State Sen. Betty Boyd

“We are being attacked,” said John Bryant, president of Oskar Blues Brewery. “The lobbyists wrote this legislation, it is proposed each year on the independent business people and they come at us and we do our best to defend a great system. This is a cleansing of an economic system in Colorado that works. It makes no sense to change it.”

Bryant said that liquor stores would not be unable to compete against convenience stores that currently line the streets. He said that would mean craft brewers would have to negotiate with corporate entities to try to find space for their products on those shelves, which ultimately would mean many craft brewers would shut their doors or move elsewhere.

Craft brewing has an indirect employment number of 67,000 jobs and an annual economic impact to the state of $12 billion.

April Patel, owner of three 7-11 stores, told the committee that the way she makes her decision on products is based on the profile of her costumer base. She said in stores where she has the opportunity to sell craft beer and the customers wants that product, that is what she brings in.

She said she had to cut employee hours since liquor stores began selling on Sundays.

A representative from Pacific Convenience and Fuel, a company based in California, told the committee that since liquor stores were allowed to open on Sundays his company had lost $1.1 billion in beer revenue.

Another 7-11 owner, who also owned three stores in the Denver area, said he had lost $225,000 on annual gross products since Sunday sales were opened for liquor stores. He said he would be willing to carry whatever craft beer the customers want.

Laura Long, spokeswoman for Bristol Brewing Company, said small breweries get left out of the equation when chain stores take over a market.

“Under the current system, any true mom and pop liquor store has the opportunity to apply for a liquor license. We are not concerned about that. We are concerned about the Loaf N’ Jugs that are Kroger and all of their decision making is made at the corporate center for Kroger. They are not made at the local level,” Long said.

Pat Ratliff, who was lobbying for the Pueblo Licensed Beverage Association, said she had commissioned top economists to do an analysis of the effects of the bill on liquor stores. She said the loss of jobs in the first three years would be close to 5,000, and as many as 700 stores would close.

“In five years, what we are talking about is the loss of 8,600 jobs,” Ratliff said.

Bill sponsor Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood, said that SB 194 would address the imbalances created by Sunday liquor store sales and added the concerns of craft brewers had been addressed through the testimony of convenience store owners who said they would be interested in carrying some craft brews.

Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton, and Sen. Jean White, R-Hayden, voted against the bill.

Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, left, and Attorney General John Suthers. Photo by Joseph Boven

Suthers and Buescher said the protection system will not be changed; instead, they urged business owners to sign up for automatic alerts already in place that will email them in case of changes to their files.

“I guess it is only a natural evolution that eventually we would see people trying to steal the identity of corporations for the purpose of getting credit lines at businesses and credit lines at banks to borrow money with no intention to repay that money,” Suthers said of what amounts to months of credit filings and bank requests by perpetrators before they are able to take advantage of their new identity.

Ron Sloan, Colorado Bureau of Investigation director, said state officials were alerted to the scam in May after a medium-sized retail company reported that it had been the victim of identity theft. That theft amounted to $250,000.

CBI determined the thieves had accessed the company’s records online and changed the business address and business contact information using the Colorado Secretary of State’s website. This allowed the perpetrators to apply for and receive lines of credit in the name of the business.

Sloan said he did not want to disclose the name of the business as the case was still under investigation. However, he said that other major retailers have been targeted by the same scheme, including Home Depot, Apple Computers and Dell.

Sloan said word travels fast when something is successful in the criminal conspiracy industry, but that moving fast to shut it down will likely deter other from trying the same scam.

“It is an interesting industry, the criminal conspiracy industry,” Sloan said.

Of the cases being pursued, one is being run in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Secret Service. Sloan explained that in that case five suspects have been identified and arrests have been made.

Buescher told the Colorado Independent that this type of criminal activity has been going on in the state for the last six to eight months. However, it is not known whether all of the cases are the result of one group of individuals or a number of lone wolves. Buescher said the cases all appear to be varied in their methods.

