Save cash on pointless surveys

It's pointless survey time in Boston once again, and the first of the year is a "poll" of taxpayer opinion on the forthcoming borough council budget.
The council has £10.5m to invest in its services, and last year the rate of council tax remained unchanged.
Interestingly, this decision - wrongly headlined as a 0% rise in the tax - was quite widely criticised, and it will be interesting to see what happens this year.
We call the survey "pointless" and we do so because the questions it asks only scratch the surface, and the big issues, such as the overall cost of administration, are not addressed.
The other thing is the vague nature of the questions, starting with the very first.
"The Council is seeking to improve value for money. Please tell us one thing that would improve value for money at Boston Borough Council."
Our immediate reaction would be to say that the Bypass Independents should resign en-masse, and we should have the chance to elect a new council sixteen months sooner than we expected. But the fact is that this is not a reasonable question to ask the average person in the street - unless they're fully conversant with the intricacies of local government finance ... which we are sure that many councillors who should be, are not.
The survey then moves on to whether we would be willing to pay more council tax or not - and if so, whether we'd like it to be as low as 1%, or £1.66 a year or as "much" as 3% ... which works out at £5 a year. Given that these figures are for a band D property, and the bulk of Boston's houses fall in the lowest band - band A - means the rise would be even lower, we regard this question as a total waste of time.
Boston is strapped for cash, and despite the ongoing recession, we doubt that an extra fiver a year would break anyone's bank. For people who pay monthly it represents 50p per installment - little more than a penny a day.
The next question says that Boston Borough Council is considering spending more, or less money in some service areas to focus on priority services (without saying which) and asks which one particular service should benefit from more investment.
The list is exhaustive - Arts, heritage and tourism ,cemetery/crematorium, community safety and CCTV committee and electoral services, economic regeneration, ensuring buildings are safe, environmental health, fraud section, housing services, land charges and licensing (such as taxis and gaming,) leisure and sports services, parks and grounds maintenance, planning, processing and administration of council tax and housing benefits, public conveniences, recovering abandoned vehicles, refuse collection and recycling, and street cleaning.
The problem with this list is that it is too long to narrow the choices in the question down to a single answer. Most taxpayers probably don't know enough about the work of these myriad departments to come to an informed decision - and the same is true of the next question, which asks which one particular service do we feel Boston Borough Council should be spending less money on - and presents exactly the same list.
Finally, we are asked if we would be prepared to pay more for particular services when we use them, and cites parking, licensing, and planning as three examples.
Interestingly, the options for answer are yes, no or don't know - though how the latter could be an answer to such a simple question, we ... don't know.
The catch all comes in question six, when we're asked for any further comments on Boston Borough Council's annual spending?
A complex issue, reduced to six meaningless questions, which convinces us that one way for Boston Borough Council to save a few quid would be to dispense with surveys like these.
Interestingly, although the council tax issue can be summed up in a mere half a dozen questions, it takes more than that for the usual stuff and nonsense about disability, ethnicity, sexuality and whether you like to dress in clothing usually worn by whichever the sex is opposite to your own - that's if you know what sex you are.
What a waste of time and money.

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