Mayor Bloomberg and the borough’s biggest developer have prevailed in a heated Downtown Brooklyn turf war.
A development corporation created by Bloomberg to spur economic development in Downtown Brooklyn was awarded a $216,667-a-year contract to run daily operations of a striving Business Improvement District representing 25 square blocks in and around Metro Tech Center.
The decision today by Metro Tech BID to hire Downtown Brooklyn Partnership to manage the business improvement district’s daily operations — and a $2.6 million budget raised through a neighborhood property tax — ends more than two years of bickering by BID board members split over the plan.
The Partnership was granted the new responsibilities despite Monday’s release of an audit by Comptroller John Liu that ripped it for keeping shoddy payroll records, poorly documenting private donations and snubbing competitive-bidding laws.
The BID board voted 21-9 in favor of the Partnership contract, with Councilman Steve Levin (D-Brooklyn) abstaining. Although a weighted voting system based on property holdings will be used to score the official tally, sources said it won’t make a difference, and the takeover will be approved.
A faction, including top BID brass, had fought the Partnership plan despite pressure from City Hall and developer Forest City Ratner, which built Metro Tech’s office complex in the 1980s.
BID President Victoria Aviles and her group failed several attempts to delay the vote, claiming the merger is a blatant conflict of interest because many board members pushing it represent Forest City and other developers with seats on the partnership’s boards, too.
Citing Liu’s audit, Aviles questioned why the BID would want turn over control of operations to an entity that “can’t run itself.”
The Partnership already runs smaller, adjacent BIDs representing Fulton Mall and the Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn streets corridor. Supporters of the Metro Tech takeover said it cuts wasteful government spending and claimed the public is better served if the three BIDs’ resources are merged into a single entity.
“We plan to look at ways to strengthen the three BIDs,” said Partnership President Joe Chan, who cited potential partnerships between local universities and retail businesses as an example for boosting the local economy.
The Partnership in a written response to Liu stated it “does not believe” the audit’s findings support that the Partnership’s “integrity … has been compromised,” adding “we have already begun to pro-actively incorporate” remedies suggested by Liu “into our administrative procedures.”
The biggest casualty is Michael Weiss, who is Metro Tech BID’s executive director and a longtime official in city government. He will lose his $165,000-a-year job through the merger effective next month.
Weiss, who fought against the BID takeover, will get a yet-to-be decided severance package, but it’s unclear whether the payout will be anywhere near a $330,000 offer he turned down last week.
Following the meeting, Weiss was still holding out hope that the Partnership deal would fall through and that a count of the board’s votes using the BID’s “weighted” voting system on budget matters would come out in his favor.
He pointed out that the BID’s accountant needs time to calculate the numbers using a very complicated formula based on property holdings, although other BID officials said the numbers still don’t add up to a defeat of the contract.
That being said, several board members expressed the possibility that the contract could be challenged in court for violating conflict of interest laws.
Under the agreement with the Partnership, Metro Tech BID will see its total number of representatives on the Partnership board rise from one to four.
Borough President Marty Markowitz called the Partnership deal “an important step in the ongoing transformation of Downtown Brooklyn into a vibrant, 24/7, live-work urban center — and soon, home of the Brooklyn Nets.”
Forest City Ratner is building an arena in Brooklyn for the NBA’s Nets which is set to open next year.
Regarding Weiss, Markowitz’s longtime campaign treasurer, the Beep thanked him for “invaluable contributions to making Downtown Brooklyn a better place to live, work and play” as executive director of the Metro Tech BID, and he wished “him well in his future endeavors.”