City Budget to focus on improved service delivery – Deputy Mayor

Feb 25, 2010 News

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By Sharmain Cornette

It may not surpass last year’s whopping $2.1B, but according to Deputy Mayor Robert Williams, the Georgetown municipality’s budget for this year will focus primarily on the recommendations outlined in the Burrowes Report.
As Chairman of the Finance Committee, Williams has the responsibility of presenting the budget, a move he believes will be realised on Monday.
During an interview with this newspaper yesterday, Williams revealed that the budget will have major emphasis on improving the municipality’s delivery of service to the citizens of Georgetown.
For this reason, he underscored that efforts will be made to target solid waste management as one of the crucial areas to be addressed this year. He related that the municipality, in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, will work towards ensuring that the Le Repentir Dumpsite will be closed by July, thus allowing the new site at Haags Bosch to commence operation. And Williams is confident that this course of action will undoubtedly help to improve the current state of solid waste management in the city.
But the municipality will not only address the dumpsite situation but rather the problem of littering city-wide with the support of its enforcement arm – the Constabulary. According to Williams, the municipality will not allow its efforts to improve the state of the city to be compromised by ‘litter-bugs’. Persons found littering will in fact feel the brunt of the law, Williams passionately warned yesterday.  In curbing the littering situation, the municipality will by extension be able to maintain the city’s drainage system which has proven to be a challenge over the years.
In preparation for the budget Acting Public Relations Officer, Debra Lewis, had revealed that each department head was required to justify spending in their respective sections in the quest to keep the municipality functioning in an optimal and efficient manner this year.
Lewis had speculated that the discussions were likely to be completed in order to facilitate the budget presentation this month end.
The value of the budget, Williams had disclosed, was decided upon following a process of consultations and considerations, one of the most important being that there was no increase in the percentage assessment of property taxes since 1998. Williams had sought to highlight that even last year there were still a number of un-assessed properties, in terms of construction, expansion and the change of use.
As a result, he divulged that the municipality had agreed in the first half of last year to focus on capturing the information as it relates to the development of the city with the assistance of the Chief Valuation Officer and private assessors. This move, he had stated was geared at determining the new value and apply the current formula to derive new assessment figures.
The properties in the city, Williams explained, were assessed some five years ago on the basis of a new system or formula which not only captures a complete view of the property aerially and otherwise, but stored each property in a database. The database, the Deputy Mayor had related, allows for comparison at anytime of what is captured and of what is on the ground in reality and also provides for the properties to be assessed on the basis of a market value as against a rental mode.
And to ensure that some headway was made in this regard, Williams noted that it was the expressed desire and mandate that the municipal administration proceeded vigorously in engaging in judicial processes to recover all outstanding taxes.
This process should have taken on the form of Petty Debt Act, Parate Execution and Distraint Warrants. However, Williams had articulated that council is of the view that there was more talk than action in this area, adding that even when concession is granted, maximum use is not made.
As such he had amplified that the municipality will work towards improving its database to include deletion of properties exempted under the Law Section 212 within the ambit of collectable taxes and update the tax register to take account of Domestic Properties used for commercial purposes in the city.
In addition to the action in the area of property taxes and even though the performance the previous year was excellent, Williams said that council is still of the view that more can be collected in revenue from markets and market-related activities.
As a consequence, he said that it was decided that the entire revenue collection system for the markets will be computerised and vendors/stall holders will be treated in a similar way as the utility companies.

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