City Council to decide if amnesty programme continues

Nov 06, 2009 News

More than $200M has been recovered by the Mayor and City Council as part of its amnesty programme.
But according to information reaching this newspaper, the way forward for the initiative will have to be a decision made at full council.
City Mayor Hamilton Green disclosed yesterday that although a proposal has been made he is in fact not prepared to embrace the continuance of the amnesty programme.
According to the City Mayor, residents of Georgetown over the past few months have responded well to the programme allowing the municipality to recover a substantial amount of outstanding revenue.
He related that based on his knowledge, a certain amount of taxpayers have been identified to remain a part of the venture pending the decision to be made at full council.
“We have had long lines of people coming in and we couldn’t complete all at once over the months. So I think that we were able to identify those that had already come in so that they could finish up their process and bring the programme to an end.”
But according to Deputy Mayor, Robert Williams, the notion behind the continuance of the amnesty is rooted in the municipality’s need to ensure that its coffers have sufficient funds to pay workers’ salaries, garbage contractors and its utilities until the end of the year.
He disclosed, too, that the municipality has been in discussion with major businesses and defaulting political parties, including the People’s National Congress Reform and the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic.
According to Williams, although the political parties have not fulfilled their commitment to pay, the municipality has been able to reach some agreements with them.
The amnesty was aimed at encouraging defaulting property owners to fulfil their civic responsibility of paying property taxes even as they were relieved of accumulated interest over the years.
Since early September, the city entity had introduced the initiative which was then slated to have been completed at the end of the same month.
However, Williams had last month revealed that although there was no initial intent to continue the amnesty offer, they had decided to sustain the move with a view of relieving even more property owners of accumulated interest and at the same time significantly boosting the entity’s revenue base. “Those who didn’t get a chance to get in on the amnesty in September, because it was a short period, they were given another chance last month.
After this round we plan on taking people to court like Wild West,” Williams had divulged.
Up to the end of September, the municipality was able to collect a total of $161M, an amount that increased last month by more than $81M, Williams said.
Even before the introduction of the amnesty programme, the municipality had commenced serving demand notices to some residents in order to make them aware of their default status, thus urging them to visit the Treasury Department to make their payments.
Even then, according to the acting Town Clerk, Yonette Pluck-Cort, the municipality was willing to work out agreements with residents who were in arrears and were unable to make payments.
Residents have over the years been advised that they could make yearly payments or are afforded the options to make payments on a quarterly basis and not be in default.
According to Public Relations Officer, Royston King, the collection of property taxes, represents about 80 percent of the municipal revenue base, which is in fact below the requisite amount to manage the municipality optimally.

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City Council to decide if amnesty programme continues

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