Abstract
Business improvement districts (BIDs) have a fascinating anatomy. BIDs are private, public, and nonprofit, all in one. BIDs are private because they are usually established and governed by the business community, and mainly comprise property or business owners who hope to improve the economic, social, and physical conditions of their districts. BIDs can be viewed as public because their revenue comes from surcharges on property taxes, which is then used to provide services (e.g., sanitation, security) that are traditionally provided by municipal governments. Once established, BIDs operate as nonprofit corporations following the general structure and rules of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.
The three-in-one nature of BIDs, therefore, creates complexity in aligning their motivation, action, and operation styles. Thus, such complexity has led to some normative questions. For example, whose interest should be represented most strongly during the decision-making process when the budget is exclusively from the property owners while the agenda would affect the lives of the public? Are BIDs truly democratic? Situations where property owners with larger properties that have bigger voices or where board meetings are closed to nonproperty owners in the community have challenged the fairness of BIDs. How each BID is operated varies depending on a variety of local factors, such as legislative, administrative, or human factors. Thus, some BIDs would be more willing and able to be more democratic than others by design. Regardless, the question of democracy is an important one as BIDs are gaining more influence in shaping and managing our neighborhoods and commercial areas.
This inquiry continues with Unger, who particularly focused on the public and private aspects of BIDs. Unger describes BIDs as “public-private hybrids” that exceptionally marry “the ability to behave as a private corporation with a governmental broadness of mission and public power to tax” (p. 3). Unger’s core question is to measure the degree at which a BID is democratic using institutional features of what he calls “publicness” and “privateness” (p. 4). The endeavors to delineate various degrees of publicness and privateness in understanding BIDs, I consider, are indeed unique, and the most notable contribution of the book to the extant literature.
To achieve his research goals, Unger first discusses the criteria that can explain the public and private characteristics of organizations, such as accountability, scope of mission, and autonomy, and confirms that BIDs manifest both solid public and private organizational characteristics in comparison to other public-private partnership entities, such as common interest developments (CIDs), tax increment financing (TIFs), and special assessment districts (SADs).
Unger then narrows the discussion to BIDs, particularly the six BIDs that comprise a multiple case study. The description and comparison of these six BIDs form the foundation on which the central analysis and thesis of this book lies. The sampling logic of how and why these six BIDs were chosen out of 72 BIDs existing in New York City is missing. Instead, the author reasoned that the six BIDs were selected to reflect various budget sizes and socioeconomic districts. As a result, the study includes two high-budget BIDs (i.e., per annum budget above $1 million; Grand Central Partnership and Union Square Partnership), two midbudget BIDs (i.e., per annum budget above $300,000 up to $1 million; 47th Street BID and Columbus Avenue BID), and two low-budget BIDs (i.e., per annum budget up to $110,000; North Flatbush BID and White Plains Road BID). Based on Unger’s observation, each BID also shows distinctive characteristics as “the corporate BID, the neighborhood BID, the industry BID, the retail BID, the activist BID, and the mom and pop BID,” respectively. The degree of publicness and privateness of each BID was then analyzed in the four areas of organizational life: mission and activities, decision-making process, constituency relations, and fundraising strategies.
The in-depth narratives and systemic analysis of six different BIDs form a convincing argument that “BIDs make clear choices about whether to act more governmentally or not in these four arenas” (p. 127). For example, according to Unger’s analysis, the small budgeted activist BID showed a relatively public style of operation, whereas the medium budgeted industry BID showed the most private style. Other BIDs in between showed mixed—some public and some private—characteristics. For example, one wealthy BID had a public-oriented mission while its decision-making process follows the style of private organizations. One low-budget BID also had closed board meetings, but its behaviors concerning constituency relations and fundraising strategies resembled those of public agencies. To explain these variations in BID behaviors, Unger argues that organizational culture is a more plausible independent variable than budget size. According to Unger, the characteristics of the leadership of each BID, specifically who comprises the board members and if they live in the community, can dictate the degree of publicness of a BID.
Unger does not propose whether BIDs should move more toward one way or another on the public-private spectrum, but is instead concerned with increasing the accountability of BIDs. Unger spends the concluding chapter and epilogue on arguing that the measures that monitor and oversee BIDs are weak, and therefore need to be strengthened. Inviting more board members from merchants and residents or establishing closer monitoring through municipal partners could strengthen the accountability of BIDs.
Unger’s concluding remarks, however, fall short of addressing potential conflicts that may arise when attempting to implement such accountability measures. Although stronger oversight and voice from the community can be justified from the participatory planning perspective, whether this undermines the grassroots, the self-help motivation of BIDs is unaddressed. Similarly, how the new inclusion would affect the free-rider problem differently remains unanswered. Holding BIDs publicly accountable sounds hopeful, but trying to quiet down one component over the other will likely bring about other normative questions because each BID component of public, private, and nonprofit is intricately interwoven in action. Finally, it is noteworthy to point out that this book is mainly based on New York City. A further reading of the accountability measures that already exist in other cities (e.g., sunset laws or Ralph M. Brown Act in Los Angeles) could be a useful supplement to the discussion offered in this book.