A. Neighborhood Needs Assessment
The Fifth Avenue BID provides supplemental security and sanitation services and lends assistance to visitors to the Fifth Avenue and 57th Street neighborhood. It also provides a Christmas season tree display at the Pulitzer Fountain and acts as an advocate for the district on issues that are important to our members.
Since the district was established in 1993, our work with the New York City Police Department has contributed to a most dramatic drop in street crime - 94%. We have also worked with the NYPD's Anti-Crime unit to secure the arrests of criminals who preyed on our retailers. In June of 2008, the BID was awarded a "Certificate of Appreciation" for "outstanding service and assistance to the Police Department and the people of the City of New York." For information about this year's accomplishments and activities, please see the next section of this report.
On a surface level, the financial crises has had little impact on our property owners and tenants. Stores have continued to open and property managers continue to go about their business seemingly unaffected. As stores like Hugo Boss and Fortunoff have moved on or gone bankrupt, others such as Armani, Diesel and Tommy Hilfiger have quickly taken their places. Our store vacancy rate is only about one to two percent. In June of 2009, a New York Post article captured this reality by stating:
"But Fifth Avenue from 49th to 59th street
seems immune to the malaise. While
many Midtown avenues and streets
have canyons of store space up for
grabs, Fifth's golden half-mile is full,
except for the Brooks site and a tiny
space recently abandoned by Sergio
Rossi. (NY POST, June 2, 2009, pg. 30)
A closer look, however, indicates that we may encounter some problems over the next year. Retailers have cut back on sales personal and more office space is being offered as sublets by commercial enterprises that are attempting to lower their costs. Industry sources indicate that rent asking rates have been falling.
As for the BID's operating budget, Fiscal Year 2009 was not a typical year for our Business Improvement District. By mid-September of 2008, it was becoming apparent that the country's financial problems would have a serious financial impact on our neighborhood. A few years prior, the Board of Directors of the Fifth Avenue BID had settled into a two year budget planning cycle. Fiscal Year 2009 was to be the second year of that cycle and Fiscal Year 2010 would be a year for an assessment increase.
In the Fall of 2008, we began to see a need to act with caution. Perhaps we would need to curtail our spending patterns; perhaps we would need to lower our staff headcount. Gradually we set a goal to be less aggressive with our fiscal plan that had been adopted by our Board some six months prior to the September/October period. In that plan, we were going to spend roughly $49,500 more than our projected income. For the following fiscal year, we were likely to request an assessment increase of roughly five percent. We also saw that if we continued to operate according to our previously approved plan, we would encounter a larger shortfall because interest rates were dropping sharply.
Through the temporary use of attrition and by making minor program cutbacks, by the end of the year we turned a possible $75,000 decrease in our financial reserves into a $25,745 surplus. And by April of 2009, our Board of Directors had determined that we would extend our two year financial plan into a third year resulting in a decision not to seek an assessment increase. Income and expense details can be found at the end of this report.
In light of these financial realities, our program activities were held steady during Fiscal Year 2009 with incremental improvements and our projections for Fiscal 2010 are more modest that we would otherwise have planned. See the next section for details about our services.
The Fifth Avenue BID will continue to offer its core services and continue to monitor business conditions as Fiscal Year 2010 unfolds.
B. Review of Accomplishments
SECURITY
The security of our district continues to be our highest priority. As described on the first page of this report, the fiscal realities of 2008/2009 have dominated what we do and how we do it. In last year's Annual Report we set five goals for Fiscal Year 2009. Our first goal stated that we would "continue to provide the highest level of supplemental security and sanitation services possible within the fiscal parameters approved by our Board of Directors." (emphasis added.) And, although we limited the amount of security staff overtime and delayed hiring replacement officers, we are pleased with the continued success of this core program. Street crime within our district boundaries was down by 19% over the prior year and as previously indicated, down by 94% since 1993. We believe that our patrols, which provided 47,954 hours of service, act as a strong deterrent to the criminal element. Our security staff, because they are on the front lines every day, also responds to tourist requests for information and assistance. During this last fiscal year, our staff dealt with 258,387 of these inquiries.
SANITATION
Our BID also provides a high level of supplemental sanitation services. In FY09, we logged 17,924 hours of Clean Team projects. Most of this work centered around the daily routine of keeping the district clean and of free of overflowing trash receptacles. For the year we stuffed 133,750 trash bags, removed 240 graffiti tags and, working with our contractor, provided 572 supplemental truck runs beyond the Sanitation Department's normal pickups. And we were able to implement our repainting project (goal #3) using our in-house staff. By the end of the year, we had repainted one hundred and ten street poles within the Fifth Avenue BID.
OTHER GOALS MET
Our second and fourth goals were to provide counter terrorism training to our security personnel. Working with the New York City Police Department, the entire BID security staff has completed two training classes to 1) recognize potential terrorist activities and 2) in detecting what the Department describes as "hostile surveillance." In the first category, our staff was provided "with an elementary skill-set required to deter, detect, and identify potential terrorist activity." In the second, they were trained "on the techniques used to detect hostile surveillance by identifying threat indicators, hostile surveillance methods, and staging locations." Other dimensions of this type of training will continue in Fiscal Year 2010.
The fifth goal for 2008/2009 was to "keep expenses as low as possible and minimize the level of future assessment increases." This was, in fact, the top priority for last year and as stated in Section I, A, we achieved this goal.
Section II: Looking Ahead: Fiscal Year 2010 Goals
As of the date of this report, New York City's financial condition is under pressure. With both the State and City facing large budget gaps and with next year's budgets looking more difficult still, the wise course of action for our company is to proceed with great caution. Consequently, our FY10 goals will be framed within this financial context.
Our primary goal will be to continue to provide existing levels of service according to our adopted District Plan and to manage our finances as conservatively as possible.
Our second goal will be to revise our web site content to make progress on the Department of Small Business Services' recommendations, within budgetary limitations.
Our third goal will be to continue our cooperation with the NYPD to provide the highest level of security training available.
Our fourth goal will be to reassess trash our collection plan, including the number and placement of trash containers.
Our final goal for the upcoming year will be to redesign our ambassador program so that every building and every store in the district is visited each quarter.