How now cash cow…
There was a time when, if downtown store owners wanted to spruce up their commercial property, they saved their money and fixed it up.
Later there was time when, if downtown store owners wanted to spruce up their commercial property, they went to the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership (DNP) and asked for a grant to help them pay to fix it up. In Nanaimo, half of the $412,000 available to the DNP came from other downtown BIA business owners and the other $206,000 came from everybody else.
Most recently, if downtown store owners want to spruce up their commercial property, they go to City Council and ask for funds. At its last meeting Council awarded $20,000 for façade improvements to three commercial enterprises. This money did not come from the funds provided to the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership, but was a double dip of public funding for our private downtown businesses bringing the general taxpayer share to $226,000.
They say that money is the root of all evil. It may not be strictly true, but one can see its insidious effects in the working of the $206,000 BIA taxpayer subsidy. (“Public BIA cash not monitored, say Critics”, Derek Spalding, in the Daily News, April 1.) While dividing earned cash is contentious enough, dividing windfall cash is explosive. Everybody wants a bite of the “freebie”. Nanaimo is the only municipality in BC which provides matching funds to BIA collections. I think they all know something that we do not.
– Ron Bolin
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
While I normally agree with Mr. Bolin and his various letters to the editor, this time the writer may have his facts wrong.
The writer is claiming that downtown commercial property owners somehow have this magical access to public funds to improve their buildings. What the writer is referring to is the Facade Improvement Fund, a fund of cash set aside to help property owners either maintain, or restore their buildings as they were in history. First, the building has to be on the Heritage register. Second, in order to get matching funds which amounts to $10,000 per side of the building, the city becomes a partner in the building and places a covenant on title. Third, whatever the owner of the building is endeavoring to achieve, he or she must work through the Heritage committee and be first approved at this level.
The money never belonged to the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership. It always came from the city. The DNP only administered the funds and assisted with the approval process.
Over the years changes to the fund also included window replacement and painting. This pool of money is also very limited. I manage a building called the Jean Burn’s building, among others that are on the Heritage register, and as much as I would like to access these funds to improve these buildings that sit directly across from the Port of Nanaimo Conference Centre, the process is long and funds get snatch up very quickly. However, because this building qualifies for these funds, our company has chosen not to do any improvements until such time as we can acquire the matching funds. If we start work on completing any improvement, we are disqualified from the funds. It is a catch 22.
The program is sound. It is a good idea, one that both the city and the province seems to want to keep as a way to save our community’s heritage.
Update:
I now hear from Matt Hussman that the previous board approved a recommendation to use previous capital funds paid to the DNPS for the purpose of making grants to owners of buildings that are NOT on the heritage register. So, Ron, yes, they are using taxpayer funds for private use.
I did want to use capital funds years ago. Then Mayor Korpan suggested that I go after those funds for the purpose of security gating as a way of helping solve some of the drug issues. I was told by the DNP and one city staff member that I cannot use those funds.
So, I guess it is who you know with respect to using tax dollars for private use – whether it is good for the community or not.
While I deny Mr. Hyne’s charge that I had my facts wrong, as money is indeed being taken from one set of pockets and placed in another, I understand his distinction between heritage grants which involve a subset of downtown properties which, according to him, carry with them a quid pro quo for city taxpayers in that the city gains an interest in the buildings so funded; and other forms of direct downtown subsidization.
It was with this latter circumstance that I was primarily concerned. I was more protesting the $200,000+ taken from all taxpayers each year and given to the DNP (now BIA1 and BIA2). What is it about downtown land owners that grants them the right to other peoples” money beyond a whim of Council?
If we further examine this pattern of public largess with private (taxpayer) funds, we find that our Council makes grants or exemptions of over $3.2 million dollars each year, i.e. roughly 4% of all property tax funds collected to various groups who, one suspects, may be suitably impressed at election time.
I am not really a grinch. I believe that it may be prudent to distribute funds or exemptions to groups that can demonstrate a return greater than could be accomplished by direct purchase, but I have seen no documentation which would demonstrate that this was done. Such documents should be available and public, else the process is open to abuse. And I have certainly not seen the documentation which supports $200,000+ per year for downtown property owners over and above the, I would guess, $175 million which taxpayers have already invested there in the VICC, the Port Theater, the Library and related infrastructure.
Ron, which $200,000 are you referring too? The capital, or the matching funds?
As I am not a downtown business owner/operator, I refer only to the matching funds that Council provides from my/our tax dollars. Whether I would be against the capital raised under the BIAs is therefore moot, but I would like to think that if I were a downtown business owner/operator, and if there were a good and doable plan for the use of such funds, that I would support them. I am all for people who get together with their own funds for mutual improvement.
Well, let me educate you on how the BIA operates.
In the past the DNP received funds through a levy assessed to commercial property owners. In round figures, commercial properties in the core were charge $800.00 and outside around $250.00 more or less, and I am going by memory.
This raised funds for both BIA 1 operated by the Nanaimo City Centre Association, and BIA 2 operated by the Old City Quarter Association. Those associations as a condition of receiving matching funds from the city passed those monies over the DNP as a partnership.
The city also provide the DNP with capital funds in the amount of $200,000 per year (again, I am going by memory).
The capital funds where to be used for capital items such as streetscape improvements, lamp standards, Christmas Decorations and the like. However, the DNP was not spending the money, but holding onto in for the purpose of building things such as the performing arts centre.
The city later stopped providing the DNP with the funds as they were no using as intended.
The matching funds are to be used to hire people like Matt Hussmann and staff, and to compound the effect of funds raised through the BIA all in the name of downtown improvement.
The whole subject of the BIA, downtown and funds is complicated and many people just don’t understand.
Thanks to the DNP board, more downtown property owners have been forced into the fold. Moreover, those properties in the downtown core now pay less and those outside the core now pay more, but will benefit less.
There is so much to say on how all of this works, and why I, through Crankshaw Holdings spent thousands of dollars and committed hundreds of volunteer hours over the years to bring all of it to light. Even council was accusing me of being the problem with the DNP – Ha – I say now. Now they all know different.
So, no Ron, the property owners downtown do not benefit from all the matching funds, capital or otherwise – unless you are part of a small group. Well, with the new board, that is all going to change!
Then something is wrong with the structure of the program. But, having set up special circumstances that favour one part of the city over the others, it is perhaps not strange that this same pattern of exceptionalism is reflected in the part itself.
BIA’s are an effective tool to help groups of people help themselves and normally do not involve general taxpayer’s funds.
Agreed. I believe Nanaimo is the only municipality in the province where this happens. What is it about Nanaimo that this is the case?
Ah, perhaps you need to ask Ron Cantelon.