Yorkshire DBID - Incompetent or deceptive?

For a BID to have any chance of success it really does need the real majority support of it’s businesses, otherwise it’s just setting the BID up for failure. The BID Consultant leads the Council and Steering Group through development of the BID, but we’ve seen that they really don’t care about explaining both sides of the voting argument or encouraging ballot participation, they on have one aim, a YES mandate no matter how it’s achieved.

The Yorkshire Coast Destination Business Improvement District (DBID) controversially won a mandate at ballot in late 2018 and Mosaic were the BID Consultants, read our Case Study on the DBID here. Mo Aswat has in the region of 15+ years experience with BIDs, had developed over 80 BID proposals when conducting this DBID, and he was even involved in writing BID rules and guidance. So given all this you’d think he’d have the ability to advise running a great ballot, wouldn’t you?

The ballot had very low voter turnout (a very common theme when you look at Mosaic ballots), and the BID was forced in on the say of just 10% of all the businesses. But unluckily for Mosaic, Scarborough Borough Council commissioned an independent investigation into the ballot, which was conducted by Pater Stanyon, Chief Executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators.

The full Stanyon report can be downloaded here, but what follows are some highlights for you lifted directly from the report into how the DBID ballot was run under Mosaic’s guidance:

“the DBID area is large. ….. lack of clarity over the distribution across the area as a major concern.”

“No clearly defined map of the DBID area.”

“I’m surprised a map of the DBID area was not readily available throughout”

Re the feasibility study; “several businesses that are listed as supporting the BID have categorically denied they gave it a ‘thumbs up.’”

“business owners did not feel they were made aware of the implications of the proposal”.

“the correspondence (ballot papers) was not clearly identifiable as being of importance, ‘looking like junkmail’.”

“There was no process in place to attempt a re-delivery of the ‘undeliverable’ documents”.

“The team were heavily reliant on the guidance and advice of Mosaic”

“I have concerns however that the advice, guidance and support provided by Mosaic was not as thorough as that the team required”

“I do have significant concerns as to parts of the process”

“there are several steps that could have been done better”

“reliance of advice from Mosaic was fundamental”

“I have significant concerns in respect of the list of voters”

“the list of voters submitted by Mosaic to the ballot holder was done far too late”

“I have 2 concerns with the list of voters.”

“first, that the list did not consistently include the names of the bill payers where they appeared in the original data. When the data was cleansed, they were replaced with the words “owner/occupier”

“Second, I have significant concerns as to the inconsistent way in which the list was filtered”

“The list classified hereditaments differently, with car parks and wireless stations having their Notices of Ballot and ballot papers sent to correspondence addresses whereas all others were sent to hereditament addresses. This had a disproportionate effect on those hereditaments belonging to the local authorities”

“In the interests of encouraging participation the names where known should have been used”

“many of the owners will not have been at the hereditament address when the ballot was being undertaken, the tourist season having ended”

“This classification, although not in direct contravention with the regulations, is in my opinion incompatible with the ballot being administered in a consistent and fair manner”

“I am not convinced that the revised business plan was communicated to all 1,354 businesses”

“communication between the DBID proposer and the levy payers has been lacking throughout”

“The inconsistent approach followed was inappropriate”

So ask yourself, does this independent report point to a BID development process and ballot that was conducted by a very experienced and supposedly competent BID Consultant? Clearly not, it’s independent evidence of Mo Aswat and Mosaic’s dirty tricks, calculated actions not to encourage voter participation in the ballot, which led to low voter turnout and a ballot win decided by a huge number of council votes.  Mosaic knew all too well what they were doing by deliberately erasing the known names and addresses of the persons entitled to vote, and sending ballot papers to the hereditament addresses instead of the billing addresses the Council had provided to Mosaic. Mosaic did this and much more knowing that a good amount of ballot papers would not be returned, and it worked – they got a low voter turnout and the YES promised to the Council, despite only 10% of all eligible businesses actually voting in support of the BID!