Things just seem to go from bid to worse as far as Boston’s efforts to win money to rescue its ailing town centre are concerned.

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Last week saw the government announce another 50 towns to benefit from the £1 billion Future High Streets Fund – which will join 50 successful areas already shortlisted to develop plans to reinvent their high streets.

The 100 victors will receive up to £150,000 to work up detailed project proposals based on their initial plans and the most attractive will move on to the big money stakes to do the job.

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The fund was mentioned exactly two months ago – when council leader Aaron Spencer announced his ‘vision’ for the town (pictured above)  – “a massive redevelopment project to dramatically improve fortunes and perceptions.”

It was billed as a joint public and private partnership plan to redesign and redevelop an area between the railway station and the river, north of West Street … and the announcement proclaimed: “A bid for finance has already been lodged with the Government’s Future High Streets Fund and another bid is being worked on in readiness for an application to the Stronger Towns Fund. The £1.6 billion Stronger Towns Fund targets places that have not shared in the proceeds of growth in the same way as more prosperous parts of the country. It will be used to create new jobs; help train local people and boost economic activity – with communities having a say on how the money is spent.”

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As we pointed out at the time, the plan covered virtually the self-same area of the town that failed to be transformed into the so-called Merchants Quay ten years ago after the ‘private’ half of the partnership pulled out and subsequently went bust.

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Within days of Councillor Spencer’s upbeat announcement, the first tranche of successful bids for the Future High Streets Fund was announced – and Boston was not among the successful candidates.

We would like to think that after that first failure the bid was polished and resubmitted – but if that was the case, then disaster has struck for a second time.

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However, at least two Lincolnshire district councils are set to benefit – South Holland has won funding for Holbeach, and South Kesteven for Grantham.

And why might that be?

Because both of these councils have adopted an aggressive, go-ahead attitude to promote, expand and improve the towns in their bailiwick – in much the opposite way to Boston.

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That leaves the £1.6 billion Stronger Towns Fund – announced in March – as the port of last resort.

A total of £1 billion will be allocated using a needs-based formula with £583 million going to towns across the North and just £322 million to communities in the Midlands – which is certain to make the competition tough.

There doesn’t yet appear to be a timescale for the announcement of grants – so we can only wait and see.

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We would have thought that Boston might have stood a better chance with the high streets fund – and are regrettably tending to the opinion that our highly-paid fancily-titled officers tasked with making Boston a better place are simply not up to the job.

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We have often pointed out how hard it is to keep track of what’s going on in Worst Street these days – largely because we believe that the people in charge don’t want us to.

So, it was interesting to find the statement of allowances for councillors for the 2018-2019 financial year and compare them with the previous 12 months.

Regular readers will remember that the most recent review by the shadowy “Independent Remuneration Panel” – almost two years ago – produced a report that appeared to acknowledge the common view that councillors … many of them certainly … are overpaid for the work they carry out.

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When the committee met it declared that basic allowances should stay the same.

But before we all breathed a sigh of relief – the panel had some tasty icing to top off the councillors’ cake.

“The main focus for the Independent Remuneration Panel, when considering the levels of special responsibility allowance, was to try and [sic] achieve a fair and equitable scheme, recognising the responsibilities and time commitment required for each position and being sufficient to compensate an average working person who may be required to take unpaid leave to carry out such duties.

“The guidance for SRAs states that the positions which receive special responsibility allowances should have significant responsibility attached to them.”

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And this is what they came up with …

So far so good – but just look at the difference it has made.

In 2017-2018 allowance payments totalled £177,991.98 – and were doled out accordingly.

But what a difference a year makes.

For 2018-2019 total of £211,259.98 found its way into the civic pockets of our representatives.

That’s an increase in the allowances total paid to councillors of 18.7%.

That’s around ten times the rate of inflation.

That’s the equivalent of almost 200 houses paying band A council tax.

That’s an extra £91 a day of your money going into councillors’ pockets.

It brings the total paid in allowances annually to almost £600 a day – seven days a week, 365 days a year.

But they deserve it, don’t they?

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Or do they?

The biggest spending committee these days is BTAC-hee-hee – which is supposed to be making the town a better place for us all.

A couple of weeks ago saw the first real meeting of the committee – the previous June session was just a post-election potboiler that appointed a chairman as well as other housekeeping duties.

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The meeting heard that again the committee was awash with money – largely due to successive council tax increases of 94.6% in 2016 and 185% the following year

A report said that the opening balance saw the committee’s reserves at 1^st April as £269,419 (comprising £70,000 as the minimum to be held to allow for

‘contingencies’ – plus £199,419 for various projects

“The forecasted [sic] closing balance on BTAC’s reserve monies is £121,638 at 31^st March 2020.”

