Starting, all attendees are in listen-only mode. Good afternoon everyone. It's a pleasure to have you join us today for our webinar on business improvement areas. My name is Susan Lowe. I'm with the Design, Coordination, and Outreach Branch of the Ministry of Jobs, Trade, and Technology. I'll be moderating and providing technical support for today's webinar and also making some of the presentation. I'm located in Victoria in the traditional territories of the Likwungen people, namely the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations. Before we get started, I'll just cover off some of our audio options on the GoToWebinar platform. If you have a headset or a microphone and speakers on your computer, you probably want to choose computer audio. But if you're concerned about your bandwidth or you don't have computer audio, you can select phone call instead, and the dial-in information will be displayed. So make sure that you log into the phone system with the PIN number that's shown. That's unique to you, and don't share it with anyone else. That unique PIN lets me mute or unmute your line if you are going to speak and ask a question during the presentation. The other parts of the control panel that we want to go over, the orange arrow lets you hide or unhide the control panel at the side of your screen. It's going to hide itself automatically if you don't use it for a while. You can also go full screen with that blue button that has the white square. The raise hands button lets you show me that you have a question to ask during the Q&A portion of the webinar. However, because there's many of you and one of me, what I prefer for you to do is actually to ask your question by typing it into the enter a question for staff space. And what I'll do is I will look at those, if there's an immediate technical issue and I have a moment, I can help to troubleshoot for you, or I will save up your questions and ask them during breaks in the presentation. So another feature of the webinar platform is poll questions. In between each presentation, there will be, and sometimes during the presentations, there will actually be quizzes. So pay attention because we're going to do pop quizzes. The pop quizzes are going to come up as a poll on your screen, and I'm going to do a test poll right now just so you can see what it looks like. This means you have to put down your sandwich. Hope you're having lunch with us today. Put down your sandwich and come and vote. Which kind of organization do you work in? So our invitations go out to local governments, economic development officers, community futures offices, chambers of commerce, provincial government, some federal government, a wide range of people. So it's good for us to find out who's on the call so we know what kind of audience we're speaking to. So I usually leave these polls open for 30 to 45 seconds. I'll watch the voter turnout. I can tell how many people have voted. So right now we're at 100% voter turnout, and then it's fabulous civic engagement. So I will hide that and I will share the results with you. So as you can hopefully see on your screen, just check that. Yes, there we go. We've got 50% of our listeners, or 59% are from local governments, 18% are from community economic development agencies, 18% from provincial or federal government, and 6% other. So if you're one of those wonderful other people, I'd love to know what kind of organization you work in so you can just fire that into the questions box, and I'll pick that up. Then one day you too can be included on that ballot. So I'll hide that and carry on with our presentation. So today's webinar is about business improvement areas. So the learning objectives for today is by the end, you'll be able to describe what a business improvement area is and how it supports economic development and identify the stages and some of the wise practices in developing, supporting, and renewing a business improvement area in your community. So today's team for the presentation will have Gaye Pooler, who was with the downtown Chemlops BIA for 20 years. She's also on the board of directors of BIA BC. We've also had Terry James, executive director of downtown Langley BIA collaborating with us on putting the presentation together. However, she was unable to make it today, but we're very happy and glad that she was able to contribute to the session. I know we have a lot of other people on the webinar who have expertise in this area, so don't be afraid to join in some notes. We've got about 20 people on the call right now. There's about half of the people who registered. Some people show up late, so we might get a really good discussion going on and some great information sharing. I also want to thank Lori Baxter from BIA BC, who helped provide some of the background details on BIAs to inform this webinar. So now before we go even further, I'm going to run another poll because we want to know, does your community have an active BIA? I'm going to put it up there. I know some of you from provincial government. May not be sure how to vote. Well, just think about the location that you live in. Does your community have a business improvement association? We have Fabulous. Looks like we've got some really engaged viewers today. You guys are getting your voter, your votes in really quickly and I hope that stays through to the end of the webinar because we do have some pop quizzes for you, so make sure you're paying attention when those come up. So I will close the poll and share the results. So 35% of our viewers today have active BIAs in their community. 41% don't. 18% don't know and 6% were working on forming one. So business improvement areas. I'm going to talk about some of the nuts and bolts, some of the enabling legislation and then I'll turn it over to Gay for some of the benefit of her wisdom in this field. One thing I forgot to mention at the beginning is that the webinar is being recorded and the presentation notes and the presentation itself will be shared on our economic development website. It takes us about a week to get the recording downloaded and converted and get all our materials together so we can put it there on our website. So stay tuned, it will be there. If you don't see it and you want to reach us and ask where you can email economicdevelopment.gov.bc.ca. So business improvement areas. So there the BIAs have been around as a concept for about 25 years and there's nearly 75 across BC I present and growing all the time. This gives you a quick overview of where they're at regionally and here are some of the these are the locations. So these are the interior and the island. Don't worry you don't have to write all these down there will not be a pop quiz on this. This just gives you a visual look at where some of these BIAs are happening. You can see that in some cases there's multiple BIAs within a particular town or name. You can see Campbell River has different improvement areas and that's because it's geographically located and it doesn't usually cover the whole city or the whole town. We'll go into how that's formed in a moment and here are the lower mainland and the Vancouver area BIA locations. You can see it's a pretty popular concept but there's lots of room for growth