Buescher added that the system to sign and change business information on the site was first developed 10 years ago, and that to change it to create passwords and PIN numbers now would require five to seven new employees. The money is hard to find for a measure that he said likely would have little effect in stopping criminal activity in the short term. He said with more than 800,000 companies in the state and 70,000 transactions a month, the state simply couldn’t get it done in time and still maintain the budget. Buescher also said that in other states hackers have simply bypassed such protections.

Instead of passwords, both Buescher and Suthers are asking business owners to sign up with the Secretary of State Office’s notification system that will inform the owner whenever information is changed on their forms. Buescher said businesses have been alerted earlier this week through a number of associations.

He added they have also created a new website at www.protectyourbusiness.us that will provide information about corporate identity theft and links to law enforcement and the Secretary of States Office.

“What we need to do is put a significant speed bump in the way of criminals who are trying to do this,” Buescher said.

Hickenlooper, McInnis, Maes

Speaking at the Denver Lions Club all of the candidates agreed that “the economy has got to be front and center.”

Maes, the Evergreen businessman who outdrew six-term Congressman Scott McInnis at the Republican delegate state assembly two weeks ago, said the state government is failing and needs to be fixed. He said he would cut the size of state government, not only for budget reasons but because he believes it is the right thing to do. “You don’t downsize government just to balance the budget. You downsize government because that is what our founding fathers wanted for us,” he said.

Like so many self-declared reformers before him, he said he would strip out unnecessary or redundant government programs and offices. “I will find the fat and waste and get rid of it,” he declared.

He said the second thing he would do is “beg forgiveness from the energy industry that we chased out of the state.”

McInnis took square aim at the Colorado State Legislature, saying the recent session was the worst in years in terms of its effect on business.

Like Maes, he said government has gotten too big and that the state’s treatment of oil and gas industry is counterproductive. In fact, he said, he decided to run for governor largely because of what he thought was happening to the oil and gas businesses under the administration of current governor Bill Ritter.

“We have to have a state government that does not continue to grow when people are losing their jobs. “We have to size the state government appropriately,” he said.

Hickenlooper talked to the crowd of mostly older white men about how he built the Wynkoop Brewing Company into a national business by opening similar restaurants all across the country.

He said his business experience was instrumental in terms of how he has governed as Denver mayor, cutting the number of employees by more than 5 percent while improving many services.

On the subject of oil and gas, he said some regulation is needed. “Looking at what is happening in the Gulf Coast, you can’t tell me we don’t need some regulation.” He said the vast majority of current regulations are simply a reflection of the industry’s best practices.

The first question he was asked after speaking was why he was running as a Democrat instead of as a Republican.

He said he gets that question a lot, and talked about his belief that people should work together to solve common problems. At one point, he said then-Governor Bill Owens was having some problems “and people told me to let him flounder.”

He said he thought that was crazy. “Our job was to help him succeed. I’m not so much a Democrat as I’m a Coloradan,” he said.

He has often claimed during this campaign that he not bipartisan, but rather non-partisan. “Someone asked me, ‘If you’re so non-partisan, how many Republicans have you appointed to senior positions?’ I said I had no idea. I never discuss politics. When we are trying to find solutions and bring people together, we don’t discuss politics. Then my chief of staff, Roxanne White, she pipes in and goes ‘I’m a Republican.’ No one knew.”

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Hickenlooper at the South Park Saloon in Alma (Kersgaard)

Coloradans he is meeting with complain about taxes and appeal for reductions in state fees, but they also ask whether slashed funding can be restored to this or that government program.

Denver Mayor Hickenlooper listens, nods and sometimes grimaces. He expresses empathy. He even occasionally expresses outrage. What he doesn’t do is promise tax cuts. He doesn’t promise to reduce fees. He doesn’t pledge to restore funding to important programs. He doesn’t promise to eliminate unfunded mandates that hog-tie local governments.

He only pledges to take what he has learned building and running a very successful restaurant chain and apply it to government. He promises a more collaborative way of running government. He talks about his successes as mayor in improving services during a time of reduced budgets.

He wants to create a master economic development plan, a template, that any city or county could use as a model. He aims to discover why one town or county is thriving and apply the lessons to places that need help. He talks about finding mentors to work with struggling businesses.

