Donald Campbell, of Vicarage Hill, Dartmouth, writes:

Having attended the annual general meeting of the Dart­mouth Business Improvement District as an interested ­resident who no longer has a business in Dartmouth, it is sad that the meeting was presented with a resolution proposing that the organisation is wound up at an extraordinary general meeting fairly soon.

Although the BID levy is mandatory for all eligible ­businesses, the basic principles surrounding the set-up of a BID allows for a process of ­consultation and exemptions.

BIDs can choose to exempt certain businesses from paying the levy, and therefore from voting in the BID ballot, and indeed many BIDs exempt the smallest businesses and some exempt certain business sectors.

It is almost certain that ­consultation was not as ­comprehensive as it should have been at the start, since there is a minority of Dartmouth BID members, such as Norton Park owners and renters of South Hams Council workshops used as storage units, who continue to object because they see no direct ­benefit in being a BID member. This could have been avoided with better communication at the start.

As central government and local government continue to find more and more excuses to cut funding for local projects, now is certainly not the time to put the knife into a scheme that, with a bit of fine-tuning, could give a huge boost to the town in the long term.

Many of the objectors say ‘it’s not the money, it’s the way we were pushed into it without proper consultation’.

Since the object of the BID is to make Dartmouth a more desirable destination, the assumption therefore has to be that, if this had been defined better initially, many of the objectors would have come on board willingly.

The objectors might care to consider the fact that there is a large army of volunteers in the town who put in a huge ­number of hours for the benefit of essential organisations. If they decided to quit, the town would grind to a halt.

Even if their time is priced at minimum wage, it vastly outweighs the £150 most small businesses are asked to pay.

It would be nice if small ­business owners viewed the £150 contribution, which can be claimed as a business expense, as being their ‘volunteering cost’ to make the town a better place to live and work in.

So come on Dartmouth, let’s get together and vote for a new, modified BID with a revised business plan at the EGM. Spending large sums on advertising for new visitors does not make a lot of sense if they are not looked after when they arrive.

If a new BID prioritised ­making the Park and Ride ­better and keeping the tourist information centre operating, albeit with modified finances, it could be invaluable to the town in the face of declining ­contributions from outside.