in the province and that's why we're doing this webinar. So I'm just going to cover off some of the governance frameworks. There's three levels of governance frameworks in a BIA. The community charter is the provincial legislation that defines what a business improvement area is and sets up the enabling legislation for it. Municipal bylaws define how the BIA is set up in that specific jurisdiction and then there's an organization that's formed to implement strategies on programs and that organization will have its own board of directors and governance structure. The business improvement areas are formed through municipal bylaw under the guidance of the community charter sections 210 to 219. BIAs are a specific and very particular type of local area service so it's important to primarily look at sections 210 through 214 as the BIAs are established by municipality using a local service area as well as section 215 which pertains particularly and defines what a business improvement area is. As laid out under the community charter section 25 a municipality may not provide a grant benefit advantage or other form of assistance to a business except as it relates to certain heritage objectives so section 215 is the part that actually allows the creation of the business improvement area because it is an exception to that overall rule. So section 215 defines what the BIA is and says that a council may grant money that has to an organization that has as one of its aims functions or purposes the planning and implementation of a business promotion scheme so it does so under the municipal bylaw. Section 216 covers the cost recovery method for the local service so if the municipality is going to fund something it has to get the money in this case. So then sections 216 1718 and 19 relate to borrowing for or enlargement or reduction of or merging of local service areas so enlargement or reduction would require the area of a BIA to be redefined and then the petition to create the BIA would be undertaken again so that typically is only done during renewal. So the business improvement scheme has to be operated by an organization either a corporation or a society there's information about the startup of a BIA in the handouts section of this the webinar so if you look in your control panel on the left of your screen there's a handouts tab if that is not showing up for any reason i'll take a look at it during gays presentation and see if i can get that for you but the handout provides okay someone can see it here we go so that's a condensed handbook members of BIA BC can actually get access to a very extensive handbook on how to get these going as well as support to get one started so going on so here's the five uses of a business promotion scheme what what does that actually entail so you can carry out studies reports on the area improving or beautifying streets or sidewalks removing graffiti conserving heritage property or encouraging business which is a lovely wide term and gade can talk more about some of the functions that BIAs have done to benefit economic development so the community charter goes on to say that the council can grant funds to an organization to run this business promotion scheme but that all of the funds have to be recovered by means of a local service tax and the council also has to define what the business promotion scheme is the maximum amount of money that's going to be granted over what length of time and any conditions and limitations on the receipt or the expenditure of the money so how do you get one started so the BIA can be created by a municipality either in response to a petition from the owners of the parcels that would be included in the geographic area or the municipality can create the bylaw and then use the reverse petition so the two methods of creating a local area service are covered in section 212 or 213 of the community charter so the petition has to define the service to be provided the boundaries of the area and that has to be shown on a map and what the estimated costs of the service will be so that anyone signing the petition or anyone who has business or commercial property in that area can be fully aware of the proposal and what it's going to mean for them so both the costs based on an average property and expectations of what they will receive in return for that cost there's two thresholds that have to be met for this to succeed so 50% of the owners of affected parcels in the area have to sign it and the parcels that are represented by that petition have to represent at least 50% of the assessed value of the properties and if you create it via a reverse petition then the same threshold has to be met so if the municipality is creating a BIA and some of the business owners commercial property owners don't want it they have to present a reverse petition with at least 50% of the owners and 50% of the value saying no we don't want this to happen and that is actually different than the alternative approval process that some local government people might be familiar with where that under the alternative approval process it has to be 10% of the lectures so there's a different thing there it's worth making sure you know what you're doing and checking that out before you go forward with it something else important is the BIA applies to properties within certain classes of properties and it's usually class 5 so light industry or class 6 business and that is actually defined by the municipal by law when they're creating the BIA gay will be going into more detail about the process of getting that going from the business community's perspective in a few minutes carrying on so the municipal by law what does the municipal by law have to include under the community charter so it has to include a definition of what the business promotion scheme is to be and the trick here is not to be overly prescriptive the organization the BIA organization needs to develop the strategic plans and the implementation plans within those categories involved so the organization also has to be an existing entity um so it didn't use to be a corporation or society before the by law is passed the by law has to cover how much money with a municipality grant to the organization and that has usually been proposed and negotiated in advance based on what the promotion scheme is supposed to be and also what people in the area are willing to pay into the BIA the by law can also contain other reporting requirements although as I said being overly prescriptive adds a lot of overhead burden to what is typically a very small organization so things I've seen in the by laws that I've looked at include requiring financial statements to be submitted wanting to see a budget some wants to see insurance coverage and this is something that is agreed upon and set at the municipal level there's usually an arrangement for when the money will be given to the BIA so what time of year and I've also seen some clauses that reiterate that the BIA organization isn't allowed to commit the municipality to any expenses and that employees of the BIA will not be employees of the municipality so working with if you're forming one working with BIA BC and looking at examples of other municipalities by laws gives you an