As much as possible this past week, he has said government should leave business alone, keeping in mind the necessity of such things as safety and environmental rules. “Half of my appointees as mayor came from the private sector,” he said.

“We will drive business out of Colorado with taxes, if we aren’t careful,” he acknowledged to 20 or so people gathered for lunch Monday at Millonzi’s Restaurant in Fairplay. He said decisions to increase state spending or reduce tax rates should depend partly on the overall economic situation.

“Sometimes it feels like it is open season on government,” he said, “but look anywhere in the world to find a better system, look at any time in history to find a better way. You can’t do it.

“We need people to be more engaged in the process. We need people to talk to each other. We don’t need bi-partisanship. We need non-partisanship,” he said.

Addressing problems with a sanitation district in Fairplay, where residents said the state has placed difficult requirements on the district but has not been willing to help or even advise the district on how best to meet the requirements, Hickenlooper said, “The state should be your partner and should guide you toward the best solution.

“The state should never be a bully,” he added.

As mayor of Denver, he said he has worked hard to act in ways that benefit not only Denver, but also the suburbs and the rest of the state.

In the past, he said marketing funds had been spent to convince conventioneers to spend more time in Denver. “That’s short-sighted. We have to look at self-interest from a larger perspective. So, now we encourage conventioneers to visit the rest of the state as well.”

In Fairplay, Hickenlooper said Denver has cut per capita water usage by 20 percent since he became mayor. “I think that’s the largest reduction by any big American city ever,” he said. “Here’s the thing, it is not Denver’s water; it’s Colorado’s water.”

In Alma, a few minutes later, emerging from the nine-year-old Ford he uses for the campaign, Hickenlooper announced, “Alma feels like my second home.”

Tiny Alma welcomed him as if it were true, half the people who gathered at the South Park Saloon there taking home pictures of themselves arm in arm with the candidate.

He didn’t give a formal speech in Alma. He sat at a large table surrounded by locals.

He told them how his mother refused to invest in his fledgling brewpub, but that his mother’s sister ponied up $10,000. “I was so determined not to lose her money that I worked at least 80 hours a week. It was grueling, but I loved it. I was absolutely terrified of losing her money,” he said.

Park County Commissioner Mark Dowaliby, a Republican, attended both the Fairplay and Alma meetings. He said that despite holding office as a Republican, he votes for the person, not the party. He said he has been very unhappy with Republican leadership in Colorado. He stopped short of saying he would vote for Hickenlooper.

“If McInnis comes to Park County, I’ll listen to him, but he would have to impress me a lot to get my vote,” he said.

Bob Narozanick, who owns an excavation business in Park County, was more blunt. “I’m voting for him. I’m sick of Republicans.”

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Although the bishops’ stand against health reform can not be separated from theology, its ties to Church economics are also very real. The Catholic Church with its hundreds of hospitals and clinics and nursing facilities is in the health care business in a major way. In 2006, Americans spent $84.6 billion on Catholic-affiliated health care. Fact is, the bishops have more at stake in this debate than principle. Former Colorado Independent editor Wendy Norris developed the point today in a blog post for RH Reality Check.

The Stupak Amendment, which is designed to cut abortion out of what would be the dominant health-care plan in the nation, may or may not be a moral victory. What it is, indisputably, is genius business strategy, the kind other industries dream of effecting on Capitol Hill.

Norris:

What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.

By restricting insurance coverage of women’s reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.

Congressional health insurance reforms promise the prospect of 36 million uninsured Americans — who are currently self-rationing care, paying on sliding fee scales, or not paying at all — flowing into hospitals, clinics and outpatient facilities via subsidized insurance, mandated policies and more affordable options in the proposed insurance exchange.

Conservatively, those newly insured people will not only add millions of dollars more to hospital coffers in the short term but the potential for trillions in billable services over their lifetimes.

The Church’s stand on government health reform has been angry and rigid, its coordinated lobbying efforts unprecedented in the aisles of its churches and in the halls of Congress. It has never taken such a stand toward the private health insurance industry. No literature has ever been distributed in the pews against the Cigna or Humana insurance corporations. No bishop’s directive has ever come down instructing priests to demand parishioners boycott Aetna for subsidizing abortion. No priest has ever said members of the faith should quit work with any employer who provides a heath insurance plan that subsidizes abortions.

