Confusion over how many voters there are.
This is another BID ballot advised by Mo Aswat from The Mosaic Partnership but something doesn’t add up, either Mo has slipped up (highly unlikely) or someone wanted people to know the actual number of hereditaments (votes).
Mo Aswat was called in to help with the consultation process and mentioned a draft business plan.
Sure enough the draft has Mo’s trademark “+” to be very vague about the number of ballot papers, the introduction by the BID chairman mentions
“1000+” eligible businesses. Also on the BID website it mentions -
“1,200 eligible businesses” so the “+” equates to 200 !
HOWEVER further down into the draft business plan it states
“1,600 levy payers” ! ( this is definitely not a figure that normally appears in a Mosaic business plan so who added it in )
I’m constantly posting on here that you must be aware of the difference between
1. Number of businesses (1,200) = voters
2. Number of hereditaments (1,600) = levy payers = votes = ballot papers.
By my reckoning there are 400 more votes than voters !
So some people are gonna be posting a thick envelope of ballot papers
Why does this matter ?
Because, especially with coastal destination BIDs (A Mosaic speciality) this is how they manage to get voted in on extremely low turnout figures (helped no doubt by multiple YES votes by a few businesses) but imply that the result was far more successful than it actually was.
The ERTBID2 has increased the amount of BID levy gained by £120,000 from £500,000 in first term to a projected £620,000 second term ! That’s a hell of a difference! They have sneakily upped the minimum payment by the very smallest businesses (and therefore raised their percentage bid levy rate) from £150 to £250 which on 1200 voters equates to the magic £120,000 difference but surely this only works if 1200 voters all currently pay the current minimum of £150 which clearly can’t possibly be the case ! ( the percentage levy rate has stayed the same)
Also they have stated that they might eliminate many of those smaller businesses from the BID altogether presumably because a large amount of them haven’t paid their 2020 bid levy bill or their 2021 bill !
The only other way of hiking up the amount of revenue would be to add even more levy payers, in other words is 1,600 an increase on the current amount if this is the case are those new businesses aware of this ?
All of this requires FUTHER investigation and you can just picture yet another train crash ahead just like the Yorkshire Coast BID.
Well done Mo Aswat you are at it yet again.