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 following images are from the 8 page vote NO campaign booklet produced for the ballot. Download a copy here.
Taunton BID refer people to their website for FAQ answers, but just how reliable and truthful are they? Well there are certainly a few mistruths in their FAQ’s, and here are 3 to show you. The failed Taunton BID 2007-12 was voted out, with contributing factors to it’s demise being reputational problems and poor transparency etc. These FAQ mistruths along with others we’ve identified do nothing to instill confidence that it will be any different this time.
Read MoreWe’ve collected feedback, concerns and questions that we’ve been receiving and filtered them through collectively to Taunton BID for their responses. Read for yourself and you'll probably agree that despite some acceptable replies, there are many worrying ones, make your own conclusions. But why do their answers matter so much? It's because it's a taste of what's to come from the same people if BID is voted in, and clear demonstration of many of the bad things about BIDs.
Read MoreConsidering the problems of the last failed Taunton BID, it doesn’t instil much confidence in the people we would be voting for to do another BID, if they haven’t properly reflected on the mistakes made last time and learnt lessons, in an attempt to mitigate risks of failure and reassure us it won’t happen again.
Read MoreSloppy research? There appear many mistakes where number of voting properties and cumulative RV figures are concerned. This is important because it’s a matter of trust, in addition to the feasibility study providing the fundamental basis for the current proposal and business plan being developed by Taunton BID during the consultation phase.
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