The theological case has always been the same. Nothing has changed. As the future of the heath care industry is being decided, however, whipping up God’s army is really good for business.

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Gov. Bill Ritter

As expected, Ritter spoke to the Rotarians about encouraging business development and used the speech to again outline the benefits of his “New Energy Economy” plan for the state.

He said we are living through a massive economic correction. He said his advisers have told him that he should consider present budget cuts as lasting because state revenues will not be rebounding any time soon.

But companies large and small, like those defecting from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce stance against climate change legislation, will make a difference in the state and the nation. . Our energy culure is changing, said Ritter. Massive companies such as Duke Energy, General Electric, Alcoa and Johnson & Johnson are seeking to embrace and advance a more sustainable energy sector.

Vestas wind energy company alone has brought 2,500 jobs to the state, Ritter said.

He also pointed to incentive breaks the state has given to business. The administration cut the small business personal property tax to help 30,000 businesses; over-hauled the tax structure to ease pressure on big businesses; and revived the Colorado credit reserve program. He said a tax credit for companies that create “a certain number of new jobs” spurred Repower USA to move its corporate headquarter from Oregon to the Colorado.

Ritter said his vision for Colorado is to expand research and education. Toward that end, he aims to develop full day kindergarten across the state and said he is continuing to work on a new assessment system that would eliminate the CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program).

“My wife is a teacher. She said ‘You will win every teacher’s vote if you just promise you will eliminate CSAP.”

The public will get behind the move to end CSAP, said Ritter, underlining his belief that the reforms his administration is enacting will help Colorado win stimulus Race to the Top funding for the school systems enacting the most innovative reform programs.

Answering questions about nuclear energy, Ritter said the main question concerns storage of spent radioactive fuel. The lack of political will to push for nuclear power has come as a result of wary attitudes toward nuclear power as dangerous. In order for nuclear to be a viable source of energy, he believes the Obama administration would have to work to educate the people on the benefits of nuclear power and on the safety of fuel storage.

“Most people who look at this absolutely feel that nuclear can play a role in reducing green house gas emissions but I think that it needs to be part of a comprehensive energy strategy. That can’t be the only thing we do.”

Other resources such as renewable resources, coal to clean coal, and natural gas could be brought online much quicker and provide a more near-term approach to energy generation, Ritter said.

“Those are all fairly immediate things that we need to do, and be about, and ask the question long term how much are we going to rely on nuclear and when are we going to build out.”

One member asked the Governor what he would do to provide increased choice and competition in the school system.

“I am agnostic. I don’t care if it is a public school, or a charter school, or private school, whatever. I want kids to learn,” he said.

He explained that his K-20 council has reached out to charter schools to be a part of defining the educational structure of Colorado. The state is interested in finding educational practices that work and making them part of the system. If a charter school comes to the state with a great plan, one that shows how to turn around students who are failing, he said, that school will find support.

“We will do anything we can to ensure the success of that charter school.”

One Rotarian asked what Ritter “planed to do” concerning TABOR and Amendment 23, which provides k-12 education yearly increases in funding regardless of economic downturns.

Ritter said he would leave alone provisions in TABOR that mandate voter approval for tax hikes. But because TABOR stops the state from “getting healthy” as the economy recovers, he will ask voters to remove the revenue caps that TABOR imposes. He said he plans to create a coalition to ask voters to remove those constraints on the 2011 ballot.

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“Gas prices are nearly 66 cents higher than last year, when they peaked at a then-record of $3.23 in late May, and have prompted many analysts to raise their estimates of where gas is going to go.”

Mike Duran, owner of Perfect Appearance, a Pueblo-based car decal application business, said customers are less likely to decorate their vehicles if they’re spending an increasing amount of cash at the pump.

It also costs more for Duran or one of his three employees to travel to give an estimate on how much a decal job will cost.

“It affects everything,” Duran said.

