2009, the SSMID had a budget of $400,000 a year. After the recession, the UG cut payments to the SSMID, and the budget went to $300,000 a year. For the last several years, the district had only three persons to provide cleaning, and the area couldn’t really be kept clean with that number of workers, he added. The UG funding went up again recently.
He said some of the previously exempt properties may not be exempt in the future, and the organization had been looking at adding an additional $70,000.
While the advisory board of the SSMID recommending leaving the boundaries as they are, the UG Commission voted to shrink them, eliminating the west side of the district.
Commissioner Brian McKiernan said he talked with two or three dozen business owners on the west end of the district, and all were against staying in the district. He said a SSMID is a cooperative agreement among the property owners.
He proposed changing the boundaries from 18th Street to 12th Street on the west, and on the south from Sandusky to Tauromee Avenue. Commissioner McKiernan said additional districts could be formed around the core district if the property owners are interested.
Kuluva said if properties were eliminated west of 10th Street, it would reduce revenue by about $43,000, about 10 to 12 percent. It would reduce the area it has to take care of by about 35 percent.
Commissioner Hal Walker said it did not seem likely that creating a new SSMID from 12th to 18th Street would be able to be self-sustaining, given the present nature of the area.
Commissioner Melissa Bynum said the physical appearance of downtown has improved, and there is an improved outlook and attitude about being downtown, since the downtown improvement district started.
Commissioner Jane Philbrook said it appeared to her that it would be like cutting the tail off a dog, and letting the tail fend for itself. She said the downtown improvement district had looked a lot better in recent years.
Commissioner Harold Johnson said he sees more security personnel on the east side of the district than the west side, and he supported making the district smaller.
The vote to shrink the boundaries was 8-2 with commissioners Walker and Philbrook voting no. The vote was approve the SSMID (with the new boundaries) with a 10-year term was 10-0.