idea of what you might want to put into yours okay that's my bit I'm just going to check to see if there's questions that have come up based on that and there haven't been yet if you have questions about the legislation components of BIAs or the community charter Danny Carson is the senior program analyst with the ministry of municipal affairs and housing in the local government vision and there's his phone number in his email address and I believe he's joined us on the call as well to listen in and he helped me put together things oh he hasn't joined us yet but he may later and if you have questions for him by all means reach out and he can clarify that so quiz time I hope you are you're ready to apply your knowledge I'm going to get things started which it's a following is false about BIA legislation let's see who's been paying attention one of these is false this is where I would love to have the jeopardy theme song to play for you on my computer I'm not sure how that could could work maybe I'll figure that out for the future all right we've got 70% of you have voted some people may have stopped to take a lunch break that's all right all right I'm going to close things off we're just under 70% voter turnout and I will share the results here we go so which is the following it's false about BIA legislation the false answer is funding for BIA sorry funding for BIA comes from residents of a community that most of you got that right the funding for the BIA comes from a local area service tax on the commercial properties so residents do not spend their money on this it is a business community initiative and I have one more quiz question before you here and then we'll get on to gays presentations what is not one of the functions of a business improvement area hopefully this should be fresh in your memory nope can't sing shouldn't sing all right we've got about the same voter turnout now so I know oh just over 75 percent oh 80 percent of you are voting in this that's great thank you very much that's great civic engagement right on guys I'm going to close this off and share the results so the wrong answer the right answer what is not one of the functions of a BIA it's providing a labor placement service all of those other things are things that the community charter recognizes as part of a business promotion scheme now the organization that runs a BIA may also have other aims and purposes but you can't use the BIA funding for those things so generally speaking BIA is stick to the the knitting of what's allowed but gay can talk about more of the things that she's seen BIA is due in her experience so I will move on as we have gay pooler who as I mentioned was the executive director for the canloops business improvement area for 20 years I had the joy of going to canloops last week and actually going through downtown and enjoyed a lot of the extra perks and benefits that the BIA provided thanks gay it was a lovely downtown all right it is okay I'm going to turn things over to gay she's got a presentation for you and this is that moment in the print in the webinar where we all wait to make sure that the technology works hope that technology works yes we have practiced this a few times here we go okay I'm going to turn off my webcam so you can focus on gay okay so welcome everybody today the formation and function of a BIA will be covered in this portion of the presentation and why BIAs are positive and how they fit into municipal economic development and contribute to community development BIAs range in size budget and focus depending on the needs of the specific community and BIAs are for every type of community from downtowns to entire towns to industrial parks to neighborhood shopping districts and municipalities in my opinion ideally should do three things encourage the formation of BIAs support the creation of the BIA organization the society the board of directors etc and then partner with the business community and going forward the BIA so we will touch on each of these points in in the presentation but first let's look at the why so reasons why this is beneficial for our municipality to do the BIAs can help you from the municipality side of things do your job of providing services and building a strong community often the nonprofit sector which BIAs are can do things quicker lighter and cheaper than if the municipality undertake the same projects no offense but that's just a fact and for example one of the things that BIAs do is they have the capacity and motivation to undertake public space management strategies which this picture really shows some good examples of things where we've got a a bistro sets and games the checkers they're awesome and you know relaxation stations that kind of thing so really working on enhancing the environment of your downtown or your commercial district and some of the more visible programs that BIAs finance include festivals ambassador programs steep street clean teams streetscape enhancement promotions social programs and seemingly the urban place management and many BIAs stage or sponsor events or festivals in the downtown core that add to the 24 7 vitality of the area so this really helps to create those vibrant communities that we we all want this photo here is actually from a block party event in Kamloops and it was we closed down a block and it was a licensed event and but all ages were able to attend so we had everything from street hockey to beer and wine sales and it went really well the new provincial legislation for liquor licensing has really helped to enable this type of family gatherings in the downtown and it was very successful so these are a few other photos of examples of things going on the upper right you see one of our ambassadors the downtown ambassadors they are a unique hybrid of hospitality greeters and security officers their friendly faces on the street to answer locals questions and tourists about direction safety shopping transportation and destination recommendations they also are trained so they can provide first aid and be the eyes and ears on the street for the BIA and be a liaison between the businesses and the police so there's a lot of BIAs that have created these ambassador teams and some are different than others but they're a really good program they can also be utilized to gather statistical information whether it's pedestrian counts and that sort of thing for they can be used for economic development and business attraction and so now let's look at the three main points we started with beginning with encouraging the formation of BIAs so whoops oh go back starting in BIA requires a group of like-minded property owners yeah must have been some kind of oh my goodness what's going on here hang on sorry something's going on with is it is it such an advantage politically well it's not supposed to you know not when i tested it so we'll see what happens here beautiful pictures yeah okay so i don't know what's going on but um so but starting at BIA requires a group of like-minded property owners and businesses coming together with a common goal of improving a particular commercial area it can be a lengthy process and require significant outreach to the area businesses and property owners to garner their support and