In addition to cutting into decorating dollars, companies that use vehicles as moving advertisements are feeling the pinch.

Sean Garrett, general manager for California-based Mobile Ads, said the company’s customers will have to pay more for their vinyl ads to travel through the streets.

“We usually just try to increase our prices to make up for [a gas price hike], which of course makes it harder for us to sell [advertisements],”  Garrett said.

The company’s seven trucks could also be parked in strategic locations more often, Garrett said, which cuts down on fuel costs but also has environmental benefits.

Duran said he hopes Congress takes action on fuel prices or taxes are lowered soon, because he worries about keeping all of his employees.

“It all goes hand in hand,” Duran said. “Something’s got to give.”
]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/3583/gas-hikes-hits-secondary-auto-related-industries/feed 0 http://coloradoindependent.com/3520/ballot-measures-stir-small-business-concerns http://coloradoindependent.com/3520/ballot-measures-stir-small-business-concerns#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:21:31 +0000 Erin Rosa http://www.coloradoindependent.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=3520 While labor groups have submitted a slew of proposals for the 2008 state ballot countering a “right-to-work” initiative that would make it harder for unions to organize, businesses associations that have not been involved in the right-to-work push say they…

While labor groups have submitted a slew of proposals for the 2008 state ballot countering a “right-to-work” initiative that would make it harder for unions to organize, businesses associations that have not been involved in the right-to-work push say they are concerned with how labor’s proposals will affect small-business owners.Last week Colorado Confidential first reported that the state’s United Food and Commercial Workers labor union submitted five ballot proposals covering a wide variety of workplace issues, including safety, health insurance and a standard living wage for Colorado workers.

Two in particular have irked business groups.

One proposal would require all employers to supply an annual wage or salary increase to account for an increase in the cost of living, as measured by the state’s Consumer Price Index. Another would require companies with more than 20 employees to provide medical health care coverage.

“We’re very concerned that they may have an impact on our ability to attract businesses, particularly as we face uncertain economic times,” says Kate Horle of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, an organization that represents more than 3,000 businesses in the metro area. The chamber has not taken an official position on the right-to-work measure, which would bar unions from collecting dues or fees as a condition of employment at workplaces that have been unionized.

Last year the chamber also expressed skepticism regarding right-to-work supporters’ claims that Colorado had lost business opportunities by not being a right-to-work state.

Now Horle says the chamber is uneasy with the most recent UFCW ballot proposals regarding a living wage and health care.

“They would be both tremendously expensive,” Horle says, noting that the chamber is composed predominantly of small businesses that could not afford the wage increases or health care costs.

Tony Gagliardi, a spokesman for the Colorado chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, an organization that represents an estimated 7,500 members throughout the state, has said that his group would adamantly oppose mandated health care coverage for businesses with more than 20 employees. In a recent poll of federation members, approximately 90 percent opposed required health insurance, according to Gagliardi.

The Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, the state’s chamber of commerce, which has endorsed the right-to-work proposal, did not return a request for comment.

So far supporters of the right-to-work measure have not submitted the more than 76,000 petition signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office that are required for authorization to put the proposal on the 2008 state ballot. The UFCW proposals have not yet been approved into petitions by state officials.

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After 11 p.m. on March 27, Ricochet sent its metro area customers this notice:

“Civitas Wireless Solutions, LLC regrets to announce we will be ceasing to operate the Ricochet(R) wireless network in the Denver metropolitan area effective March 28th, 2008.”

In some areas of the city, service was unreliable by morning.

Ricochet President Judi Evans did not return phone or email messages for comment. Ricochet’s downtown Denver headquarters has been closed.

The Ricochet email notice directed customers to contact foreThought.net in order to keep their email accounts in service.

Jawaid Bazyar, president of foreThought.net, a Denver-based ISP, said he considered buying Ricochet in 2003 but instead struck an agreement to provide email services to the company’s customers.

“Ricochet, in particular, started life with a good user base but with a technology that was on a downward trend. What happened was sort of inevitable,” Bazyar said.

Faster home and portable Internet connections have become available in recent years, Bazyar said.

