Infighting Continues Among Bayside Business Owners

There may be some confusion over who gets to hold the gavel at a Bayside BID meeting called for Tuesday.

The BID’s all-volunteer board has fallen out of favor with dozens of business and storefront owners, who have splintered off and re-elected the former Executive Director Gregg Sullivan, according to the Queens Courier. Meanwhile the board has hired a new director.

Sullivan was fired by the board for what BID President James Riso called “insubordination.” A new Executive Director, Lyle Sclair formerly of the Brooklyn Economic Development Council, was given the post.

A spokesperson for NYC Small Business Services, an agency that oversees City BIDs, acknowledged Sclair as the director.

“SBS will be monitoring to ensure that the organization is providing quality service to the neighborhood,” said SBS spokesperson Meredith Weber.

The BID office has been largely unmanned, and mostly out of operation since December, when Sullivan was let go.

In a letter circulated by Sullivan, member complaints begin with “...the outrageous and unexplained 98% increase in our BID taxes, the fact that our Bayside Village BID Web site that we all paid thousands of dollars for has been completely abandoned for over six months now and rendered out of date and embarrassingly obsolete and become a squandering of our funds while more stores are going out of business than opening.”

The letter was purportedly written by William Degel, of . Degel did not respond to multiple requests to confirm that he penned the letter, and Riso says he believes it was actually written by Sullivan.

Riso admitted that the BID saved money from not having to pay the executive director salary from December until last month, but says the tax increase will go towards bills for advertisements and Christmas lights that .

BID members are demanding an accounting of how BID funds are being spent.

“We handed over all our documents, minutes, 501C3 to [Councilman] Dan Halloran and he sees nothing wrong with how we’ve been operating,” said Riso.

Halloran’s office sent out a press release in January claiming that the legislator doubled funding for the BID. But the BID is actually supported through an involuntary tax of business owners on the Bell Blvd. commercial strip.

The letter circulated by Sullivan indicates that BID members have been demanding refunds for services not rendered.

“Gregg Sullivan keeps stirring the pot, so to speak,” said Riso, adding, “These negative attacks are only slowing progress down and these individuals should be seen as part of the problem and not the solution at this point…We hope that moving forward, all the members of the BID will put their energy into helping the BID instead of denouncing it, by joining committee’s, helping our new Executive Director succeed, help man BID functions, or even volunteering their free time towards possibly joining the board.”

Riso, who says he will be attending the meeting at 6:30p.m. on Tuesday, May 8 at , will likely face many newly active members.