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CID proceeding with sales tax election despite complaint

The Columbia Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District is proceeding with Thursday’s half-cent sales tax election despite a request to postpone.

CID Board President Tom May received a letter Wednesday morning from attorneys for Jen Henderson, an eligible voter and outspoken critic of both the sales tax proposal and the CID organizers.

In an email Thursday morning, CID Executive Director Carrie Gartner said the board has not been given enough time to review and respond to the issues raised in the letter.

“Cancelling an election midstream is a serious issue and that legal determination simply can’t be made that quickly,” Gartner wrote.

Among the reasons for delaying the election, Henderson’s attorneys Josh Oxenhandler and Richard Reuben take issue with the CID board handling all election operations – including sending, receiving and holding the ballots – without any oversight.

“The CID Board has a direct financial stake in the outcome of the election because the CID will receive the sales tax money collected as a result of favorable vote, should that happen,” the letter states. Similarly, Executive Director Carrie Gartner’s salary is contingent upon the successful passage of the tax.”

Missouri law allows for the board of a CID to conduct their own elections, according to Boone County Counselor CJ Dykhouse. Such an election, he added, isn't bound by the section of Missouri law defining the state’s election rules because of a subsection added to the relevant statute in 2007.

Those rules, however, would be legally binding if the Boone County Clerk were serving as the election authority, as it did in the 2011 Downtown CID election. Dykhouse said the County Clerk isn’t running the Business Loop CID election because there were no available election dates in 2016.

Gartner said the CID was told that the County Clerk wouldn’t be able to hold the election any sooner than August 2017.

Nonetheless, the CID is following all the default rules for mail-in election, according to May.

“We want to make sure the process above reproach, that nobody can come back and say ‘This was done in a certain way that’s not ethical or legal.’“

Henderson was the first registered voter identified by the County Clerk as living within the CID’s boundaries. In September, KBIA discovered an additional 13 voters residing in the CID. Gartner said the ballots were mailed on Nov. 30 to all eligible voters, including a 15th voter who is considered inactive by the Boone County Clerk.

Not all voters share Henderson’s views of the proposed sales tax.

Krunal Reshamwala lives and works as a front desk supervisor at the Days Inn on west of the Business Loop. He said he and his – Rajendra and Shivangi – support the sales tax increase. Reshamwala said the area needs more improvements, like better street lighting and crosswalks, in order to compete with Columbia’s downtown nightlife.

Felice Ann Brown, who goes by Franky, lives on Garth and grew up in the same area of town. When she first heard about the CID in October, she was enthusiastically supportive since hopes to eventually move her new business, a clothing store, onto Business Loop 70. She said the improvements were necessary to attract more shoppers.

But Brown grew skeptical when she called the CID’s office in November, and her phone call was never returned. Brown said she wanted to know exactly how the CID would spend the $200,000 the sales tax is estimated to bring in annually. She compared the situation to the rigorous process she recently went through in applying for a business loan.

“If a bank wants me to give them a full, however many pages it took for me to explain what my business was going to do, before they even considered having a meeting with me to actually give me a check, then shouldn’t y’all already have a plan that y’all can state to the public when they have these questions about what you’re going to do with the money we give you?” Brown asked.

Voters have until 7:00 PM to return their ballots to the office of the Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District in Parkade Center.

Update (10 Dec. 2015, 5 p.m.): Added quotes from other eligible voters.