feedback and so seeking out the champions within the business compute community is important and start conversations with them about forming a BIA you might already have a merchants association that is not a BIA with funding levy and so reach out to them and then help those champions to set up meetings communication with the merchants and property owners in the creation process is the biggest key and also the most challenging so to be able to get out there and really communicate with them and and get them bought into the process is huge and the creation process includes several steps so establishing the need of a steering committee identifying the initial BIA boundary obtaining support from area businesses and orders forming a non-profit society working with the municipality you know informing them of your intentions and enlisting assistance canvas the area to gather input on priorities and adjust the BIA boundaries as needed then develop a preliminary budget communicate the BIA proposal to business tenants and owners and then submit the official BIA proposal to the municipality and then the official municipal notification process begins so how can you help in this process if you're from the municipal side one way is to offer staff help to facilitate these meetings and meeting space and help to determine the best area to include in the BIA because you want to be very careful about how you determine that area and then help them to develop that budget for the first five years they may need help working on a budget and help with strategic planning we also would like you to invest in the process and provide seed money for BIA startup it takes time and money and champions need someone to work with them to do all of the legwork so they may have to hire somebody to help them get that going and if the business people have not come to you then go to them they may not know about the potential for BIAs so these pictures this little quick story this is downtown Kamloops uh some time ago that the bottom picture I have not been around that long the top picture I do remember it was in the 1980s when the we lost Woodward's downtown and the downtown was going downhill fast and the businesses wanted to partner with the city they realized we needed a major overhaul in the downtown and they were really long-range thinking business people so they went to the city and really pushed them to do some revitalization but they pushed with money too they were willing to pay so they it was a a type of specified area tax but it wasn't a BIA thing but they did pay a levy over several years to help pay for these streetscape improvements so it's a good example of partnering and then you want to support number two point support the organization uh for creation through to implementation of strategic plan goals and ideally make things easier not more difficult so you want to be able to remove barriers to change and improvement you know if you sometimes cities want to make little bit too onerous bylaws for patios for example you want those patios out on the street look the vibrancy that it adds to your street so make it don't make it too difficult for the merchants to be able to do it and uh you know allowing business use of public space even outside of patios to be able to bring their products out onto the street so allowing that is a really great way you want that connection of between the pedestrians and the businesses and if those businesses you know spill out onto the street out of their businesses it really gives you that vibrant street feel that you see in this picture and the other thing is to supply the property owner information and business license information that the BIA needs in order to be created and function going forward and when they're going through renewals so they they need that information and you don't want them to have to burn up a lot of resources to get that and I know this is one of the points right now that some cities are saying with worried about the freedom of information that they can't release that but actually you can so it's um one of the things we're trying to get municipalities across the province to come in line with as BIABC and don't don't ask them to do things that are not required by the community charter like you know financial audits and owners reporting asking for property owner support when it is supposed to be just a reverse vote these are just examples of some of the things that have happened in municipalities and shouldn't in my opinion and then stand behind that organization as they're going forward and their initiatives so if they want bylaws revised or created or they want to use public space like this example shows here it helps them with that so like the revitalization tax exemption bylaw is a really good one that can be used in different cities so help with that and if there are any other incentives that can be created to retain or attract businesses or developers then work with the BIA to make those happen and realize that it does take a lot of time and dedication to see the results you know these things don't happen overnight I was with the BIA downtown for 16 years and you know we made a lot of progress in that time but some things were just like oh my gosh we're still talking about parking but so you know really help the BIA to get there and realize that it doesn't happen overnight and then help with the renewal of the BIA which comes up every five or ten years depending on the span that they go for each time and help them through that process and the potential expansions and so some B you can be a resource just some examples of how you can be a resource is to supply staff time and advice and cooperation cities many cities have great people working with them that have amazing knowledge and talent that can really help the BIAs you know maybe help with annual general meeting assistance special event planning and giving grants for special projects programs or events things like a commercial facade improvement grants and then knowing your role in this whole process which Susan explained part of the community in charter enables the BIA bylaws so the city is really an oversight group so you want to be that oversight but not you know interfere too much support them but don't interfere too much and really understand the different scope of your you've got BIAs the city active and you know chamber of commerce and they're all sort of working together and and some people say that well why do you need a BIA if you have a chamber but they're quite different a chamber and the active they look at the city as a whole and they promote the city as a whole whereas the BIA is very concerned about just their specific area so that's the area that they want to promote and you know the chamber is does a lot of advocacy for provincial and federal level so which is good sometimes the BIA feeds things through them to get that advocacy done so working together is really good but really to understand the different mandates and just going back to the financial reporting requirements a little bit because this one of the things that pops up sometimes as issues for BIAs is that you know in Camelots we were always just required a notice to reader which a lot of BIAs do and that's it's