Council orders BID's

"free" concert postponed

It’s emerged that Boston Borough Council was behind the move to cancel next month’s free music festival in the town’s Central Park.
An email to the local band Audio Tap from Jo Moscrop, the project manager for the concert at Infodex Events, broke the news.
It read: “Unfortunately Boston Council have requested that Boston BID (the funders) postpone Boston Beat in September due to the temporary relocation of the Market (just outside park gates). We are awaiting a reply back to confirm the new date for the Festival (next year sometime).
“As I'm sure you will agree this is a huge blow and one we could all have done without.
“We are absolutely gutted here and are so sorry that we have to give you this bad news.
“We had everything in place for the event; all the work had been done, just a matter of turning up on the day.”
A comment posted on Audio Tap’s Facebook page (picture below)  reads
“Well, no live music in the park this September. THANKS BOSTON COUNCIL.

click on photo to enlarge

“Unfortunately Boston Council have requested that Boston BID (the funders) postpone Boston Beat in September due to the temporary relocation of the Market (just outside park gates).
“I’d have thought it would have helped trade in Boston, with the extra people in the town.”
What we don’t understand is why the project was allowed to develop for so long before the council decided to intervene – thus raising people’s expectations and wasting a lot of the organisers’ time.
Boston Borough Council has an officer on the BID board – and even if he was not present at the meeting which took the decision, he must surely have been aware of it.
The Boston Beat event was announced in the local papers two and a half weeks ago on June 27th – so a decision was clearly taken well before that.
So why did the council take so long?
Was it an indirect way to stop the BID blowing £10,000 of levy payers’ funds after a week of protest against the use of the money for such a project?
If so, it has backfired - as feeling against the BID is now running higher than ever.
See Monday’s Boston Eye to read some interesting e-mail conversations and admissions about Boston BID.

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