The BID is throwing money at Consultants from out of town.
Minehead BID have already been planning their ballot preparations for a while now, a year in advance of the renewal ballot and have been very active in their vote yes campaign actions already.
Note the background of the BID Manager, Karen is a PR Consultant, and from the BID public statements it’s clear that a key reason she was appointed was because she can do charm offensive PR spin operations for the ballot. They even admit her ballot PR experience will be useful. Sod delivering value for money front line projects for levy holders this next year then!
She's nothing moe than a PR & marketing agency person and not even local (lives near Weston-Super-Mare), and being paid a consultancy / agency rate you can bet she's not cheap either! Also remember her agency is already being paid over £7,000 a year just to run the BID social media.
Couldn't all this money being spent on her consultancy fees be kept in the local economy rather than send £10's of thousands out of it?
When spending the levy let's at least spend it locally, not ignore Minehead residents / businesses and pay it to someone who is not local.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-morledge-19006217
Also, the BID has appointed another outside Consultant specifically for the BID renewal ballot and its yes campaign process, another expensive quango who is not local. Mel’s engagement started over a year before the ballot!
So as you can see, thousands of pounds are flowing out of Minehead on quango Consultants rather than front line projects for the businesses, all because the handful of BID Directors want to continue taxing Minehead businesses.
Ask yourself this, if the BID has done such a good job the past few years, why do they need to waste thousands of pounds on external Consultants and PR ‘experts’?
The BID re-ballot process is not hard and surely it would be a walkover for them if they had done a great job and simply asked everyone to vote?
But they know there are many unhappy businesses, so BID are happy to waste even more of hard earned levy payers money on their skewed yes campaign.
