Bolin's Blog and Grill

The following letter to the Editor was sent recently to all our local newspapers.  To date neither the Daily News or the Star have even reported that the event took place and the article in the Bulletin ignored entirely the srole of general taxpayers in supporting the objectives of our downtown businesses.  BIAs and the DNPS are not well understood, but a significant amount of our general tax money is going to their objectives.  I am not against downtown businesses organizing for their own objectives, nor do I object if they wish to tax themselves for that purpose.  But to take my tax money for their objectives is a step too far.  I hope that the letter explains this clearly.

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Downtown Nanaimo Partnership Society meeting at the Shaw Auditorium on Wednesday, July 29.

In our society groups are free to organize themselves to promote their own interests and Nanaimo offers many examples.  Specific areas of the city are likewise free to organize for their own interests, i.e. neighbourhood associations.  There has been yet another type of special area/special purpose association, created by provincial legislation: BIAs.  Business Improvement Areas can, given a successful majority vote of their members, cause all owners/businesses in that area to pay a special tax to serve their special interests. There are currently two BIA groups in Nanaimo and a number of them in British Columbia.  In Nanaimo, and only here, has the BIA system been extended by city bylaw and through an organizational structure recently described as Byzantine, to a system in which general property tax payers match the funds raised by the BIAs.  In the past five years, this has meant that general taxpayers have contributed nearly $1,200,000 to the purposes of the BIA members.

Readers may be aware that all has not been well in the DNPS camp.  At Wednesday’s meeting it appeared that the primary point on which all could agree was that the matching funds from general taxpayers should continue.  Why?  It can hardly be maintained that the city and its taxpayers have scrimped on funds spent in the downtown in recent years.  Hundreds of millions in capital funding have been spent (VICC, Port Theatre, and the downtown Library just to name the biggies).  In addition to the DNPS matching grants, healthy operating grants over the last five years have been given to societies and agencies located in the downtown: Museum Society, $1,389,109; Port Theatre Society, $2,248,688; Tourism Nanaimo, $1,565,500, plus an unclear amount in annual operating funding to the downtown Library, the VICC and other lesser agencies. 

I do not object to the funding of public purposes, but to fund a special group or area of the city the purpose of which is to serve the city by first serving itself is questionable at best: and if this is done for one group or area, why not for others?  I am sure that my neighbourhood could improve the city by improving itself.  Why is Nanaimo the only city in BC which provides matching grants to BIA monies? And why was this meeting not promptly reported in our local newspapers?