Since 1989, the Ceres City Council has rubber stamped the quest to levy annual assessments against businesses in the downtown district. But on Monday Vice Mayor Bret Silveira led the charge to halt the practice and rethink the mission of the Ceres Downtown Revitalization Area Board (CDRAB), calling the effort a failure.

A total of 49 businesses are within the boundaries of the district and most pay $10 to $25 per month depending on gross receipts. For the most part, the money paid by businesses has paid for banners, landscaping maintenance and paying the electric bill on downtown lighting.

Brandy Meyer, a downtown business owner and Ceres Chamber of Commerce president, said she appreciated the city not increasing the assessments and desired more involvement of business owners.

Economic Development Manager Julian Aguirre said the city cannot force businesses to pay the assessment but can encourage them to participate.

“This project since its inception has basically been a failure,” Vice Mayor Silveira bluntly said. “In the last few years, the only businesses that had any improvements or anything from this fund are the businesses right downtown on Fourth Street and some on Lawrence and North. All the surrounding businesses have received nothing from any of this fund. The business owners are frustrated. They’ve all told me that they don’t mind paying in it if something’s going to happen. But they can’t continue to expect anything to happen because for 20 years nothing’s happened. I don’t have an answer.”

He asked for the program to be paused and reevaluate its mission and mentioned how businesses are complaining they feel they are getting nothing for their money. He noted, for example, how Fifth Street has received no street lights. Silveira also noted that almost all of the assessments go to the contractor which takes care of landscaping on Fourth Street and paying the bill for lighting.

Councilman James Casey agreed, suggesting the least the district can do is to install street lights on Fifth Street and other areas of downtown.

Also suggesting a pause “until we can better figure out how to allocate that money” was Councilman Daniel Martinez who noted how Fifth Street is dark.

Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra said the annual assessment of approximately $7,800 would “not be enough to fix street lights or roads.”

“I think maybe we should pause until we figure out exactly what’s going to be needed and what the real costs to actually serve the entire district and not necessarily just Fourth Street,” said Vierra.

Community Development Director Lea Simvoulakis stated that the council does not have the authority to suspend the district since the business owners are in charge and control the future of the district. She also said that the city general fund would have pick up the costs if the business assessments are suspended.

“There’s not enough money annually collected to do meaningful work but also it requires the business owners to come and vote on what they would like that money spent on,” said Simvoulakis. She added that business owners aren’t involved and asked for time for city staff to get them involved in giving input on what improvements or programs they want to see.

“You’re going to kind of be cutting us off at the knees,” she said. “We can’t revive it and find out what people want to do if we don’t have the (district). We have new business owners that far outweigh the uninterested business owners so we’d really like to get them activated.”

Silveira stood by his guns, saying “there’s just no way I can … support this moving forward as it’s currently structured.”

City Engineer Michael Beltran said the city can include lighting on Fifth Street, at a cost of $25,000 to $30,000 apiece, into the Capital Improvement Program.

“We do have money to spend,” said Beltran. “As we move through these projects we can put this in the program and spend money on downtown, if that’s your desire.”

Silveira replied, saying that’s exactly what business owners are seeking and added “nobody’s given them any idea or options in 20 years.”

Simvoulakis pressed again, saying the business owners would have to dissolve their district by coming to the Ceres Planning Commission which acts as the CDRAB authority.

“We do need to the property owners to come to our meetings to offer ideas,” she insisted.

The city attorney weighed in but asked for time to research the matter before the council acted on levying assessments.

With no motion, the assessments will not be implemented until further study.