Inge Durre has published a list of questions she wants answered about the proposed, or, rather, the inevitable, invincible Business Improvement District for downtown Asheville. Advocates have obediently been overt ambassadors for the pursuit group, while the red weed has slowly permeated downtown culture. Why, an Interim BID Board is now acting, and nobody outside the inner sanctum seems to know by what authority. According to Durre, “The Interim BID Board boasts of its endorsement by the Downtown Management Committee, when in fact, 5 of the listed committee members also serve on the Interim BID Board.”
The BID will come with an exciting new 7% tax increase on downtown properties. The revenues might or might not cover basic city services like public safety and sanitation. The city is too busy paying to recruit more microbreweries to the area and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars imperviating greenways to use tax dollars for that. To Durre’s knowledge, no real study has been produced to show what will pay for what, and all presentations to date have been to promote the BID, not to weigh pros and cons.