quite sufficient not a full audit because if you've got a BIA that has a small budget you know a full audit is very expensive and to have to do that and it's not you've got all these other levels of oversight with built into the organization because you have to report to your members at every AGM so if the members don't support your budget your BIA is done so you have that and then your board of directors of course is your oversight so city is a very high level gatekeeper in that process so yes you know the money comes in through your system and goes out of your system and and you're that gatekeeper and you have to make sure that you know they present their budget and that sort of thing but you know don't get too carried away you know make sure that they can still function and partnering is a huge thing partnering with your BIA in order to help sustain it to build relationships and look for those mutually beneficial projects I mean to me it just makes sense like I've got a couple pictures here the the cigarette but recycling I say like to say that the city was a butt partner with that project they were great we wanted to do this recycling program and they helped us to purchase the the units and that installed them for us we had a another group that collects them and then we send the send them in to be recycled so a really good win-win thing and getting some of the butts off the street and the planters were another thing we the city helped us to purchase the planters and it was a B city project as well because countless is a B city and you know Home Depot helped us out and the business helped to maintain it so just really good partnering examples and of course you can really realize savings as a as a city by working with the BIA so the BIA can often with a project do the heavy lifting as in organizing something this example here is the tree lights downtown Kamloops so we wanted tree lights downtown and the city of course was not going to come down there and install a bunch of tree lights for us because it would just cost so much money but we organized to have the contractor we decided what kind of lights to use we ordered the lights and once we did all you know we did all of the hard work the organizing of the heavy lifting of it they were happy to pay for the lights so it was just a good way of getting something done and and really working together on it and you can partnering to help serve your community because that's what it's all about is really having a good building community and having a great community and we did a mural project is a good example we have funding from the government the building owners had to pay into it we lined up artists for it and you know we got free scaffolding for the wildlife park that kind of thing and the city enabled it but they didn't have to provide any funding for it so they made sure that you know the we helped us through the permit process because we have to have permits and countless for for murals which is actually a good idea so they enabled it but they didn't have to put any money into it so it was great and it's become a tourist attraction within our community these are all in the back alleys of our downtown so it's an alley art gallery and as Susan mentioned earlier remember that BIA BC is a great resource for municipalities and business groups with the handbook and everything so there's lots we can help to get started and all the efforts of the BIA and their partners improves public awareness establishes a positive image for the area increases customer traffic and attracts new businesses so the results are a vibrant community and that's what we all want isn't it this was actually a back alley block party that we did and who would have thought that you could do a party in a back alley and it was awesome and we had tons of people show up this was last summer and we did the the mural on the left that sort of is graffiti style that was a temporary mural that we just kind of popped up for the day and then painted over it later but in the background you can see some of some of the other murals that are permanent ones and it was a great great one and these are just a couple of examples of things that that smaller BIA can help to contribute to economic development so our state of the downtown report we gather together a lot of information that was specific to the downtown not just camels in general because if you were looking at trying to attract a business to locate in the downtown they want to know you know pedestrian counts and and what the demographics are and who you know who lives there how much money they make do they already educated all these kinds of things and so that information a lot of it's out there and but it had to be gathered and boiled down to our specific area and that was where some of the information we had to go out and get like the pedestrian counts but other stuff stats Canada you know the city had or our active department had so but it's a really good economic development tool that our countless active department does use and then that's also the sell sheet there on our city center revitalization tax exemption program and it's a really good program to be able to try and get some development happening in your downtown and it's really starting to see some results now where we've got more residential being built in our downtown which is unique residential in your downtown to be successful so I don't know if anybody has any questions at this point or if Susan do you want me to just carry on with the the next section is the stuff for Langley there's a couple questions that came up so we can ask and then we'll go forward one question and so the question is can a BIA be created in a regional district? I didn't think so but I thought I'd ask you in a regional district because the community charter language all talks about municipalities yeah so there'd almost have to be because you have to have a municipal bylaw to make it happen right is Danny here? No he's not this might be one that we'll have to check with Danny and then I'll get back to you yeah that was a little technical for me yeah is there any reason that a chamber of commerce could not be the operating agency of a BIA? Well I've not seen that happen because the BIA their mandate is very different from a chamber and just the way that they operate I mean a chamber could help get the BIA up and started but ideally you would like want to have a separate board of directors and a separate non-profit society for your BIA but a chamber could certainly be one of the partners to help get it going so and this actually the governance question that comes next perhaps helps to touch on why BIA would have its own society the question was if an owner is leasing or renting out a space would the landlord and the business owner get voting rights within the BIA? Well that is also like it being a member of the BIA is one of the confusing sort of things because if you're paying the levy you know you would be considered to be a member if you're BIA but what some BIAs do and that's what we did in countless is we had another separate voting membership and so you could you know for 20 bucks a year whatever you became a voting member whether you were a property owner you had to be