Ricochet operated a “mesh” network of small boxes typically mounted to light and telephone poles throughout the city with downward facing antennas that transmitted information. Subscribers were given a card that wirelessly connected their computers to the system.

Ricochet has changed hands at least three times since 2000, according to Bazyar and Denver city officials.

The company served major metropolitan areas through the United States but,after a series of financial failures and changes in ownership,scaled back to the Denver and San Diego markets. The service made its Denver debut in 2002. Last year, the company’s owner,Terabeam, discontinued Ricochet’s San Diego service and sold its Denver operation to Civitas Wireless Solutions, said Terabeam Vice President David Renauld.

Renauld declined to comment on why Ricochet halted service in the Denver area, saying he had been in contact with Evans and knew Ricochet service would cease shortly before it went dark, noting that Terabeam has not been a part of the Ricochet business since July.

Other business associates were also given short notice with little explanation.

“They didn’t explain to us what exactly was going to cause the service to go dark,” Bazyar said.

Ricochet’s less-than-24-hour notice to its customers was “crappy,” he added.

A press release in April 2007 heralded a new agreement between Denver and Ricochet, giving the Wi-Fi company access to right-of-ways, such as medians and alleyways owned by the public, throughout the city.

Although last year’s release touted Ricochet’s role in serving police cars on the move throughout Denver, the city’s police officers only used Ricochet service before higher-speed wireless Internet service was available.

For the past few years, Denver police officers have used Verizon’s wireless service in squad cars, which is about 10 times faster than the old Ricochet service, said Darryn Zuehlke, director of the Denver Office of Telecommunications.

The city had 1,000 Ricochet wireless accounts but was only using a few hundred for employees working from home at the time the service ceased, Zuehlke said.

“When the Ricochet service shut down,the only thing that really affected us was the non-essential stuff,” Zuehlke said.

The company still has a non-exclusive, right-of-way agreement with Denver and could restart service with a different customer-base catering to businesses, Zuehlke said.

Ricochet’s email to customers also said they would be eligible for a discounted rate on Internet provided through Comcast for 12 months.

Cindy Parsons, vice president of public relations for Comcast, said the company hadn’t acquired Ricochet and did not purchase its customer list.

“It is more just an opportunity for us to provide high-speed Internet to Ricochet customers,” Parsons said.

She did not know how many Ricochet customers had signed up for Comcast’s Internet service.

Small-business owners aren’t generally thought of as supportive when it comes to a tax increase, but as Colorado’s commercial strips age, some entrepreneurs are electing to tax themselves in an effort to revitalize their neighborhoods.

In Aurora, Colo., car dealerships recently joined with family-owned restaurants, antique stores, groceries and other businesses to create the longest Business Improvement District in the state.

Last year, an overwhelming majority of the more than 700 businesses along 4.3 miles of Havana Street voted to annually tax themselves 0.45 percent of their properties’ value to clean up and promote the neighborhood to potential shoppers throughout the Denver metro area.

“The voters, they had to see a purpose for the money that would go to something they thought would do them good. Anything, when you raise taxes, is, `what’s in it for me,’” said business owner Paul Suss, who helped campaign for the district’s creation. “We were able to sell them on, `You know what? This area gets revitalized and there is something in it for you and it’s not only increased sales. It’s increased property values. It’s increased opinion of the area.”

Under the Colorado law that allows the creation of Business Improvement Districts, property owners representing a majority of both a proposed district’s property value, in this case $73 million, and total commercial square footage, must vote to form the district.

Suss, who has run the car dealership Suss Buick Pontiac GMC on Havana for 28 years, said he sees the approximately $3,000 he pays in taxes each year to support the district as an investment. 

The annual amount most businesses pay is significantly lower.

This year, the Havana district, which has yet to be formally named, will collect about $330,000 from its members and plans to use the money to create a brand identity for the area and promote the district with signs and special events aimed at drawing shoppers to the area.

‘A complicated sell’

Most Coloradans have probably experienced a Business Improvement District while browsing in downtowns throughout the state – but rather than promote themselves, the districts focus on bettering the area’s shopping experience with small actions such as improving landscaping, managing parking and providing store directories.

