Security district for Upper East Side

Real Estate Weekly, Sept 7, 1994 by Lois Weiss

Currently, he noted, "There's a blue ribbon panel, a steering group of concerned citizens and property owners who are starting the process. And then after it is approved, the DMA will be formed..made up of the business community, citizens groups and other people," he explained.

The guards, said Riccio, would be employed by one security company that would obtain the job after a request for proposals process coming from the DMA board. "We would have the police do the police work, while the security guards are there as a deterrent," he added.

While Riccio said their security consultants had been using $14 or $15 per man per hour for budgeting purposes, Lerner said he would estimate costs closer to $10 per hour per man, a number that pleased Riccio.

But Lerner noted if there is going to be a BID-like bureaucracy, the cost of administering that bureaucracy could greatly increase the cost of the services.

"The security services supplied by BIDs seem to be of a higher cost and there is a lot of resentment because the building owner is forced into it," he said.

Lerner is ebullient, however, about the benefits of neighborhood guards, which he provides around the city for block associations and community groups, including some on the Upper East Side, Riverdale and Greenwich Village. He cautions that such guards usually end up displacing the crime to another locale, be it the next block or the next neighborhood.

That is worrisome to Richard Eyen, who is the former president of the Sutton Area Association, where he said the use of security guards has been discussed in the past. "Anything that happens on the East Side affects this area tremendously," he observed.

Both he and Lerner question the supplying of security guards through a vehicle that in effect becomes another layer of government. "I don't believe we should create these small governments," said Eyen. "It creates bigger haves and have nots."

Bennett bristles at the very idea of creating an impression of elitist and rich co-op owners protecting themselves, as does Riccio.

"We are interested in providing equal protection," she insisted. "While there are many active block associations and groups [hiring guards], it's fragmented approach. [The blanket approach] helps deal with the displacement problem."

Eyen also worries about accountability, an issue being raised more and more about the current BID process, and these basically appointed officials having control over large amounts of money.

There is also a growing concern over voter resentment that building owners and now residential buildings have to pay extra for services they believe the city should be providing under its own taxing policies. "If they feel this is being forced on them with an extra tax, I don't think this will go so smoothly," Lerner said.

Even so, Madison Avenue and 86th Street are seeking to form their own BIDs and it is unclear what will happen to those should the East Side security proposal come through in the next year or so.

But Brooklyn Council Member Herbert E. Berman, who chairs the Finance Committee that approves BID budgets, says in these times of fiscal necessity, BIDs can provide the extra boost that the city itself cannot.