For Local Businesses:
CALL OR E-MAIL YOUR CITY COUNCILORS BEFORE THEY VOTE TO ADOPT THE BID ON THE 19TH: You can use this sample e-mail or phone script if you like. "I would like to urge you to vote against the BID. In a time of reccession, the BID will heighten the recession's effects by raising property taxes by 40%, thus raising residential and business rents and prices all over downtown. It will destroy independent businesses that have no margin for that cost, eliminating the very businesses that put money back into the local economy and make Northampton's reputation as a vibrant art culture. Those who opt out will still be paying taxes that go into the BID--up to almost a million of the city's dollars a year--yet they will be excluded from vital municipal services. The BID is illegitimate for many reasons, including the gerrymandering of Smith College and the fact that downtown is not enough of a commercial and industrial zone to fit BID criteria, and about 30% of the assents required by law are from residential property owners who are excluded from the BID. The BID will be making decisions that affect everyone in downtown and Northampton, yet they will be allowed to meet behind closed doors, with no transparency or accountability.Finally, the BID proposal has grave implications for civil and human rights, especially those of low income people--it implies that the homeless will be used as a free labor pool, it creates provisions for private security and informants which will police the streets based on the interests of businesses rather than the interests of the public, and it still includes the language of a classist anti-panhandling ordinance that was tabled due to overwhelming community disapproval." Just so you know, if you own a business downtown, if your business is between Pleasant/King st. and the bridge to Hadley, your councilor is Reckman. If your business is before Pleasant and King st. but still downtown, your councilor is Murphy. Here's a list of councilor contact info--maps of wards are linked below (if you can't figure out your ward by the map, e-mail me at simon.caty@gmail.com and I will help you find out what ward you're in.). Remember to contact three councilors--the two at-large councilors, Bardsley and Dostal, and your ward councilor. James Dostal, At-Large City Council President 586-1390 jmdostal@comcast.net Raymond LaBarge Ward 7 584-5561 Here's a map of the wards, to find out which ward you're in, which city council you have, and thus which one you should call:
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