Downtown BIA remains a ‘nightmare’
Budget approval delayed as politicians, city staff weigh in on long-standing controversy
Death threats. Nightmare. Mess.
Those words were all used to describe what’s going on within the downtown business improvement association during last week’s Niagara Falls city council meeting. For the second time in three months politicians deferred approving the BIA’S 2023 budget due to ongoing concerns.
Council granted authority to municipal staff to grant a loan of about $100,000, if required, to help the embattled BIA continue to operate until issues can be resolved. The money will be paid back once the budget is approved and the city starts collecting the levy from downtown properties.
Politicians received conflicting information about the status of the BIA chair position, with concerns raised about recent efforts to remove the current chair.
“I have some serious concerns about what is going on with the BIA,” said Coun. Wayne Campbell, council’s BIA representative. “It’s not functioning very well and there is a lot of conflict, there’s a lot of threats to the executive director — death threats. It’s becoming somewhat of a nightmare, to the point where the executive director, she’s a mess.”
In recent years, some downtown merchants have been unhappy with the direction of the BIA board, budget increases, meeting processes, elections and communication and transparency issues.
Council approved the appointment of a new board in December after an election that ruffled some feathers, and deferred approving its budget until members could have an opportunity to discuss it.
At the time, Mayor Jim Diodati said council was not going to act as a “referee,” adding it was important for the BIA to sort out its own issues as an independent organization.
“Staff are here to give advice, but we’re not here to go in and clean up their mess and decide who’s right and who’s wrong,” said city clerk Bill Matson. “They need to do that themselves. In this short amount of time that they’ve been together, as this new board, I’ve only seen the problems get worse.”
Coun. Ruth-ann Nieuwesteeg, who was chair of the Main and Ferry BIA, said councillors have been “inundated” with concerns about the downtown BIA, which has not been the case with the other BIAS.
“My concern, as a councillor, is that we have a lot of exciting things going on in the downtown — the university and the GO train — and we need to have this resolved.”
She said downtown businesses are trying to operate in a “challenging” environment, including having security guards at meetings.
“I’ve never seen anything like that. I think it really comes down to what perception of the role of the BIA is. There’s, I think, two models happening here. One where the BIA serves at the pleasure of the businesses and it seems like downtown, it’s kind of reversed, that the businesses are serving at the pleasure of the BIA. When you’re hearing from business owners — business owners that have been there for a long time — they’re completely frustrated, they feel that they don’t have a voice.”
Coun. Victor Pietrangelo said councillors get emails from both sides, adding he doesn’t “know what to believe.”
“Is there any way that votes that deal with the downtown can simply just be deferred until we get some type of verification from staff who’s running the BIA?” he said. “Maybe we can have our clerk actually give us an update and at our next meeting, hopefully we have a budget that we can pass. I think we got to get on with something, it’s just a matter of I want credible information in front of me.”
Council decided to only treat information received as official correspondence from the executive director, with Matson saying she’s employed — and was hired by — the board.
Campbell said before the board’s next meeting the BIA will be “bankrupt.”
“There was some question whether they could get partial monies from the city to negate the possibility,” he said.
Jason Burgess, the city’s chief administrative officer, said he assumes the BIA is not facing bankruptcy, but rather it has “just run out of cash or it’s a cash-flow issue.”
“Because the budget is being deferred because council wants some additional information, the deferral causes a cash-flow problem for the BIA,” he said. “If council wants to provide a bit of a lifeline, you can give the CAO and the solicitor and the treasurer the authority to loan an amount to the BIA.”
Burgess said the BIA would need to prove “financial need” before a loan is approved.
Campbell said there’s a “certain percentage” of board members that want to cut the BIA budget, which means there will be no future Santa Claus and Canada Day parades.
He said the city made arrangements with the BIA to operate those events at a “much-reduced cost” than the municipality was spending.
Nieuwesteeg said no other BIAS run those parades.
“I don’t know if they have to go back and figure out what their mandate is and what the role of the BIA (is) and they have a consensus on that,” she said. “I think that’s the crux of this whole issue. Other BIAS aren’t running that way, and there doesn’t seem to be any issues with the other BIAS.”
In an interview, Matson said he, Burgess and Campbell will try to set up a meeting with the executive director and board chair to “come up with a plan on how we can move forward.”
“I really don’t want to spend time just going back and trying to decipher what has happened in the past — I think that’s going to be very exhaustive, it’s not really going to get us anywhere,” he said. “But try and get them off the ground here and get things progressing.”