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 business plan to ballot timetable is being rushed and is not inclusive.

On 7/1/20 Taunton BID finally shared their ballot timetable, but still not their business plan despite it being shared with SWT Council in early December. Note how rushed it all is and despite the Business Plan being written 2 months ago, BID are not giving voters time to properly scrutinise, feedback and help tweak it like other BID’s do with an inclusive approach. The Business Plan is the document our BID would operate from and all businesses will decide their vote from, so why Taunton BID are currently hiding it from businesses for so long and intending to rush the final stage really doesn’t make sense.

Against BID22 December 2019timetable

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.