If money held the answer to all of Boston’s problems, we would be one of the most carefree towns around – but sadly, when we get it, we don’t seem to know how best to use it.

The news this week that Boston has been awarded £10,000 by the government to help boost its town centre just means yet another chance to pour money down the nearest drain.
The announcement of the cash injection came from the unfortunately titled Local Growth Minister, Mark Prisk.
Boston has really done nothing to earn the cash, as the awards have been made to every town that applied to be a Portas Pilot – more than 300 of them.
The submission for Town Team Partner status was made by Boston BID following a failure to gain one of ten £100,000 cash prizes under the Portas scheme.
The fact that we didn’t win came as no surprise since the lacklustre entry, accompanied by a tedious and dreary video, was never going to be a contender. Instead, the line was taken that Boston’s bid had most probably failed because the town had already received £2 million to refurbish the Market Place, and had access to a further £650,000 from English Heritage over five years to   improve the looks of the town centre listed buildings.
We all know what has happened since then.
We have a featureless Market Place that looks like a grim Stalinist-era parade ground, and just one local shop applying for cash from this first year’s English Heritage grant.
Making the Town Teams announcement Mr Prisk said: “By putting your Town Teams forward as Town Team Partners, you have ensured that real progress can be made."
Boston will now be able access a support package produced the Association of Town Centre Management has prepared for Town Team Partners.
Why this should be newly available is anyone guess, as Boston Borough Council is already a member of ACTM – which charges between £620 and £1,000 for membership.
That aside, Mr Prisk says the extra support will help the teams to strengthen their leadership on the ground, and enable them to try new ideas on their high streets to make them more attractive and competitive.
Boston Business “Improvement” District has – as often reported in Boston Eye – never had a good idea since it began, and somehow we doubt that much will emerge from this latest largesse.
The BID’s imagination seems to begin and end with the Town Rangers, whose hours they are planning to extend into the evenings – at a cost of a further £16,000.
By a gloomy co-incidence, around three years ago, Boston Borough Council received a £53,000 government grant from a £3 million package shared between 57 towns and cities which the Communities Department felt were blighted by empty shops.
As the council occasionally does, it shrugged much the job off on to Boston BID, who promptly messed it up.
A total of £30,000 was allocated to turn two empty shops in Strait Bargate into the Giles Art Gallery and community hub, together with short term measures costing £12,000  provide graphics to decorate empty shop windows, and longer term plans costing £10,000 for a grant scheme to offer new retailers taking on an empty shop funding towards  business rates for their first year.
The short term plan fizzled out because the idea was to buy “bespoke graphics” to decorate the windows of empty shops – instead of a one size fits all self-cling version.  Being “bespoke” they could only be used in the shops they were designed for - and not be transferable. 
Estimates of £20,000 to bring the shops up to scratch for the community “Hub” were accepted before the  discovery that meeting building regulations would bump the costs up by a staggering 60%  –  to £32,000, and the idea of grants towards the cost of business rates for retailers occupying empty shops was side-lined to fund that massive overspend.  
But worse was to come. It was then estimated that another £10,000 would be needed for the landlords’ fees,  and to fit out the shops, pay the BID levy and cover the utility costs.
Then, when vandals smashed a window that cost £2,300 to replace, it turned out that this was not covered by insurance -  and a mistaken assumption that the South Lincolnshire Community Voluntary Service would get discretionary rate relief swallowed up another £5,750.
So, after months of delay and incompetence we ended up with an allocation of £5,000 for large scale maps produced by Boston BID and £47,000 for a shop to promote stopping smoking.
The legacy is that we now have not one, but two shops flogging this particular horse – which is just what we don’t need in two primely positioned shops.
Do you appreciate why we don’t expect much from Boston BID – except to carry on wasting our money as before?

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