By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
August 3, 2011

With $40,000 in its pocket, Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce is hitting the streets to promote establishing a Community Improvement District in Northeast.

The City of Kansas City loaned the $40,000 to Northeast Chamber through its newly established CID/Neighborhood Improvement District (NID) Revolving Loan Fund.

“One of the greatest challenges for any area in the city that wants to create a mechanism like a CID is quite honestly, who’s going to pay for it? It takes money to be able to do it,” said Scott Wagner, City of Kansas City Council member and founder of the Revolving Loan Fund.

As the first organization to benefit from the Revolving Loan Fund, Northeast Chamber isn’t taking it for granted.

“We’re ecstatic,” Northeast Chamber President Bobbi Baker-Hughes said. “It’s been something the community has talked about for 20, 25 years, but it’s never been so close to becoming a reality as it is right now.”

During their monthly meeting July 26, Northeast Chamber discussed the formation of a CID and consulted with other CIDs in the Kansas City area.

According to Northeast Chamber’s fact sheet, a CID is an “economic development tool that allows commercial interests and private parties within a specified area to band together, plan business services and/or public improvements considered important to their economic vitality.”

Proposed CID boundaries for Northeast include commercial properties along Independence Avenue between Paseo Boulevard and Ewing Avenue.

Northeast Chamber will serve as the sponsoring organization of the CID and has already formed an 11-member steering committee comprised of Northeast business owners, residents, property owners and organizations.

To fund the CID, the Chamber is proposing flat assessments against property owners within the proposed boundaries, along with an additional percent sales tax within the same boundaries.

To establish the CID, 51 percent of the property owners and 51 percent of the assessed value ownership of the properties must approve adopting a property tax levy, Baker-Hughes said. In addition, residents within the proposed CID boundaries must approve the additional sales tax. Property owners will sign a petition to show their support and residents will vote via mail-in ballot.

Steering committee members are in the process of gathering contact information for the 269 properties and creating their sales pitch.

Using an aggressive timeline, the Chamber hopes to have the CID up and running by September of 2012.

Benefits of a CID

“I hate paying taxes as much as the next person, but these are community directed dollars. No other governmental entity tells us what to do,” Baker-Hughes told Northeast News. “You can fix the problems that are specific to your area. If we want to spend money washing sidewalks, that’s what we’ll spend the money on. If we want to spend money putting up cameras in (crime) hot spots of the community, that’s what we’ll spend our money on. It’s a self defined expense.”

Although still in the infant stages, Baker-Hughes said the steering committee is focusing on crime and grime as key issues. Other areas include beautification and marketing the Northeast shopping district.

“We want to be an international market place and we’ve got to lay the ground work for that and then get it marketed, so that we can bring consumers here and we can keep our community shopping in this area,” she said. “We’ve got to move forward quickly, get the CID in place and then start implementing some solutions to challenges that we have wanted to overcome for years, but haven’t had the dollars to do it.”

A number of CIDs in Kansas City have employed “ambassadors” (security guards) to keep an eye out for criminal activity and provide assistance, like give directions, to passersby.

Master Patrol Officer James Schriever of the Central Patrol Division said CIDs are vital to communities.

“What the CID does for the police department and the community itself is give you one central voice,” Schriever said. “Twenty-five years ago, I spent many hours of my police career standing at Warner Plaza and Main picking up prostitutes as a police officer. Today, that (prostitution) area does not exist and it does not exist because of all of the efforts of the Maincor CID and their organized attack working with law enforcement and government entities to address crime and social disorders.”

Losing any of the CIDs in Kansas City would be detrimental and leave gaps in service, he said.

“Independence Avenue is a huge link,” he continued. “It’s a missing link as we call it in our division. A lot of crime has been displaced to Independence Avenue just because of the design and dynamics of it.

“That’s why we need a united front on the Avenue to work with us to address it.”

Northeast Chamber is hoping to eliminate that missing link and transform Northeast for the better.

“I’m excited,” Baker-Hughes said. “I think we’re on the cusp of something great.”