St. Jacobs BIA looks to take on larger role, increase fees threefold; council approves

THREE YEARS IN, THE new BIA in St. Jacobs wants to expand its role in promoting business activities in the village. To that end, it’s seeking a threefold increase in the special tax levied on some 85 businesses in the core area.

To do that, the BIA (business improvement area) is reaching out to its members to back the plan, or at least not to object – if more than a third of the members opt to oppose it, the plan will fail.

The group cleared the first hurdle this week when Woolwich council agreed to let it pursue the plan. The BIA is a creation of the township, and its obligatory levy is applied by Woolwich tax collectors.

The impetus for the sudden 300 per cent increase – which would come into effect next year, if approved – is the sale of St. Jacobs-based Mercedes Corp., which looked after marketing, promotion and downtown beautification, among other functions, for some 40 years. The company having been sold, it plans to back away from that role completely by 2019. Mercedes, which owns many of the retail locations in the village along with the St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market, St. Jacobs Factory Outlet mall, and surrounding properties, was sold last year to Schlegel Urban Development.

With Mercedes no longer paying a host of businessrelated expenditures – from garbage pickup to marketing – the current BIA levy doesn’t come close to covering the costs, BIA advisor Laurel Davies Snyder told councillors meeting Tuesday night.

Using the extra money, the BIA would hire a coordinator to look after the full range of functions, from events such as sidewalk sales to beautification projects and marketing, she said.

When it was created in 2015, the BIA had an annual levy of $40,000. A twoper-cent annual increase means the group has a maxim take of $41,616 this year. The new plan would boost that to $120,000 for 2019, with inflationary increases thereafter. Business pay a special tax based on size and assessment, with a minimum annual fee of $300 and maximum of $3,000 set from the start. Under the new plan, those figures would rise to $1,000 and $5,000 respectively.

With the current levy, 18 properties with an assess-

ment range of $14,150 to $295,500 are paying the minimum amount of $312. There are two properties that are currently paying the maximum of $3,121 and their assessment range is from $4,330,500 to $4,619,000. The remaining properties are paying based on their assessment with an average amount being $875, noted Woolwich deputy clerk Jeff Smith in a report to council.

Following council’s decision, the township will send out registered letters to each of the property owners within the BIA catchment area. Once in receipt of the letters outlining the proposal, property owners will have 60 days to respond in writing. If onethird of owners representing a third of the assessed value object, the project would die. Otherwise, the township could go ahead with the plan, likely by mid-September, Smith said.