a property owner or a tenant so you had to you know be a tenant so those business tenants are definitely brought into the process because they they can be they can become a member they can sit on the board because they're actually the ones that end up paying the levy let's face it the property owners you know they're going to push that down to their businesses so you definitely want those tenants to be voting members. So it sounds like that would be a reason why to have a separate nonprofit society for the BIA because you want to have your own set of bylaws and set out the voting classes of members in the bylaws of the society because you could have a chamber of commerce member who's not located within the geographic area that's defined for the BIA and oh absolutely that person to be voting on the expenditure of the funds that are raised from the affected properties. Yeah that that's exactly it all comes down to governance folks it all comes down to governance and usually a chamber represents an entire city whereas you could have two or three you know like in in camels we right now currently have two BIAs we have three at one point like no not every town they actually have three BIAs. Yeah three Camel River has three Victoria's well the city of Victoria downtown has one there's a lots of different ones in Vancouver. Some of them may only be a few blocks long. Yeah what size of community would you believe would be best able to sustain a BIA kicking into consideration the capacity of the community for volunteers. Well one of the things you have to look at when trying to figure that out is you got to look at the value of your properties like if you say okay you're downtown merit for example you know what's the total value of those business properties that are downtown and if you put a a levy on there of you know 78 cents per thousand of assessed value how much money is that going to raise and you know how much because you can only put you know you don't want to have your levy so high that it's you know people aren't going to want to pay it they're going to really revolt against it then how much money does that gather and can you do anything with that amount of money so that's kind of what you need to look at is it from that that financial point of view to say okay are we big enough to have a BIA how many businesses do we have what's the you know total value of those properties how much money could we you know reasonably raise and then what could we do with that money could we hire somebody and then still do something or once we hired somebody we wouldn't have any money left to do anything so it's really got to look at the financial side of it first even before you sort of look at that volunteer availability. Are there some BIAs that don't have paid staff that just run with the board of directors that run the programs? Well that there may be I'm not aware of any I know that there are some that have just part-time staff for sure because they're small but it's really difficult to have to really get anything done operating with just a volunteer board because they have full-time jobs they have their businesses you know they really don't have you know it would just be you do have to have some sort of staff. Yeah the corner of the desk becomes an awfully large corner of desk yes and the corner of the desk becomes the entire desk right yeah yeah things fall off okay so it's not really sustainable okay thank you shall we move on with the other part of the presentation yeah so stop my webcam here we go okay so new BIAs will be responsible for branding their association and informing the membership that they are part of a BIA so we're different in the sense that our levy comes from the property owners via the municipality so because there's no direct billing for membership fees many businesses do not even realize they are part of the BIA it's important that the scope and responsibility of each BIA is clearly defined as each BIA is different depending on the needs and social dynamics of that community so simply put we assist the businesses in our area as to join together to accomplish more than what any one business could accomplish on their own by pooling our resources so this is true for advertising campaigns events promotions you know such as Christmas and promoting the business community in general so we create partnerships in the community with our municipalities the RCMP and other not-for-profit organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce community groups and individual businesses so this is a good example in Langley of the Operation Clean Streets program that they run and they provide we provide opportunities for information and ideas exchange as well amongst the businesses through newsletters meetings networking opportunities and workshops we create new and engaging community events and seek sponsorships to help fund them and that getting additional revenue is a huge piece of what you do as a BIA in Camelots we usually ended up doubling our levy by getting sponsorship funds whether it was cash or in so that sponsorship pieces is huge to be able to do all of the things you want to do like these types of events and we also advocate on the behalf of our members at the municipal level and other levels of government to influence and support policy and by law changes and we work with our municipalities to revitalize and beautify our BIAs and to ensure the business community is informed and has a say in these activities you always want to have that communication between the municipality and you know if they're doing infrastructure and having that communication between them and the businesses so the BIA is that conduit there and most importantly we are the face and the voice that represents our entire BIA and a little fast fact for you across the province there are more than 70 established BIAs which Susan was showing at the beginning but they represent over 60,000 businesses and 16.5 billion in land value with more than 10 million in combined budgets and this these numbers are actually a few years old but that just gives you an idea of the collectively we have a very strong voice in our business communities and so the Langley provides facade improvement grants to their businesses through their get fresh program and quite a few BIAs have done the facade improvement grants and it's a really great way to show to get immediate change within within your communities and Langley also ran a recent contest started at Langley.com that will provide one new retail business owner over $130,000 in startup assistance huge to get a new business going and this was advertised throughout the province which resulted in dozens of applications and brought tremendous attention to Langley City as a place to open up business so overall you know maybe they're they're giving that $130,000 to one business but what a good business attraction tool because now they've advertised Langley as a good place to do business throughout the province and in the in Langley the DLBA has also worked extensively with Langley City Mayor and Council over the years to ask them to pass bylaws that mitigate the proliferation of some of the following businesses. So pharmacies that dispense methadone, check cashing