SID Workshop to be Held Tonight

The latest workshop to work out the details of a Special Improvement District (SID) for South Orange will be held tonight at 7:30 p.m. at .  This follows a meeting last month where the South Orange Board of Trustees (BOT) hammered out the language of the proposed ordinance.

In November, after a lengthy discussion about multiple concerns they felt needed to be worked out.

A committee had met from April of this year until October to determine if a SID should be enacted.  The committee be created, however, many business owners are .

The ordinance if passed would create a district management corporation.  Some of the powers given to the corporation would include the ability to manage a staff, apply for grants, borrow money from private lenders and government agencies, pay for advertising for the businesses in the district, organize special events in the district and can take control of certain properties. 

Village Council Steve Rother explained at the last workshop that the ordinance was created mostly from state statutes.  This has led to some broad terms in the ordinance, something which did not sit well with some officials.

“If (a SID) is to be created, it basically has to have a set of goals,” Village President Alex Torpey said at the time. 

Some of those goals to be discussed include a way to organize all of the separate downtown organizations, whether the Board of Trustees will have more oversight over the budget of the SID and how the factors into a SID.  In addition, the questions of ’s role and the make-up of the budget are still questions that may be addressed.

Since tonight’s meeting is a workshop and not an official Board of Trustees meeting, no action may be taken to either further or scrape a SID.