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DiCicco pressing on with Callowhill NID - despite an apparently successful petition against it.
Opponents of the proposed Callowhill Neighborhood Improvement District were caught by surprise today when City Council took up and voted through the bill authorizing the NID - despite the fact that City Council Chief Clerk Michael Decker acknowledged in an official letter yesterday that opponents of the NID had delivered petitions with enough signatures to overturn it.
DiCicco pressing on with Callowhill NID — despite an apparently successful petition against it.
Opponents of the proposed Callowhill Neighborhood Improvement District were caught by surprise today when City Council took up and voted through the bill authorizing the NID — despite the fact that City Council Chief Clerk Michael Decker acknowledged in an official letter yesterday that opponents of the NID had delivered petitions with enough signatures to overturn it.
The proposed NID would levy a 7% property tax surcharge on all residents of the district, which is north of Chinatown and streches from Broad to 8th street. Neighborhood groups and individuals have testified both for and against it. But because Council members almost invariably defer to District Council members on matters in their neighborhoods, a single Council person, in this case 1st District Councilman Frank DiCicco, can effectively create such a district, with the burden to overturn it falling to those opposed. To overturn it, dissenters have to collect the signatures of a majority of residents or signatures representing a majority of the total property value being assessed.
Yesterday, Chief Clerk Michael Decker wrote in an official memo addressed to members of City Council stating that opponents of the NID had passed both "tests" to overturn the district:
Under the first test, 51.9% of the affected property owners registered their disapproval. Under the second test, property owners whose property valuation amounted to 59.82% of the total property valuation registered their disapproval. (The property valuations were calculated for the Chief Clerk’s Office by the City’s Office of Property Assessment.)
Councilman Frank DiCicco did not immediately return a phone call and email seeking comment; but it seems apparent that the Councilman — or possibly, since no one CP spoke with is exactly sure how this works, the office of the Council president — intends to challenge the validity of the signatures submitted.
Because it is being passed in the last two weeks of Council, the bill will also require the mayor's signature to become law.
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