The Phoenix City Council denied a citizen petition that would dismantle the Roosevelt Business Improvement District on Wednesday.
The petition was authored by Bramley Paulin, a landowner within the proposed BID. Paulin made the petition with the purpose of making the City Council reverse its decision to approve the BID’s formation.
The Roosevelt BID, which was approved at the Jan. 20 City Council meeting, called for beautification of street fronts and investment services in the area within Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue and between Fillmore and Moreland streets.
Paulin exposed the incomplete nature of the BID boundaries diagram and Dickinson Wright Attorney Gary Birnbaum, rejected the map as it was deemed incomplete and lacking in statutory requirements. Reassessment of the diagram continued on March 2 and is an item to be readdressed on May 19.
“As a property owner I was told very early on that we would have a vote,” Paulin said. “We learned later on that there was no vote, you could only protest.”
Paulin said his petition requests the city acknowledge House Bill 2440 and Senate Bill 1487.
House Bill 2440, which requires a petition to be signed by owners of more than half of the taxable property within the proposed BID before its creation, was passed on Feb. 9 and signed by Gov. Doug Ducey on March 11.
Greg Esser, vice president of the Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation, said he believes Paulin’s petition is premature considering the recent process of approval that has taken place for HB 2440.
“As you are aware we’ve recently had House Bill 2440 passed and we still need time to understand the implications of that,” Esser said.
Senate Bill 1487 states that when a municipality contradicts state law, the attorney general can withhold the city’s shared state revenue.
Paulin said his petition was meant as a reminder to City Council that they needed to follow the rules like everyone else.
“This action of Jan. 20, and now the state law, kind of puts everything in a quagmire and my petition simply asks them to follow the law,” Paulin said. “What they did is not legal anymore in its process; a new process is required.”
The proposed boundaries for the BID were passed by City Council on Jan. 20 at the formal meeting; however, the proposed assessment diagram was not passed.
According to District 4 Councilwoman Laura Pastor, the BID formation is just boundaries, and the community would need to decide what to do with the land inside those boundaries.
“The formation of the Roosevelt Business Improvement District is just a formation and it was going to be up to the citizens in that area to determine what they wanted to do,” Pastor said.
Erick Baer, one of the founders of the Downtown Voices Coalition, said he would like to see supporters of the BID using the money for the greater good of the community.
“If they want to do something where they (supporters of the BID) really care about other people, let’s plant trees, let’s give blankets to the homeless, do some positive rather than give them $125,000 a year for a cake job,” Baer said.
The petition lost in a 6-3 vote by City Council.
“This is literally hundreds of people that have been working for a period of more than three years now to move this forward,” Esser said.
Contact the reporter at Brianna.Bradley@asu.edu