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After it approved the colossal tax hikes, the committee decided to meet monthly – but has now reverted to once every two months … with a disappointingly thin and dreary agenda.

In fact, the principal item was a report on the work of the BTAC town centre operatives – who seem mostly to have confined themselves to repairing vandalism.

The operatives are funded by BTAC-ky – but as many readers will recall are doing a job that was formerly the responsibility of Worst Street Central … until services were cut and the cost subsequently inflicted separately on town centre taxpayers.

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It wouldn’t be so bad if BTAC occasionally stuck to its original brief – which was to work for the overall benefit of the wards that comprise the town centre.

But it does not.

All the money, time and effort goes on a tiny central area and the park – while the rest of the residents (many of whom live in some of the poorest wards in the borough) are effectively told to stick their heads up a bear’s bum.

Sadly, the same is true of Boston Big Local – which was meant to spend its £1m of lottery cash on these poorer areas but has persistently acted as a paymaster for Worst Street – despite not being supposed to.

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So, a poor meeting with little business – and the notable absence of two of its 14 members.

Ironically, the missing duo comprised both members of Boston BiG’s Skirbeck Ward – Councillors Colin Woodcock, who’s the BTAC-ky vice chairman and Anne Dorrian.

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We say ironically, because the pair set up a blog for themselves on which they gave a categoric promise …

“We PROMISE to TURN UP, to REPRESENT YOU and to be HONEST and ACCOUNTABLE in the process.”

No ambiguity there – just a broken promise right at the start of their term of office.

And after a blazing start – with blog entries on March 21^st and 25^th, May 19th (twice) and 26^th, then June 25^th – the rest is silence … not a peep for more than two months.

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Meanwhile, there was confusion at BTAC-ky over the progress of the task and finish group set up to examine Boston’s night-time economy – which swings into action once the public lavatories have closed.

Another BiGger – Neill Hastie – was widely assumed to be the chairman of this group, but we are told that he surprised the meeting by calling for a progress report from officers.

There’s a word for it – chairmanesia.

We’re told that it had to be patiently explained that it was the job of the chairman to establish the group, set the agenda, run the meetings and supervise the eventual recommendations, as these things don’t happen by magic.

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However, all this has apparently created a window of opportunity for Boston Police – who after years of looking the other way a lot of the time have suddenly cottoned on to what people are talking about – and are surely not taking the chance to plan a pre-emptive strike.

Market Day on Wednesday 21^st August – the day of the BTAC-ky meeting – saw the town centre seething with boys and girls in blue doing … er … exactly what we would expect girls and boys in blue be doing.

What an amazing co-incidence – especially considering that not long before this swoop the police seemed to be implying that Boston was almost anti-social behaviour free.

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Then came a follow-up tweet.

We especially liked the hash codes attached to underline the point that Boston does have a police service after all – #yourpolice #wearelistening … and one that we thought was rather over-egging the pudding #hereeveryday.

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The claim that this was not a one-off was another excessive use of egg in our view, and we can now no longer recall how many times over the years newly-appointed beat officers told our local ‘newspapers’ that they were going to ‘clamp down’ on such things as cycling on pavements and in the pedestrian precincts with whatever was done (if anything) proving so short-lived as to be almost extinct from the start.

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In fact, just a week later – last Wednesday 28th – things looked completely different. As we trawled the market at the same time as the previous week, there was not a person in blue to be seen, which somehow did not surprise us.

And the Facebook page set up to record incidents of street drinking, fouling andanti-social behaviour was doing a roaring trade as usual ...  

Worse still, a reader told us of a serious episode of drinking and general anti-social activity in the area between the entrance to the Stump and the former Tory offices.

You know the spot ... right across the river and within sight and sound of the town’s police station.

The same day there was major vandalism at the town’s cinema and a couple of back-packing youths were seen on the roof of the former HSBC bank – but apparently attempts to interest the police were unsuccessful.

Ironically, all this occurred on the day that a meeting of concerned residents drew a big crowd and a top table comprising the Chief Constable and PCC our MP, the Worst Street leader and a Chief Inspector.

We haven yet digested any accounts of the meeting – but we can guess at the likely outcome …

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Our garden waste bin recently fell victim to one of Worst Street’s hi-tech ‘freighters’ (dustcarts) which saw it split lengthways and in need of replacement.

Yes, we know that there are probably no local companies that make wheelie bins so it’s obviously not possible to benefit the Boston economy.

But … as we teeter on the brink of leaving Europe at long last, we have to ask – would it not have been possible to buy Boston’s bins from a company that made them closer to home rather than … GERMANY?

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Finally – a very late entry to our caption competition which featured council leader Aaron Spencer and tourism portfolio holder Alistair Arundell on a circular bicycle.

As we said – whilst it came in late it was too good to ignore … so here it is.

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Our former blog is archived at: http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com

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