City Commission gives final approval for Grove BID

I see Dave Collins every day but yesterday I had to give him my congrats on the final passing of the BID (Business Improvement District) by the City Commission on Thursday.

Dave is the Executive Director. We are going to celebrate over his famous cucumber punch on Sunday at the Gifford Lane Art Stroll, in fact.

That is Dave, left, with Rohit Patel, owner of Anokha Indian Restaurant.

By a vote of 4-0, all four City Commissioners present voted in favor of the BID. The four commissioners Marc Sarnoff, our own district commissioner, Joe Sanchez, Michelle Spence-Jones and Tomas Regalado, all seemed to be genuinely happy to vote for the special taxing district.

The city went back and forth a bit until finally after many meetings until a "defined partnership" was decided upon between the city and Grove, according to Dave.

The city will now be giving the BID $971,000 and the local business owners will be "taxed" another $462,000 for the total yearly budget of $1,433,000.

This is a major victory for the Grove, giving us autonomy and allowing the businesses to decide how they want the village run. There are 19 board members, quite large for a board. Comm. Marc Sarnoff is one of the board members and he is able to choose two other members. The rest of the board was elected.

Currently this is part of the board:
Property owners: Manny Alonso-Poch, Joe Harrison, Scott Silver and Maurice Wiener
Merchants: H. Bredermeier and Steven Anton Rehage
Restaurant owners: Sylvano Bignon Lalo Durazo and Lee Marks
Hoteliers: Sam Kelley and Barbara Wendel
Comm. Marc Sarnoff
Three non-voting members include Lilliana Dones, Monty Trainer and David Yoblick.

I like the BID Board (love that, BID Board), because I know most of these people personally, and they are all decent people who want the BID to succeed and are always volunteering their time and energy for the good of the Grove.

There will be various committees that will meet monthly and report back to the main board a few times a year. But the committees will sort of be calling the day to day shots on certain issues.