Taunton - A look at the failed Taunton BID ballot 2020 & the NO campaign against it.

Taunton has an interesting BID history:

2007 - BID established after a YES ballot result, with a 5 year term ending in 2012.

2012 - BID renewal ballot resulted in a NO, so BID kicked out.

2014 - BID development ballot resulted in a NO again (with a worse result than in 2012).

2020 - Some bright sparks decide to bring BID back to ballot again, and the ballot was ‘suspended’ 2 hours before ballot closure for no good verifiable reason, so NO BID yet again! Interesting that when one of the BID proposer steering group members was asked what happened to the BID he replied “we knew it wasn’t going our way”.

The following is a series of articles are from the hard fought NO campaign for the 2020 ballot, which basically beat the Council and BID proposers into submission. You can see how the campaign developed and many strong evidence based NO arguments were put across, so please read with interest and feel free to copy / use any article tailored for your own NO BID campaign.

The case for SWT Council to abstain from voting in the Taunton BID ballot.

BID is meant to be for the business, voted on by the businesses, and so the ballot shouldn’t be influenced either way by Council votes. Given the significant voting influence both SWT and SCC will have in the Taunton BID ballot, we feel both Council’s should abstain from voting in order to let the businesses decide. Hence in October 2019 we wrote to all Councillors & the Chief Executive at SWT about this matter, setting out the strong case for SWT to abstain from voting in the Taunton BID ballot, and this is the case we presented.

Against BID16 December 2019SWT2, abstain

Taunton - A look at the failed Taunton BID ballot 2020 & the NO campaign against it.

The following are a series of blog articles used as part of the NO campaign, scrutinising the BID proposals and summarising objections.