That makes gathering support for business improvement districts even harder.

Last November, as the business owners in East Aurora were approving their district, voters in Steamboat Springs defeated a similar request to fund that city’s downtown district by six votes.

“It’s a complicated sell for a number of reasons,” Bill Moser, district board chairman of the Steamboat Springs Downtown Business Improvement District told the Steamboat Pilot & Today last year. “To explain what Mainstreet does in and of itself is complicated, because it has so many different facets and is practically like a business on its own.”

Steamboat’s BID supporters have vowed to try again this fall.

Cherry Creek model

Other BIDs have hummed along quietly for years.

The Cherry Creek North BID, which was established in 1989 – the first of its kind in the Denver area – waters and cuts the area’s lawn, removes snow and trash, and maintains lighting and outdoor benches for its 320 businesses.

Fledgling BID’s like the Havana district sometimes look to Cherry Creek’s marketing efforts and events, which draw people from all over the state, as an example of business districts’ potential. 

A BID can be formed by business owners and approved by the city council, but must go to the ballot before taxes can be collected to fund the district.

“Every state has legislation that controls how a BID is created and it varies,” said Anna Jones, a senior associate at Progressive Urban Management Associates (PUMA), a firm that offers consulting services to BIDs. “Colorado is one of the most difficult states in the country to form a BID largely because of T.A.B.O.R.”

Legal and consulting fees can also stymie would-be districts. The city of Aurora paid for PUMA’s services for the Havana business owners and has given the district $10,000 for start-up costs.

PUMA keeps tabs on about 15 BIDs throughout the state, Jones said.

Creating a BID takes the right mixture of private sector interest, city support and a specific vision or goal for the area, Jones said.

Communication is key

Executive Director Gayle Jetchick, an early supporter of the district who now works as its only full-time employee, said communication between district supporters and business owners was key to the district’s formation – from addressing business owners’ concerns to making sure eligible voters had requested ballots.

“There’s one gentleman that owns property and he was afraid that the city was going to be involved and control everything and that the BID wouldn’t do what he really wanted it to do and the bigger property owners would have more of a say, and as it’s turned out he’s totally pleased with what we’re doing, getting everyone involved,” Jetchick said.

Timing also gave the Havana district momentum, with the announcement a dilapidated mall in the heart of the district would be demolished and replaced with fresh mix of walkable stores and residential units.

Winning over local businesses was easier than even finding the appropriate contact person for larger, national chains like Costco and King Soopers, she said.

“Some of the larger, big chains don’t really care what goes on locally. The mom-and-pops have a lot, it’s their life, they have a lot more at risk or at stake,” Jetchick said. 

And while an increasingly closely knit group of community businesses may elect to tax themselves, could the additional financial burden seem off-putting to business owners looking to relocate in an area with a BID?

Jetchick said that as word of the Havana BID spread to real-estate agents, the owners of vacant land and buildings along the commercial strip have heard from more potential buyers.

Neighbors see ‘win-win’

Businesses aren’t the only ones to potentially profit from a BID’s efforts.

Nearby neighbors have also been strong advocates of the Havana district’s creation and are quick to point out how bringing more shoppers into the area will benefit them.

“It’s a win-win situation,” said Arnie Schultz, president of Neighborhood Organizations Along Havana. “They’re going to improve [the area]. We’re going to have better businesses, better places to shop and our property values are going to go up.”

And in communities like Aurora, which depend largely on sales taxes to fund day-to-day city services, all residents stand to profit from more purchases made on city streets.

Under state law, BIDs are reviewed every five years and will be dissolved if the businesses fail, or decline, to file a business plan for two consecutive years. 

Jetchick hopes anyone who lives nearby, or simply drives down Havana Street, will start noticing changes this spring.

Not everyone is expecting big things from the Havana district.

Gerre Leyden, who runs Heirlooms Antique Mall on Havana, said she’s watched the work of BIDs near her home in downtown Denver and knows how much or little they can accomplish for a neighborhood. 

“It’s little enough to pay to give it a try, frankly,” Leyden said.