Past issues
Feeds
The Paper in print
Twitter
Facebook
Contact us
Email updates Twitter Facebook RSS Feeds
Dark days are ahead for some Atlantic Avenue business owners if they don’t agree to tax themselves — the city will take the pretty lights away.
After years of debate over who would pay for the Victorian-style lampposts that line the avenue’s sidewalks, the Department of Transportation gave the community an ultimatum: we will take away the antique-style lights unless merchants create a Business Improvement District — which would charge local businesses a yearly fee that would pay for projects like the maintenance of the posts.
“They’re holding the historic lights hostage!” said Elizabeth Crowell co-chair of the Atlantic Avenue BID Steering Committee. “Right now, we have the lighting, but nobody has paid for their maintenance in many years.”
The city confirmed the good and the bad news: The lights are on the chopping block, but they’re safe for now because the proposed BID includes a budget item for the lights’ maintenance.
On the other hand, if Crowell can’t convince businesses to form the BID, the city will rip up the lights.
A business improvement district is a quasi-public, self-taxing entity that supplements such city services as sanitation and security. The Atlantic Avenue BID proposes to change each landlord about $23 per foot per month for the privilege.
The fight to keep the lights intact is not only about their faux-historic beauty.
“Before the lighting, it was dark here — there was a safety issue,” said Sandy Balboza, president of the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association. “Not only that, but they add character to the street. It’s not a city requirement to have them, but the community needed them.”
The battle over who would pay for the lighting’s maintenance started almost four years ago. The lights aren’t covered in the city’s general budget, so the city told the Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation to foot the bill in 2007.
But the city says that the development corporation has not kept up the payments, so the Department of Transportation has moved to take the lights away.
But with the BID’s annual budget of $240,000, the city extended the removal deadline until later this year, pleasing Balboza and her crowd.
“If the city starts to pull them up now, we won’t be able to afford to put them back in,” she said. “If, er, I mean, when the BID is in place, this is just a small service that our businesses will finally be provided with.”
©2010 Community Newspaper Group
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
Print this story
Digg this
Del.icio.us