TIME FOR A NEW COUNCIL AT CITY HALL

Nov 30, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

 

 

Having read that the Georgetown City Council recently passed a motion of no-confidence in the acting Town Clerk, and then having visited the city yesterday and seen disgusting scenes of fetid water accumulation in various parts, one has to ask who will move a motion of no-confidence in the very Council which is at odds with the acting Town Clerk.
This is not the first time that the Council has found itself at odds with one of its officers, but it is hard to recall it ever moving a motion of no-confidence in any of the previous Town Clerks.
Georgetown is the capital city. For it to flood so easily after only just a few hours of moderate to heavy downpours, means that the drainage system is in crisis, and one has to ask just who will stand up and take responsibility for that failure.
Do not expect APNU to do what Desmond Hoyte did many moons ago. Do not expect for APNU to express its lack of confidence in the Council. That is not going to happen.
What is more likely to happen is that they will join the chorus that says the government is strangling the municipality of funds.
But if the political parties are not going to demand responsibility for the sorry state that the city has found itself in, then it is time for the citizens of the capital to express their outright indignation at what happens every time there are rains in the country.
Heaven forbid what is going to happen when the rains intensify. The residents of the city are going to be facing a terrible situation. They know what the root causes of the present situation are. They know that this has nothing to do with the acting Town Clerk. In fact the lady has hardly settled into office, hardly had time to get her feet wet, hardly had time to deal with the myriad problems that confront the municipality. Yet she is facing a no-confidence motion.
This now seems to be the new weapon of choice to force persons to resign. No performance evaluation, no evidence of wrongdoing, no formal complaints to her superiors, no request for an investigation. Simply pass a no-confidence motion and demand that it be respected. Soon the school children will begin to pass motions of no-confidence in their teachers. This is a recipe for chaos.
The residents of the city should pass their own no-confidence motion based on their own experience of the state of the city and demand that the entire Council take responsibility for this state of affairs.
There is no need to take to the streets. They should simply call for a day of rest in the city and ask that all businesses close their doors on that day as a form of protest against the conditions in the city.
They should demand a non-political, non-partisan interim management committee to take over the affairs of City Hall. Surely no such body can do worse than what is happening.
The opposition, however, will not budge. It sees control of the municipality as important; it views Georgetown as its political turf and it will not cede this turf, despite the protestations of the public that things are simply not working as they ought to. And with the no-confidence motion against the Town Clerk, the opposition has grounds to accuse the government of being unresponsive to the Council.
Well, it is not place of the Council to decide who should be the Town Clerk. That is the prerogative the government, which needs to balance two sets of interests: the right of the Council to adopt policies for the improvement of the city and the need for those policies to be consistent with the public policy of the government. The idea of an autonomous local government is a myth.
This is how it has always been and this is why certain officers within the local government system are appointed by the government rather than by their councils. If the councils were allowed to do this, then there is a risk that they could disregard the public interest and do things in their own interest.
The no-confidence motion against the Town Clerk should therefore not be used as a distraction, nor should the state of Georgetown be used to restate the case of the Council that applications for new sources of revenues have been stymied by the government.
If your collection rate is below forty per cent, this means that a case cannot be made out for new taxes, because you are not sufficiently collecting the existing taxes, which for residential places, is extremely low.
In recent years, a number of these residential places have been converted to business premises. And it needs to be asked how many of them are paying the business rate. For, given the expansion in the number of businesses in the city, the city coffers should have improved tremendously by this development alone.
It is time for a decision to be made and the government should use the powers to bring an end to the existence of the present Council.
There will be cries that the government is acting in a dictatorial manner, but once the government acts within the precincts of the law, it should not be bothered by the criticisms. It should signal that it plans to dissolve the Council and appoint a non-partisan council to manage the affairs of the City until such time as local government elections are held. Enough is enough!

---

---