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By Jorge Casuso

June 27 -- As the race to determine the future of the Bayside District goes into the homestretch, a campaign flyer mailed out last week is urging Downtown property owners to nix the proposed assessment district.

The color flyer calls on Downtown Santa Monica’s 256 property owners to vote against the Property Based Assessment District (PBAD), saying the $3.6 million a year tax assessment will have “questionable benefits.”

Paid for by “Property Owners against PBAD,” the flyer claims “PBAD is Bad for Property Owners” because the proposed assessment district “directly benefits” the Third Street Promenade “at the expense” of other Downtown property owners.

The mailer directs voters to a web site that encourages those who have cast ballots to approve the plan to write to the City Clerk and “direct them to change your vote.”

So far, more than 200 property owners have cast their vote, according to Bayside officials. The City Clerk said Thursday that none had requested that their votes be changed.

“I don’t know if I can change a vote,” said City Clerk Maria Stewart. “If the question came up, I’d have to get legal advice” from the City Attorney.

The plan to create a new assessment district requires a simple majority of the vote, which is weighed based on the amount a property owner would pay in new assessments.

Bayside District officials, who have been working for nearly two years on the plan -- which includes the first major management overhaul since the Promenade was created two decades ago -- quickly responded with a mailer of their own.

“There’s a concerted effort” to defeat PBAD, Bayside Executive Director Kathleen Rawson told the district’s board Thursday night. “It seems like a small group of people, but an influential group of people” is behind the flyer.

Rawson said Bayside officials didn’t want the opposition flyer to be “the last piece people saw” before the July 8 deadline to cast ballots. But instead of responding directly to the flyer, Bayside decided to release a color flyer that provides detailed information about the plan.

Approved by the City Council in April, the plan would revamp the Bayside Board and the way it is chosen and pump an additional $3.6 million in new assessments to boost maintenance, enhance marketing efforts and create an “ambassador program” to inform visitors and help keep the streets safe.

Under the proposed plan, assessments would be based on the property’s size, type of use and location in an expanded district divided into three zones – one comprised by the Promenade, another along 2nd and 4th streets and Ocean Avenue and a third between 5th and 7th streets.

A property on the Promenade would pay the most at 76¢ a square foot per year, properties on neighboring 2nd and 4th streets and Ocean Avenue would pay 34¢, while those on 5th to 7th streets would pay 19¢.

A building on the Promenade with retail and office use, for example, might pay $16,500 a year, while a large office building could pay as much as $45,000, according to Bayside consultants. While a hotel might pay $20,000, a non-profit could pay as little as $1,500 per year.

Under the plan, the streets would reap benefits proportional to the assessments paid by their property owners.

But some property owners have complained that the costs outweigh the benefits.

One of the property owners opposing the plan is Santa Monica Christian Towers, a senior housing complex on 6th Street between Wilshire Boulevard and Arizona Avenue.

“I think the City has made (the district) entirely too large,” said Donna Alvarez, a member of the Christian Towers board, which voted to oppose the district. “I just don’t see the benefits to this” for the low-income residents, many of them on social security subsidies.

Alvarez, who is quoted in the opposition flyer, says Christian Towers would pay about $5,000 a year in assessments to “get the streets cleaned once a year and have an ambassador go by once in a while on a bicycle.”

But other residential property owners off the Promenade are voting for the plan, which they say benefits the entire Downtown.

“It wouldn’t be looking to the future to limit this to 5th Street,” said Alan Freeman, who represents JSM management, which owns and operates more nearly 1,000 residential units Downtown. “We definitely need ambassadors on 5th, 6th and 7th.”

JSM Capital is among the major property owners casting a “yes” vote. Other major property owners voting for the plan are the City, which represents 10 percent of the assessed property Downtown, and Macerich, the owners of Santa Monica Place, who would pay some $265,000 a year for the company’s three properties, including the indoor mall.

Douglas Emmett, one of Los Angeles’ largest leasing companies and the owners of 100 Wilshire, the white 21-story office tower on Ocean Avenue, would pay $301,500.

An official for the company, which is said to oppose the plan, did not respond to a call for comment.

In addition to the new assessment, the plan dramatically overhauls the way the Bayside is managed, giving property owners more power over who makes policy decisions.

Under the plan, the existing 11-member Bayside Board currently appointed by the council would be replaced with a 13-member board, six of whose members would be appointed by the council, six by the property owners and one by the City Manager.