The Riverhead BID Management Association will have to hold its annual meeting over again.
The organization held the meeting on Wednesday, but did not give proper notice of the meeting to BID property owners and tenants, as required by its bylaws. The board of directors sent notices out by email, using a list provided by the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce, the group’s president Raymond Pickersgill said Wednesday.
But the entity’s bylaws require notice of the annual meeting to either be sent by first-class mail to all property owners and tenants or to be published once per week for three consecutive weeks in a newspaper published in Suffolk County, pursuant to the state not-for-profit corporation law.
The election of new board members held at this week’s meeting — the principal business of the annual meeting — will have to be held again.
Only a handful of BID property owners and tenants attended Wednesday’s meeting. But that’s been typical of the annual meeting as well as the board’s regular monthly meetings, Pickersgill said.
“In fact that’s why we tried sending out email notices. We’ve put the ads in the paper in the past and they didn’t seem to have any result,” Pickersgill said.
The annual meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 15, Pickersgill said.
The Business Improvement District is a special tax district that encompasses downtown Riverhead from the riverfront north to the railroad tracks, from Court Street on the west to Prospect Place on the east. Property owners in the district pay a special district tax. The money collected is managed and spent by the Business Improvement District Management Association, a not-for-profit 501(c)(4) corporation, pursuant to the BID plan adopted by the Town of Riverhead and a contract between the town and the the BIDMA.
Property owners elect five members of the BIDMA board and commercial tenants elect five members. Three members are appointed by town officials (one by the town supervisor, one by the town board and one by the town’s financial administrator.)
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