facilities, pawn shops and thrift stores because you really want to have a good business mix within your community and sometimes if you have you know too many of those types of businesses it really you know it doesn't attract more of you know other businesses to have a good business mix and the the BIAs also act as the liaison for any major infrastructure improvements that impact the BIA businesses so roadways, underground infrastructure, parkland development, streetscape revite etc because we have found that when store owners are upset about business disruption and you know that happens it works much better if they have an informed and involved person on the other end of the concerns and also that you know they've maybe gotten that information before they start riffing the street up not when they start riffing the street up so it's really important that we work with the city in advance of these things and Langley City actually invests over $500,000 a year in beautification and revite of their downtown core like hanging baskets, banner street furniture, event support etc so which when you add that to the DLBA $430,000 a year budget really allows for continuous forward momentum from a development perspective so again pooling money and and getting more bang for your buck and Langley City and the DLBA have an outstanding relationship where both parties respect the work that the other does they partner in numerous economic development opportunities while not stepping on each other's toes always good not to step on your mayor's toes. As a result despite the city's small size they rival larger communities where sometimes BIA funding is allocated to what would normally be municipally funded items so it's one of the things you always have to be cautious of as a new BIA is that you're not getting things downloaded on to you from your municipality I mean it's tempting to do that as a municipality but you know you got to make sure that the money is the BIA money is really used in the right way so renewal now we've created a BIA and five years later we have to renew it so because a typical renewal period is every five years some will go seven or eight or some ten somebody did 20 but it's amazing I don't know how they did that with how can you budget 20 years out but anyway but the process of renewal should start at least eight months before the renewal is required because there's a lot of groundwork you have to do and there's approximately a two month timeline required for renewal the actual bylaw part of it which you know your first second and third reading of the new BIA bylaw which is prepared by the municipality and this is the time for the BIA to ask for any increase in their levy or expanding their area or extending the renewal period etc and then the petition against the bylaw so the first reverse petition is mailed out to the affected property owners and they have 30 days to respond so then if you know the reverse petition fails which means success the bylaw then goes to council for the fourth and final reading and I'm sure you understand but I'll just reiterate how a reverse petition works and first of all it's the reverse petitions are designed for the BIA to succeed which is good so for a reverse to be successful and for a BIA to be discontinued a total of 51 percent of the property owners and 51 percent of the total commercial value of the properties in the BIA boundary must vote against the renewal so it's not just you know if you have a couple of big guys that have you know big value properties getting rid of it you have to at least you know 51 percent by number and by value so it's a good a good way that they do that some of the usual requirements for marrying and council that they want to know for going into renewal is a report outlining the successes of the BIA since the last renewal which also highlights any new concepts and projects for the future sort of a plan going forward and that's always a good thing to include with the letter the the reverse petition that the city sends out and some cities allow that and some don't but I think they all should allow to have something like that sent out with their letter so that all the property owners get that information the successes in the future and then this the city of course would want the budget projection for the next five years of the renewal if that's the term and particularly if an increase in the levy has been requested because you want to say you know why you're increasing the levy what are you going to do with that money where is it going and then the BIA would come to council and do a presentation at a council meeting just prior to that first second and third reading of the bylaw and so each municipality as Susan said has is different about when it comes to what they require from the BIA as backup material for the request for the new but some of them are things like testimonials from business owners and property owners I mean that's a nice thing to have I don't think it should be a requirement but it's it's always good to add in as a BIA to add in anything that you can to show that there's value there so I've often done that it's gotten testimonials from owners and having that you know success report so this is what we've done up until now and this is the plan going forward so that's a very important piece oh yes so this is just gives you a little short cap of some of that requirements there or the renewal process and that's it for me okay thank you okay so this was content that Terry James contributed for the webinar from the township of Langley so we just have one question around this around the renewal process well I'll put my webinar my webcam back on so you can see me hi um so the reverse petition is created does it kind of trick businesses into agreeing is there a little ethical question there is the reverse petition method is that designed to sort of trick businesses into agreeing to go forward with it well I wouldn't look at it as tricking them it what it is is that you know usually it's always those negative people that are going to come out and vote anyway so you give those the people that are going to be negative about it they're going to come out and they're going to say yes and they're going to vote against it but the people that are in favor of it don't have to do anything as far as voting so it's just I don't know I think it's a good process to go a good process for renewal myself yeah in in general you're happy with the status quo you may not actually be paying attention to civic processes and if it was a positive petition you may miss the opportunity to say I like this keep going it's usually those who are unhappy who are watching for the opportunity to stop something yeah yeah so it's yeah so they have that opportunity if there is yeah it's it's sento to every person who has the right to vote so all of those partial all those business owners who are affected by the levy so they want to come forward and speak against it they have that opportunity it's fair well it it's actually goes the property owners it doesn't necessarily go tenants which is kind of a little unfortunate in a way because the tenants are often the ones that see the benefits of the bia because they're the ones with the business on