Business Groups Fill The Breach

The popularity of BIDs here is part of a trend seen from London to Los Angeles, Moore said. New York City has more than 50 BIDs, dating to 1976 when private businesses stepped in to bolster deteriorating public services that resulted from New York's financial crisis.

District law requires that a majority of landowners within the boundaries of a proposed BID agree to the special taxes and sign a petition. The plan, which includes the boundaries for the special district, must also be approved by the D.C. Council and the mayor. Residential properties, churches and other nonprofit groups are usually exempt from the taxes. A BID is governed by a board of directors that includes property owners, and it must be renewed by a vote of the membership every five years.

The services provided by a BID vary in scale and sophistication. The Downtown BID, which collects $10 million in taxes from 535 properties spread across 138 blocks, employs cleaning crews, helps pay for new sidewalks, streetlights and signs, sponsors public cultural events, markets the neighborhood, helps businesses develop, provides services to the homeless and subsidizes the D.C. Circulator, the crosstown public bus service. The Adams Morgan BID, on the other hand, is collecting $300,000 annually primarily for street cleaning and security.

"In Adams Morgan, it's having cops there late at night because of the clubs," Widdicombe said. "In Georgetown, it's about buses to get people to Georgetown because of their ill-fated Metro decision [to refuse a light-rail station decades ago]. It's different things to different neighborhoods. It's democracy in action."

Some of the business improvement districts are talking about working cooperatively to share equipment, reduce costs and start services that would cross boundaries, such as WiFi networks. One example is the Circulator, whose costs are subsidized by four business improvement districts.

One district has expanded beyond commercial properties to include residences. The Mount Vernon Triangle Community Improvement District taxes condominiums as well as commercial properties because the emerging neighborhood is filled with residential towers that are either planned or have been recently completed. The district would not be feasible if it taxed only commercial buildings, said Widdicombe, who is also executive director of the nascent Mount Vernon group.

The Downtown BID is weighing whether to seek a legal change that would allow it to also tax some residential properties.

"When we started, there were no residential properties downtown," said Rich Bradley, executive director of the Downtown BID. "But now more residential properties are coming on line and we've got residential owners approaching us, asking us for the kinds of services we provide to the business community."

But residents are less likely than businesses to want to pay special taxes, Moore said. "People living in a neighborhood say, more than businesses, 'Wait a second, I paid for that already,' " he said, referring to local taxes paid by city residents. "Anyone trying to expand BIDs who are looking to include condos and residential buildings, they have a lot of work to do."