ENGLEWOOD—On Tuesday, Aug. 8, the Englewood Council held a special meeting to override the mayor’s veto of an ordinance that ends the Englewood Economic Development Corp. (EEDC) management of the city’s special improvement district, replacing it with a new entity.
Mayor Frank Huttle wanted to maintain the position of the EEDC, as indicated by the veto, but council members unanimously voted to override the action in the brief meeting.
The EEDC was composed of 15 people, 13 of whom were mayoral appointees. A seat was reserved for the mayor and a council member. The new entity, the Englewood Special District Improvement Management Corp., will be composed of mostly business owners and landlords from Englewood. Its structure will be defined following upcoming deliberations, said Third Ward Councilman Eugene Skurnick.
Paul Kauffman, a Fort Lee-based lawyer and former head of the EEDC, resigned via a letter to the mayor on June 28 upon hearing news of the ordinance to dissolve the branch being proposed. In past meetings, Skurnick questioned the stability of the corporation, citing the frequency at which its members resigned and were replaced, according to meeting minutes.
The EEDC, prior to Aug. 8, had been receiving its funding through a Special Improvement District (SID), which imposed a tax on any businesses that were within the parameters of the downtown area that the SID covered. Businesses in the area had been providing these funds since the EEDC was created in 1986.
According to Skurnick, the EEDC had, at one point, been composed of all council members as well as individuals appointed by the Englewood Chamber of Commerce, prior to the appointment process being changed to mayoral appointments five years ago.
Skurnick, an opponent of the EEDC in recent years, looks forward to developing a Special Improvement District composed primarily of business owners and landlords, whose livelihoods depend upon Englewood’s downtown economy.
“Aside from the local business owners and landlords, we’ll likely look to have two elected officials as well. It’s always a good idea to have someone who can implement desires[…] there are events that the city needs to approve and participate in.”
According to Skurnick, the EEDC has cycled through six leaders in the past two years. He told the Northern Valley Press that, in his view, a more attuned leadership could go a long way in guiding a group made up of people with more vested and personal interests in Englewood’s downtown.
“We’d like to hire a professional executive director, someone who knows something about downtowns and businesses and has experience in the field,” Skurnick said.
Englewood, facing what Skurnick deems “a crisis,” originally voted down a budget proposal in March that would have created a 6.8 percent net tax increase for residents. He went on at a March meeting to argue that if the city council had a means to take back control of the EEDC’s district, it could reduce the increase in tax on the average home in Englewood.
At the same meeting, council members Wayne Hamer and Marc Forman proposed additional cuts as a means of reducing the tax hike to a number more in the range of what’s common—hopefully, they said, below 3 percent.