A petition to cancel Rhinelander's Business Improvement District downtown has gotten the needed signatures to dissolve the district, but supporters aren't done yet. Emotions on both sides of the issue came out at a required Planning Commission meeting Tuesday(3/2).
The city council chambers was filled with mostly supporters of keeping the BID district. The district started nine years ago with businesses paying extra to promote retention and development of business downtown.
Businessman Larry Frasier wants to keep the district. He said Rhinelander is at the point like the famous movie "It's A Wonderful Life". He says the vision in the movie centered on one character named Potter who thought everyone was on his own...
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"....his mindset was everyone is out for themselves. Where personal greed reigns supreme, where there is no sense of community, and a dying downtown results..."
Frasier said Jimmy Stewart's character won in the end convincing the community they had to work together.
Another supporter was David Heck. He says people love living here, but the district is key to improving the city...
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"....we have a great community but the town looks bad. The town looks old, the town looks worn down. We're never going to get businesses here until we believe in ourselves and create our own destiny..."
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One of the petitioners is businessman Jerry Shidell. He said he, too, wants a strong downtown. He said he disagreed with the BID because he says it hasn't done as much as they could have in the nine years...
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"...it appears to me when I walked into businesses and they said to me, 'where's the petition, I want to sign it'. It wasn't like I had to twist their arm. They didn't have any problem. Frustration had reached the boiling point..."
Shidell said growth comes from entrepreneurs, not associations, who invest in their ideas...
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"....this is something we want to do. And then we take every fiber of our being, our heart and we say, 'I can do this'. And then most importantly, then we reach in our wallets and pull out OUR money..."
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Petitioners have about two-thirds of the property value, with 50 percent being the tipping point to end the BID. Supporters have until April 1 to get signers to withdraw their signatures. If more than 50 percent of those eligible in the district still want it gone, the BID dissolves.
