It's a Capitol Riverfront kind of day here, as I now see that the bill to create the
Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District was introduced to the DC city council last week by Tommy Wells and Jack Evans; it's
B17-0208, "Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District Amendment Act of 2007." The text of the bill
is online; it describes the boundaries as being all of Near Southeast and most of Buzzards Point (from 2nd Street SW eastward, with a few jogs along Q and P), and it sets out the taxes it will assess on commercial properties within the BID. No word yet on when hearings will be. You can visit the
Capitol Riverfront BID web site to read their executive summary, bylaws, and operating plan, and also take a look at some of
my previous entries on the creation of the BID. And what exactly is a Business Improvement District? It's an area where the majority of property owners agree to an "self-tax" that pays for services that aren't provided by the city, like security, public space maintenance and cleanup, marketing, promotion, development, parking, transportation, etc. Here's the
Wikipedia entry, if you want more general background on BIDs, and RestoreDC also has
a page on DC's BIDs.