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Scanned, recopied or Internet copy, if there are errors, please e-mail me with corrections:
Opening comments:  More at the end.


The Mississauga News - May 11, 1988  By JOHN STEWART Staff Reporter

Battle rages over Clarkson's
Business Improvement Area

The battle for control of the Clarkson Business Improvement Area (BIA), which has raged for three years, has intensified in the wake of publication of a newsletter which accuses the group's executive of a series of irregularities.

On one side of the battle for control of the BIA is longtime local businessman Ted Biss, who heads the association founded in 1976 to beautify and promote shopping in Clarkson Village.

On the other side is vice-president Pat Pleich who is actively working to have the BIA disbanded on the basis that it is not acting on behalf of the majority of the 110-odd merchants in Clarkson.  She has collected the signatures of more than 50 per cent of the merchants on a petition calling for the BIA to be abolished.

Adding fuel to an already troubled situation is the Freedom Party, which is actively campaigning across Ontario to have BIAs disbanded and which has already been successful in two communities.  The party, which opposes government taxes in general and mandatory BIA tax assessments in particular, caused a furor at the last general meeting of the Clarkson association when two of its members taped the proceedings, much to the executive's chagrin.

A newsletter published by the Freedom Party in early April accused the BIA of a long series of perceived sins including: operating without a constitution, improperly conducting votes, allowing non-members to vote, refusing proxy votes, using the BIA newspaper as a "publicity gimmick" for the executive, and acting like "dictators."

In an interview, Biss, who has run the All-Trailers company for two decades in Clarkson, rejected the host of criticisms leveled at the BIA executive.  In a written reply to the newsletter, Biss said those bent on destroying the association have "sunk to new lows of misinformation, half-truths and outright lies." Only the "malicious, personally slanderous remarks" prompted him to reply, he said.

The budget for next year will not double, unless the association agrees to such a move, he pointed out.  The BIA operates under a constitution, which are the regulations of The Municipal Act, he says.  Those regulations make no provision for proxy votes.  He rejected suggestions that any vote has ever been deliberately miscounted, and says he no longer writes for the Clarkson Corners newspaper since the question of potential conflict arose.

Biss admitted that in the past, people have voted at meetings who were subsequently found to be ineligible. In fact, Biss and his son James, who was president of the BIA for three years, have only one assessed property and should not have been allowed to each vote on issues or to both be on the executive.  "We assumed we had two different businesses and two votes and everyone else assumed it too," says Biss.

James Biss says the flyer clearly "goes beyond reasonable criticism."  He accuses Pleich of "being manipulated by the Freedom Party for their own political objectives."

"As far as I'm concerned, it's fanatical," adds the elder Biss.

Pleich, who has been involved with her family business, The Barn Antiques, for 18 years in the village, says a small minority of Clarkson businessmen have dictated to the majority, most of whom are too busy running their businesses to fight their rising BIA tax assessments.

"A little clique was formed and there's no control," she says, "and things have gone horrendously wrong." She says that after a unanimous vote in December to add five additional board members to better balance representation from various plazas, the executive held a "secret" meeting in February which excluded the five new members.

It was a $250,000 grant coupled with a $250,000 loan under the Community Association Improvement Plan that really caused Pleich to begin questioning the BIA's direction.  When she went to a meeting where final approval was given and found only eight people in attendance, she was alarmed.  "When they can't even look after the flowers in the flower pots, how can they manage $500,000?" she asks.  Pleich claims that circulation of notice of the meetings is poor with the "friends" of executive members being invited, in the main.

As for her participation on the executive, Pleich claims she has been "verbally abused" at several meetings.  "I might as well have been invisible" at most of them, she adds.  But Ted Biss says Pleich rarely spoke up at executive meetings at all.

The rebels in the BIA have already been successful in blocking, at least temporarily, expansion of the association to take in the Clarkson Village shopping centre, which would increase the total tax assessment revenue for the BIA by about a third.

William Frampton of the Freedom Party, who has attended meetings along with his party's action director, Marc Emery of London, Ontario, says his party is simply assisting the concerned local business people.  He admits abolition of the BIA is his party's aim.  "The executive and city hall don't want to do anything about the problems," claims Frampton who lives in Mississauga and ran in the last provincial election.

His group is philosophically opposed to BIAs because once city council passes a resolution establishing them, every merchant in the prescribed area must pay a special additional tax, whether he supports the idea or not.  There is no specific provision in the provincial legislation to allow abolition of BIAs, but in other areas dissidents have simply taken over the executive, reduced the annual budget to zero, and prompted local councils to repeal the bylaw establishing the business group.

Pleich says she is not a Freedom Party member, but she agrees with its criticisms of BIAs.  She says she would support a business association in Clarkson if it was voluntary.

Biss has already promised that the first item of business at the next BIA general meeting will be a vote of confidence in himself as president.  If the majority don't support him, he will step down.

Biss is waiting for a list of names from city hall of those who are eligible to vote before he holds the next meeting.  He's obviously becoming tired of the trench warfare that has plagued the association.  "Every time we do anything, she's against it," he says of Pleich.

"I don't want to see this drawn out to the point where it interferes with Clarkson as a viable place to shop,".  the president adds. Surveying the changes in Clarkson including the street furniture, lampposts, new signs, and lockstone paving, Biss says things have never been better for the village.

Pleich points out that many of the street improvements seem to be in front of the stores of the merchants who are on the executive, or support it.  She agrees Clarkson is getting better, but she doesn't agree that the BIA deserves any credit.

Both Biss and Pleich say the strong statements and actions in the fight for control of the BIA have forced them to consult lawyers and consider legal action.
 



[COMMENTS BY DON B. -  ]


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