The Santa Barbara Vintners are proposing to create a Wine BID with a 2% charge to sales to raise $1.6M for marketing and staff. To create the Wine BID the SB Vintners are proposing the wineries vote be weighted by the amount of DTC sales in California (wholesale is excluded) instead of the democratic one vote for each winery. Thus, a handful of large SB wineries, most with out of county or out of state headquarters, can determine the vote. This raises the same issues the Founding Fathers faced with Madison’s Virginia plan for voting during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Thoughts- reactions? I understand Sonoma County is considering a Wine BID. Does anyone know how the creation voting will be done? Thank you.
No idea how they work in agricultural regions, but in NYC they are funded by property taxes, or rather, assessments made to properties and each is run by a not-for-profit organization, or a District Management Association, set up specifically to run it. For each DMA at least half of the members must be property owners, both residential and commercial tenants must be represented, and four members must be from from City government. They are only allowed to spend money on a specific set of tasks.
I’m only familiar with urban districts, but the funny thing is that historically, they were first developed in the west to allocate water rights. It was only later that cities adopted them.
It’s very different with an urban setting, but they make an effort to include broad representation that doesn’t only favor one factor, like DTC sales. You guys may want to include things like vineyard acreage, proportion of DTC to non-DTC sales, on-site sales, etc.
Good luck with it and let us know what happens. It’s an interesting area.
The BID’s I know of use a combination of land square footage and improved square footage to determine voting power and amount of payment.
Why not just create a voluntary trade association, with fixed dues, and fixed votes? That way seems much simpler.
(Also I would suggest defining an acronym before its first use, some can figure it out from context, but not everyone)
That would be me. Especially since WineBid is such a well known site.
For those as clueless as me:
Wine Business Improvement District
Here is the website:
https://www.sbcountywines.com/winebidinfo.html
(I have zero dogs in this hunt. Just trying to understand what the OP is talking about.)
Thanks for clarifying the OP!
Well . . .
Let’s educate everyone what is actually happening here. SB County is very different than most other counties in that we do not have ‘huge’ wineries that help establish large budgets for the Vintner’s Association, nor do we have hundreds of ‘Business’ members as other regions like Paso do. Therefore, the budget for the SBC Vintners is about 1/3 of Paso or Sonoma County. We have 2 full time employees - versus 5 or more in other regions like Paso or the Willamette Valley.
Due to this, we have always been ‘challenged’ to market our ‘brand’. And add on to that, we have a generally ‘apathetic’ region whereby wineries are really not willing and wanting to get involved and most don’t seem to understand the concept of ‘rising tides’ . . .
Now our County also has some political challenges - our local government has not been as ‘welcoming’ to the wine industry as other regions north of us. And our Vintner’s Association was set up as a ‘non-political’ one, which historically meant that it did not get directly involved in ‘governmental matters’.
In crafting this BID process, the Board and executive director attempted to look at all possible ways to ‘make it fair’. As others have pointed out above, BIDs are not usually based on one company, one vote. Some might see this as ‘fair’ but it’s not really equitable, especially in our area, where most wineries do not get involved in anything other than what’s best for themselves. They looked at a way to make it mandatory and ‘trackable’, and using revenue/taxes paid to the BOE, it was pretty easy to how this might work.
Without a staff and with a ‘volunteer’ board, our area is at a disadvantage to others. Most on this board wouldn’t realize it, but most folks south of us, in LA, Orange and San Diego Counties, for instance, really don’t know what we as an entire region have to offer. They don’t realize, for instance, where the Santa Ynez Valley is or where the Sta Rita Hills are. We ‘take it for granted’, but that’s because many in the wine biz tend to somewhat live in a bubble and can’t see beyond this.
As a very small winery in the area, I’m very much in favor of this concept, and of creating a larger budget to allow our region to not only market itself better, but to hire a governmental advocacy person as well to assist in fighting for things like offering cooking classes at wineries, having rooms available to stay at wineries, etc.
Note that the region is also working on the concept of a Grape Commission, whereby a small fee will be applied to all tonnage produced in our area. Most on this board probably don’t realize that over 60% of the fruit grown in SB County is sent outside the County for processing . . .
I’d love to have a broader conversation about this - comment away.
Cheers.
Larry, wouldn’t the difference between the BID and the trade association mentioned above be the BID isn’t voluntary? If whatever business meets the requirements set forth in the formation of the BID all are required to pay, correct?
You are correct. It would not be voluntary at all. That certainly creates a potential challenge that many of us are worth it. It is similar to conjunctive labeling laws that required every wine from a specific Geographic County denote that county of each and every label. It’s done in Monterey and Sonoma counties and we hope to see it done in Santa Barbara County at some point in the near future.
Though our County is not as well-known with the general wine consumer as others, it still has some presence due in part to the Association and everyone has benefited - as will everyone here.
Well if its not voluntary, that would be just another form of taxation, with who knows on representation.
Maybe there are not enough collective interests here, all aligned in the same direction to make this happen.
I would think the normal path would be some businesses start collaborating, see the benefits of cooperation, get a formal trade association going, and then a few years later, when its obvious there are a few free riders piggy backing off others, push through some forced taxation on the holdouts.
Think the onus is really to get a proof of concept out there first before demanding more taxes.
I think they need an electoral college
We have a formal trade Association - that is and never has been funded well enough. The ‘fee’ would be paid by consumers, not the wineries, and it would allow us to have the funds to better market our area, to better represent our wine industry at the local and regional government level, and more.
Cheers