Business group shows true colours
- and gives town the BIDdle finger
The group was set up after a rancorous annual meeting in July at which members called for the company to be wound up.
However, the BID has apparently refused to have any dealings with it – even though Boston Borough Council was highly influential in its creation and has a close relationship with the company – which some critics feel is less than healthy.
When the July meeting collapsed in chaos a member of the Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce was appointed to look into the way the BID was working and report back within three months.
Little seems to have been done since then, but tonight sees a special meeting called at the demand of dissatisfied BID members.
Regular readers will recall that once the BID was created (and there is a school of thought that says the majority vote required for this was pathetically small) all businesses in the area became members whether they liked it or not, and forced to pay a levy of between one and two per cent of their business rateable value. Boston Borough Council dragged the handful who refused into court to make them pay.
We won’t bore you again with the fine detail, but the BID draws in more than £100,000 a year, and spends the lion’s share of that on staffing and admin.
It has delivered some minor projects – but most of them fall into areas which their normal business rate payments already fund … something that was promised would not be the case.
The BID has already nailed its colours to the mast ahead of tonight’s special meeting.
It has had the audacity to spend members’ contributions on legal advice and told them that item one on the agenda – a vote of no confidence in the board of directors is “not a term recognised in company law.” So yah, boo, sucks to you!
The second and final item on the agenda “ to progress the winding up of Boston BID Ltd” is dismissed with equal arrogance – “Business members are reminded that only the Chamber member can vote on proposals to wind up Boston BID.”
There’s democracy for you. One man - the one and only vote!
However, the battle is being carried forward under the championship of local accountant Darron Abbott, who represents several of the pressed members of Boston BID.
He has written to all Boston councillors and told them: “This lack of desire to co-operate does not surprise me, it purely reflects the contempt that Boston BID shows to its levy payers.”
He has asked the council to get its officers to withdraw their co-operation from Boston BID and seek value for money for the council taxpayers and business rate payers by charging the company for the correct amount of officers time spent collecting the levy.
He has also asked that the council withdraws its officer representative from the BID board until the company decides to co-operate and also listen to levy payers
His e-mail concludes: “I would hope as a councillor you will now look at Boston BID in its true light - a company that does not listen to its members wishes and carries on regardless, totally ignoring what its members want from it.
Sadly, since the e-mail was sent last Friday, only four of the borough’s 32 councillors have bothered to respond, and a senior officer who ought to know better is said to be more worried about the bad publicity for the BID - rather than showing concern for its disdain of the council, the businessmen and the wider general pubic.
What can you say?
The BID hierarchy is acting like a bunch of tin pot banana republic dictators. They need lessons in good business manners, common courtesy – and really, we think that the critics are right … Boston BID has failed the town dismally and should be wound up as soon as possible.
If any of you are at tonight’s meeting, we’d appreciate your thoughts about what went on.
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.
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