The Asheville City Council meeting for today is canceled. On the agenda was a request for funding for a study. The Downtown Master Planners, consultants hired from the Massachusetts firm Goody Clancy, wanted Asheville to create a Business Improvement District. BID’s have been created in a number of cities in North Carolina and elsewhere for a couple of reasons: (1) Municipal governments have been failing to provide adequate public safety and infrastructure, and (2) People have been convinced that festivals, street flowers, and other niceties are best provided with public assistance (welfare). A BID would be given taxing powers over a part of the municipality in order to provide these services.
Those charged with making sure the Downtown Master Plan gets implemented will ask city council when they next meet for help funding a survey and study in the name of education. The survey will ask downtown business people not if they want a BID to provide niceties, but what niceties they would prefer. It is expected the results of the survey will be presented to downtown officials as a mandate. The study will be a “benefit analysis” – not a cost-benefit analysis.
