Westwood merchants and property owners are upset at Councilman
Jack Weiss’ possible preparation of another Business
Improvement District, less than four months after the
Village’s original BID was ended amid controversy.
The agenda for Friday’s L.A. City Council meeting includes
an item proposed by Weiss that would allocate $25,000 in city money
to the BID consulting services of Keyser Marston Associates to help
develop plans for a new BID.
Weiss, whose fifth district includes Westwood, had a meeting
with community members on Jan. 9 and failed to give any indication
then of his plans to create a new BID.
The last BID was cited by the Los Angeles district
attorney’s office for violating the Ralph M. Brown Act, a
state law prohibiting secret legislation by public bodies. The
perceived secrecy surrounding current plans, while in no way
illegal, has many up in arms.
“I’m pretty positive that he knew about this motion
long before our meeting,” said Philip Gabriel, owner of
Scrubs Unlimited.
Weiss’ projection of a new BID will be a property-based
organization, like the previous one ““Â where property
owners, not business managers or merchants wield decision-making
power, even though merchants sometimes end up bearing the financial
burden.
Weiss acknowledged the failure of the property-based BID during
the last meeting, saying he wanted the next one to be
merchant-based.
“This whole thing is underhanded and wrong,” said
Jay Handal, president of the West L.A. Chamber of Commerce.
“It is a real lapse in credibility,” said Jeff
Abell, owner of Sarah Leonard’s Fine Jewelers.
Though Weiss hasn’t officially appointed anyone to run the
new BID, Doug Brown has been one of the prime movers behind the new
BID, according to Handal and others. Brown was the treasurer of the
old BID for two years, during which $750,000 of its capital
improvement fund went unaccounted for.
As treasurer, Brown had the fiduciary duty to ensure the BID was
being audited annually, but the BID was never audited during his
time.
There are currently two separate auditors trying to account for
the large sum of missing money. A meeting has been set for Jan. 30
for a resolution to this matter.
Several phone calls to Weiss went unanswered. According to his
press aide Lisa Hansen, Friday’s agenda item is “the
first step in a lengthy process in assisting the Westwood
businesses to create their own BID.”