Having a BID really does risk the BID having to pay for Council services.
The Knaresborough BID Task Force is trying to convince businesses to vote yes by giving the impression no existing public services (i.e. council services) to the BID area are at risk. This is simply a lie, it's a promise that can't be kept.
The BID newsletter Q&A answer is a carefully worded ‘smoke and mirrors’ statement, and after reading this post you’ll read it in a different light.
Yes public agencies have to continue providing statutory services in a BID area (the killer words ‘have to’ in the Q&A), but that’s talking about the legal minimum they have to provide i.e. certain level of minimal street cleaning and environmental health services etc.
So what is at risk in a BID area are all the discretionary services public agencies like councils normally provide a town, those non statutory services they don’t have to provide but do i.e. money for christmas lights, florals, extra street cleaning and events etc. Funny how the BID plan lists many of these ideas eh?
The BID Task Force are saying to you “it’s ok, we’ll have baseline statements with all the public agencies to make sure we don’t lose any of these services which we’ll benchmark”. Again, this is nothing more than a con mans’ ruse in an attempt to get yes votes.
Fact is these baseline statements are not legal binding, so the local authorities can easily start saving money by pulling back on providing any of the discretionary services in the baseline statements. It’s proven they do in other BID towns, and the BID can do nothing about it.
Even the industry body British BIDs says this: "Baseline statements have no legal binding force but are useful statements of intent".
So baselines really are worthless statements and just look at the evidence of how worthless they are. The National BIDs Survey 2019 told us that:
• Only 27% of BIDs felt that baseline statements are still being adhered to.
• 18% of BID's admitted to considering transfer of services from the public sector to their BID for things like Christmas lights, hanging baskets, street cleaning, graffiti removal, public toilets, marketing and events.
How much more proof does one need, to see that voting in a BID is the start of the slippery slope for the loss and/or privatisation of council services in a BID area, paid for through the BID tax.
As the BID was meant to be in ballot now, only delayed with a week to go, ask the Task Force for a copy of all the baseline statements now because they should have prepared these already, so no reason they can’t share them.
But in an attempt to re-assure Knaresborough BID businesses that they won’t lose any public agency services, we recommend that instead of baseline statements, only legally binding baseline agreements are put in place with all the public agencies. After all this is what the Q&A statement is leading you to believe eh?
Again, it’s a matter of trust, and as this post demonstrates, you really can’t trust everything the BID Task Force is telling you.
If there is no BID, the Council will continue to do what they currently do and be responsible for the Town. Vote Yes and you will see the Council take a step back and the BID fill the void, repeat, repeat, repeat until eventually the BID is your Town Centre Management taking over responsibility and accountability from the Council, being run by a small group of self appointed individuals who will not operate in the best interests of the Town.