AS of November last, the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) collected $1.7B in revenue, which represents less than 50 percent of what that body had estimated to collect for 2012, Minister within the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Mr Norman Whittaker, reported yesterday at a press conference at the ministry’s Fort Street, Kingston boardroom in the presence of senior minister Ganga Persaud. Following Whittaker’s statement on the council’s revenue situation, Persaud said it was mind-boggling that the municipality was collecting such huge sums of money and yet cannot properly manage the city.

In the budget for 2012, M&CC had estimated to collect $3.8B in revenue, but managed to collect only the amount mentioned above, according to the estimates presented to the ministry.

Minister Whittaker said it is a legal requirement for each municipality to present its next year’s estimates by November 15 of each year, but the Georgetown City Council is always late with theirs.

The $3.8B was not a figure pulled from a hat, he observed, but was based on rates & taxes to be received from a number of properties, even those residential ones that should be classified as commercial.
“I am not aware that there is any serious and concerted effort to go out there and reach out to the people, most of whom are the commercial businesses who owe. And they need to do that! So while you claim government must give you more money, you have millions out there, but you sit and put the blame here,” Whittaker remarked.

Meanwhile, the six municipalities: Corriverton, Anna Regina, Rose Hall Town, New Amsterdam, Linden and Georgetown, submitted the estimates of their 2013 income and expenditure to the Local Government Ministry on November 15 last.

Prior to the submissions, Whittaker reminded the officers that the budgets have to do not merely with a set of numbers.  “It’s about plan-and-control measures which reflect a vision (for) the municipality. It helps to control what happens in each department,” he had told them.

He cautioned that revenue garnered must equal expenditure, and that when the expenditure exceeds the revenue, there has to be some way to finance the deficit. “That represents liabilities to persons, and ultimately, it is the council and residents who will have to help remove that deficit.”

Whittaker said government, through the Local Government Ministry, would help to remove the deficit only when this is absolutely necessary. “We do not help councils to wipe out deficits, because we are of the view that budget deficits represent either hanging your hat where your hands can’t reach, or there must be some necessary need. And, in such a case, the ministry will assist by way of grants, but that has to be (in) critical situations.”

The minister urged the officers to monitor projects during implementation in order to lessen residents’ complaints. “Monitoring and supervision of projects are important, so that we do not realise, at the end of a project or near the end, that perhaps the wrong materials were used. “We now have to go out and take measures to reach out to people to help them to pay their revenues.”

He pointed out that municipalities are breaching the regulations when they cash people’s personal cheques and when they keep in hand more money than they legally should be keeping.