Ever wonder who is responsible for the embarrassing Internet clip-art banners that uglify Commercial Drive lampposts so offensively? Who, neighbours of tolerant Commercial Drive might ask, hired the private security guards to stroll up and down the sidewalks to write up reports on the panhandlers, the buskers and those standing around too long on the street corner? Who, people wonder as they cringe at the sight of them, caused the new sidewalks along Commercial Drive two years ago to be forever engraved with the gagging slogans “Drive Certified” and “The Drive”?

The culprit is none other than the Commercial Drive Business Improvement Association. This is the same organization that found $3,000 in its $350,000 budget to donate to the Fair Tax Coalition, a big business political lobby organization pushing hard to redistribute the civic tax burden off the shoulders of business property owners and onto the shoulders of home owners, but thoroughly rejected handing a dime of support over to the neighbourhood organizers of the Commercial Drive Car Free Festival, the festival that brought 30,000 neighbours out to businesses front doors on two Sundays last summer. City Hall required the local BIA to at least ok the festival, if not financially support it, an act the BIA held out on till the last minute, threatening to cause the City to pull the plug on the immensely successful and already well-loved festival completely. Why, you might ask, incredulously. Because the Car Free Festival is “too political,” say board members, noting that NDP MP Libby Davies spoke at the last one.

Retail district BIA’s began to form 10 years ago throughout the city. Within their catchment areas, which in the Commercial Drive BIA includes both sides of Commercial Drive from Adanac Street to 14th Avenue, all business tenants and all land owners are mandatory members. But no workers and no residents are allowed to join. City Hall attaches a premium to business property tax assessments that are meted out by landowners to business tenants, and then hands over the collected funds to the elected board of the BIA. In the case of the Commercial Drive BIA, the City will collect and hand over $350,000 for the coming year.

It is up to the elected board of the BIA to figure out what to do with the funds. In the case of the Commercial Drive BIA, over one-third of the budget, or $137,000, is to be allocated to Intercon Security Inc, suppliers of uniformed security guards who stroll up and down the street wielding note books they use to record the names and the doings of anyone found on the street not engaged in shopping or legitimate work. If someone is in distress, if someone is being beaten, or if someone is peddling crack cocaine, the guards shuffle along—they can do nothing and are instructed by their supervisor to do nothing. But they routinely stop buskers, panhandlers, and people simply passing the time of day, and record their names, note the times of these “incidences” and move them along.

There are many other questionable items that appeared on the proposed 2008 budget that was presented to members of the BIA at an annual general meeting held in Federico’s Supper Club on the evening of September 24. For example, even though the BIA office was recently relocated from an accessible storefront space in Il Mercato Mall to a window-less room behind ever-locked doors on the second floor above Federico’s Supper Club in a building owned by the family of the president of the BIA, the budget called for $28,000 for office rent.

Questioned about this extraordinarily expensive rent, current board members of the BIA said not to worry, the rent is actually only about $1,000 per month. The budget as presented to members by the board, it was carefully explained, was only a formality to please City officials whose only concern is to see that all the money handed over is at least theoretically allocated somewhere, it doesn’t really matter where. The numbers in the budget, it was explained by current board members, could and would be easily shifted around at will once the document was filed with the appropriate City office. None of the allocations in the budget presented to members are in fact real. When asked when a real budget would be presented to members, the board replied that there would not in fact be such a budget. Spending of the $350,000 lifted from business property owners up and down the street would be a fluid process. So goes the budgeting process at the Commercial Drive BIA so long as the City never proceeds with an audit. The thoroughly fake budget was passed.

The City-dictated constitution of the BIA mandates that nominations for new board members be filed at the locked-up BIA office no less than 28 days in advance of the annual general meeting. The BIA sent out a call for nominees 21 days before the meeting. Consequently, the only nominees for the board allowed at the meeting were all the current board members. The constitution also mandates that board members may not serve two consecutive two-year terms. But because there were no other nominees, all those elected were sitting incumbents. A motion to nominate candidates from the floor at the meeting was not allowed on the grounds that the constitution said nothing about the possibility of nominations from the floor. Yet, on at least two previous occasions in the BIA’s six-year history, nominations had been accepted from the floor. But not this time, despite several members present expressing their desire to step forward as nominees to the board.

Residents of the Commercial Drive area, citizens using the street, and workers employed in the street who wonder who is putting up those awful banners, who is hiring the obnoxious private security guards, and who is funding organizations like the Fair Tax Coalition, and who isn’t funding or supporting even by word the Car Free Festival, should know that it is the business community of Commercial Drive that is responsible, but not all of the businesses in the BIA wish it to be so. The constitution states that six of the 12 or 13 seats must be landowners and six or seven of the remaining seats must be business tenants. At least two and probably three of the tenant board seats (we don’t know because the nominations and election proceeded without presentations or speeches, or even proper introductions), have been and will continue to be occupied by paid employees of big companies like Shoppers Drug Mart and The Royal Bank.

Support your local businesses by all means. But don’t expect the local business organization paid out of City funds to support you. We tried to fix it. We failed.