Posters advertising one of Oakland’s biggest neighborhood food events, March’s Taste of Temescal, still linger on windows in the neighborhood. Prominently displayed in the center is Pizzaiolo.

That’s the restaurant owned by Charlie Hallowell, the chef accused of sexual harassment by more than 30 former employees, as reported in a 2018 Chronicle investigation. Hallowell, who publicly apologized for his actions, has returned to Pizzaiolo day-to-day.

A few weeks earlier, downtown Berkeley was in the throes of its second annual Pizza Lovers Month, with diners working toward a potential raffle prize by eating pizza at 10 restaurants. One of those was Western Pacific, a restaurant Hallowell opened in November 2018.

The organizations behind these events are the local business improvement districts (BIDs), quasi-public, quasi-private groups that work to draw people to their neighborhoods. They collaborate with cities on big projects like adding protected bike lanes or upgrading street lamps, but they also allot a portion of their budgets for marketing.

Most neighborhood BIDs operate without any public oversight, despite the fact that their funding comes from taxpayers and public money. Residential and commercial property owners in the district pay compulsory annual assessments — in downtown Berkeley, for example, the owner of a one-bedroom condo might pay $81 per year, while the owner of a two-story building housing a cafe might spend nearly $4,500 annually.

Public entities that own neighborhood property also contribute, including the city of Berkeley, Berkeley Unified School District and the University of California.

Yet in the wake of the #MeToo movement, these promotional efforts have started to raise eyebrows. The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) posted a photo of a Western Pacific pizza on Instagram suggesting followers “put this in your face hole!!” The Temescal Business Improvement District posted 10 tweets celebrating Pizzaiolo, a number far higher than some neighboring restaurants received.

When Hillary Huffard heard Hallowell had stepped away from his restaurants amid last year’s sexual harassment accusations, she didn’t feel comfortable making a public stand on the issue. In early 2018, she quietly stopped serving Pizzaiolo’s bread at her then-6-month-old brewery Roses’ Taproom, just three doors down from Pizzaiolo.

She’s tried to run Roses’ with a focus on equality, so it has been frustrating to see her business’ name on the same posters as Pizzaiolo’s for neighborhood events, to feel like she has no choice but to be promoted alongside someone accused of sexual harassment, including uninvited kisses and spanking.

Despite the revelations, local neighborhood organizations have continued supporting Hallowell’s restaurants as they would any other business. In Huffard’s view, the Temescal BID has been operating with “blissful ignorance.”

“It’s not fair to not have a stance,” she said. “We don’t get to operate in a vacuum. It doesn’t matter if you’re serving all sustainably raised, humanely raised, organic whatever if you’re not treating your employees well. By being complacent, you become complicit.”

In an emailed statement, Pizzaiolo managing partner Donna Insalaco said the East Bay community has held the restaurant group accountable. “We are so grateful for the support of our customers who believe in the changes we have made and will continue to make. We are thankful to our incredible staff, who with such talent could work anywhere, but choose to be a part of this change,” she wrote.

Part of the BIDs’ mission is to promote the district as an attractive place to shop and eat. In 2015, 16.5 percent of the Downtown Berkeley Association’s budget went toward marketing and business support, for example, totaling $251,248. But does promoting a neighborhood as a whole mean BIDs must include every restaurant in its events and advertising?

BID representatives argue yes.

“I’ll suffice it by saying that we support all our downtown merchants,” said Matthew Jervis, the director of vitality for the DBA, in an email. “It would be inappropriate for the DBA to weigh in on the internal issues of any of our businesses.”

Shifra de Benedictis-Kessner, the executive director of the Temescal BID, told The Chronicle that the BID is “legally obligated” to provide services, including event production and promotion, to all of its businesses.

But a local researcher doesn’t buy that argument. Paul Boden, executive director of homelessness coalition Western Regional Advocacy Project, studied West Coast BIDs for two years with the UC Berkeley School of Law.

“Special benefits for the property owners in that district doesn’t mean you have to run advertising for every single business,” Boden said. “The city also pays assessment fees and the state government pays assessments for their properties and you don’t see (BIDs) advertising the city or state, so clearly there’s not a legal mandate.”

Even though BIDs technically do not exist to serve private businesses, it makes sense for them to promote businesses and want those businesses, such as Pizzaiolo, to do well. That’s because BIDs serve the landlords, and landlords don’t want vacancies.

At the same time, a restaurant like Pizzaiolo is so controversial that some diners have chosen to boycott it — and they might not frequent the neighborhood anymore.

“I would imagine BIDs would have an interest in who the business owners are, both from a moral point of view because you don’t want to condone sexual harassment, and also from a business interest point of view,” said Oakland city council member Dan Kalb, whose district includes Temescal. “If it gets out that there’s an owner who has committed sexual harassment, that could reduce the clientele and the people who patronize the business, and that hurts everybody.”

Kalb works closely with the Temescal BID on proposed development projects and other issues, but the BID acts independently.

“I don’t think any entity should ignore or condone sexual harassing behavior. No one should say, ‘Well that happened, that’s bad,’ and forget it,” he said. “People who do that in the public sector would face serious consequences. People who do it in the private sector should face consequences.”

For Erin Wade, the owner of Temescal’s Homeroom who pays property assessments to the BID, it’s upsetting to think her social justice-oriented restaurant gets marketed alongside a restaurant that has been reported to have a serious harassment problem.

But it’s complicated, she said.

“What do you do when it is your job to improve and promote an entire neighborhood when one of its members crosses a line?” Wade wrote in an email. “My personal hope is that all organizations that care about ending harassment use their power to shine a spotlight on leaders working to make positive change.”

In Berkeley, the stated goals of the DBA include making the neighborhood “safer,” “inclusive” and “welcoming to all.” Where does sexual harassment fit in?

“Public safety, the safety of women, zero tolerance for sexual predators — that’s all paramount to the structure of a society,” said Amy Murray, the chef-owner of Revival Bar & Kitchen, who has been operating restaurants in downtown Berkeley since 2000. “We do have to protect each other, stand up for each other, and have this kind of conversation circulating to advance, otherwise we don’t advance.”

Murray has just joined the DBA’s board, so it’s possible that with a fresh voice in the room, discussions might begin about the BID’s support of Western Pacific.

Ultimately, though, it’s diners who have the most power.

“It’s commercial real estate — the highest bidder wins and there’s no ethical committee besides the consumer,” said Murray. “But the consumer is saying, ‘We just want the pizza.’”

Huffard would like to see the Temescal BID assert its values on a public forum and “make it clear the businesses they promote operate with a moral compass that is on the right side of history,” she said. “If you’re going to spend so much time to be like, ‘We’re a great retail and restaurant area,’ and you leave out this huge, upsetting and important aspect, you’re doing a huge disservice.”

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker