City certifies The District’s CID petition

The city of Columbia on Wednesday officially certified the petition by the Special Business District and the Central Columbia Association to create a Community Improvement District in the 43-block area downtown.
A CID is a special taxing district that can levy a property tax or a sales tax. Its formation must be approved by more than half of the total property owners and property owners owning more than half of the total assessed value of the district.
Property owners owning just less than 70 percent of the total assessed value of the proposed district and 58 percent of the total number of property owners approved the petition, according to The District Executive Director Carrie Gartner. The City Council will hold a hearing on The District’s formation in February. If it is approved, it would not take effect until October 2012.
The District spent the past year gathering signatures and meeting with property owners about the CID, Gartner said. Very few actually opposed the petition, she said, and the property owners who didn’t approve the petition were mostly those the organization couldn’t get in touch with.
The District’s goal is to combine the functions of the SBD and CCA under a CID board, Gartner said.
“The CID was designed to really bring together everything we do in this office,” she said.
Functions such as economic development, mostly performed by the SBD, and marketing, mostly performed by the CCA, would be brought under the supervision of one board.
Currently, The District is funded through a 47-cent property tax per $100 of assessed value paid by property owners in its boundaries. The CID would keep that rate the same, Gartner said, and actually lower the maximum rate to 60 cents from the current 85 cents. That made it an “easy sell” to District property owners, she said.
But the real attraction of a CID is the options it gives The District for other revenue streams, Gartner said.
“It’s not just property tax revenues,” Gartner said. “You can also impose a sales tax with a vote of The District’s residents.”
The SBD and CCA board’s priority now is to get the CID approved by the City Council, Gartner said, but they will be looking at the possibility of implementing a sales tax in the future.
“Right now, the property owners are funding the bulk of what we’re doing,” she said. “What a sales tax would do is let everyone who enjoys The District pay a little bit into what we’re doing.”
The District would also have the option of selling bonds paid by sales and property tax revenue to finance large projects. Gartner said there are no immediate plans for any large projects.
Gartner noted that a special sales tax downtown wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. Almost every large retail center in the city, such as the Columbia Mall and those anchored by the Walmarts and Bass Pro Shops, collects a one-half-cent sales tax imposed by Transportation Development Districts. Those districts, established by the property owner and approved by a judge, pay for road projects, stormwater detention and parking lot improvements.
“If you look at all the other retail centers, they already have a one-half-cent sales tax,” Gartner said. “It would really bring us to parity.”