the street so it's always as a bia it's a good approach to go to your businesses and give them all the information and say talk to your landlord and tell them that yes this is good i'm willing to have because you're paying it he's not going to pay it and not send it down to you so you know you go to your landlord and say hey i'm happy to pay the bia levy because actually when you look at how much an individual business pays it really doesn't amount often it doesn't amount to a whole bunch any year like it might only be a couple hundred dollars or you know i had anywhere from you know a hundred bucks up to you know several thousand so you know to have those those tenants talk to the property owners because it is the property owners that you know have the vote because they're the ones that get the letter from the city right okay well we have time for some more questions and we have one more poll one more pop quiz to run based on gays presentation here's your opportunity what are the roles of a municipality in working with a bia there's multiple correct questions and on this you're actually allowed to choose more than the one option so some of these however are not correct i believe you can take your vote off of the ones that you think are incorrect so i i know that some people have left us they've they've gone back their lunch break is over so we'll just leave this open we've got 63 voter turnout which is still pretty good in british columbia that's excellent we're up to 70 percent now so a couple more seconds here as more votes come in and there are more than one correct answer and you can choose more than one option on this quiz so all right we've got 94 percent submission here that's fabulous so let's share the results back the roles of a municipality in working with the bia so absolutely yes encouraging the formation of bia supporting the organization the municipality if i'm right gay does not actually define what the business promotion scheme will be is that right oh you might be muted again okay well no there you go i thought i turned the camera off in here i can't tell um yeah no the the business the city does not determine that right um but the municipality does partner with the business community but they don't do the audit of the financial statements so that's up to the bia requirement yeah that would be uh knowing some directors of finance i can tell you that they're not looking for extra work so no they they want to see the financial statements in some cases but actually doing an audit nope all right that is all we have for our polls today i'm just going to check to see if we have any more questions right now and i'll take the presenter back we have some discussion time i'll just check for questions oh there was one more question i'm just going to pop this out here so i can take a look at it are there any restrictions on a bia's board of director of membership so you maybe you can't be an elected member in your municipality or you can't be a government employee are there any restrictions for a bia well generally that's in the the bylaws of the bia and generally you want to them they're usually either a property owner or a business owner um there's often there will be a city council liaison a non-voting liaison on the board but not as a board member because that is considered a conflict of interest okay what if there's a city council member who's a business owner well that has i actually have had business owners that ran for council that were on my board at the time and they stepped off the board and that is something that is written into some bylaws not i don't think it is in the standard bylaws but it is often written into bylaws that if you do you know run for elected office that you have to step off the board right they did it voluntarily because they saw it as a conflict of interest yeah yeah but technically you know it depends on the bylaws of bia it comes into governance yeah it's governance awesome all right thank you very much yeah so we have no more questions coming up i just want to run through some final slides about what's coming up in our webinar series so we've got um economic reconciliation is our topic for next thursday this is with paul assert and he'll be talking about what economic reconciliation looks like and how do we engage in economic activities without sort of recreating some of the traditional control and manipulation that has happened in our economic system and so there's a link for that it's pretty easy one bit dot lee slash june 7 dash 3 the dash 3 helps me keep track of where people found out about my webinars so i'm looking at my marketing tools june 19th from 10 until 11 am we'll be doing a workshop on part of our tech dev 101 workshop series actually we're looking at the innovation ecosystem model unfortunately i forgot to put the link in my powerpoint presentation but if you give me a little bit of time after this you'll be able to use bit dot lee slash june 19th dash 3 so using this the same mechanism that's my code for links i post on my webinars if you have not been getting our webinar invitations if you found out about this webinar from somewhere else and you want to get our webinars you go to this link cm.pn slash you're going to have to write this down slash 3 i n j unfortunately go to webinar doesn't let you just click on my links so you just have to write that one down when you're signing up title is your job title and company name is your organization and that just helps me see what kind of roles we have on our distribution list and where you're from uh once again i mentioned we're having the tech dev 101 webinar on the 19th you can also request the full day workshop to come to your community we're doing these throughout the year and throughout the province the workshop dad talks about tech and innovation basics and it actually takes a really customized focused look at your community with up to 30 community leaders tech entrepreneurs chamber commerce people municipal people and just really talks about what the tech and innovation ecosystem is like in your community and how to build on your strengths as a community using tech and innovation as an economic development driver it is not all about how to get gaming companies to move to your town uh although that's a good thing it is really about what's happening here and how do we make sure that we're getting the benefits of tech and innovation so email us if you'd like to request one of those workshops we are starting to fill up so get your email requests in soon we have a certain budget of course but this has been a really popular one so we're really excited it happened in penticton just this week in fact so after this webinar you will have a pop-up link to complete the feedback survey and i'll be posting the recording of this in about a week and don't forget to register for our next webinar thank you very much for joining us everybody thank you gay for participating and also thank you to terry james from the langley bia and to lori baxter from the business improvement associations of bc to get us connected and make this happen so i will be shutting off the webinar thanks for for having me thanks gay you're you're welcome thank you okay i'm gonna end it all goodbye everybody