A deadline for downtown Wilmington business and property owners to indicate whether they would support a special service district, and what projects they’d want those dollars to fund, has been extended to next week.

Responses to a short survey, now due Dec. 12, will help with the work of a task force established to explore the possibility of a Municipal Service District. Wilmington Downtown Inc. had received only about 50 responses as of Thursday, said Ed Wolverton, WDI president and CEO, and hoped to get many more.  The survey was mailed to owners and also can be completed online through this WDI link.

An MSD is a designated portion of a city where a special tax is assessed to pay for extra services and improvements outside of those the city already provides. Those services could be as simple as extra maintenance and trash removal or more complex, such as business recruitment.  

“If enough of us agree that formation of an MSD is a good idea, the proposal would go to [Wilmington] City Council for approval. That would require a detailed business plan specifying proposed assessment rates, services and improvements to be provided, and other particulars still in review,” wrote Clark Hipp, chairman of the MSD task force, in a letter that accompanies the survey.

Hipp, an architect and downtown property owner, also wrote, “Once we know about the interest for extra services, we will seek input on governance. This is typically carried out by a group made up of district representatives that is endorsed by the City Council.”

Downtown Wilmington's larger property owners would pay most of the assessment, according to information accompanying the survey. For example, the survey says, of the 1,137 privately owned properties in the Central Business District, there are twenty properties with an assessed value of more than $2.1 million. 

"Owners of these properties would pay about 42.2 percent of the total MSD assessment. Owners of the 50 downtown properties with tax values under $16,500 would pay about 1 percent of the total," the survey brochure says, citing its source as New Hanover County property tax records.

North Carolina already has 56 MSDs in communities throughout the state, including Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro and Goldsboro.

A public meeting expected to provide information on extra services a Wilmington MSD might provide is planned for 6 p.m. Dec. 17 at Coastline Convention Center, 501 Nutt St.

If owners agree to a plan and ask City Council to establish an MSD, the council could take action on the proposal by early summer 2015, the brochure says.