City Hall statutory meeting ends abruptly

May 28, 2014 News

– rift continues between Mayor, Sooba

The City Hall’s statutory meeting which was scheduled to be held yesterday was cancelled because Mayor Hamilton Green

Carol Sooba

had deemed the semi-locked room where the meeting was to be held, unfit.
Additionally, there seemed to be more bad blood between the Mayor and the de facto Town Clerk Carol Sooba, whom the Mayor had addressed as an interloper when she was present before the statutory meeting was cancelled. After Sooba left, the Mayor decided to hold a press conference to air the concerns of the council.
Green spoke at the press briefing among other things about the payment of staff salaries when he mentioned that “you have a person who can subtract from our fund half a million dollars for what is clearly personal use not authorized by the finance committee and certainly not this body the municipality.”
According to Green, the City Council has been stifled of funds to such an extent that “when you look at the condition of Le Repentir Cemetery; when you go around the city as I have done over the past few days and in every community there are complaints about the drainage system and the insanitary conditions facing citizens and which affect the wellbeing and health of our young people, those statements are nonsensical.”
“When garbage is piled up around the city it is because we have an obtuse, obstinate administration that we don’t recognize now, that has refused to carry out instructions of the duly elected council.
“Let the public know that we ask them to be patient because we hope that some justice would prevail so that the council and the citizens of this country can have as its Chief Administrator some person or persons who are rationale willing to observe protocol, respectful and most of all qualified,” said Green.
As the Mayor continued with the meeting, the public address system was abruptly cut off during his speech leaving him to continue without the use of microphones.
Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green speaking on the cancellation of the statutory meeting outlined “what is needed to be brought to the media’s attention is that even though the request for the doors to be opened so you would have easy access in and out of these chambers, that request was not granted, and we heard the excuse that after three weeks the key could not be found so there is no other effort made while at a previous press conference we were told that those locks will be replaced.”
She said that at the last Statutory meeting there was a bomb scare and “as I came in the statutory meeting today there were shady characters both outside and inside of the building, which has over the period of time caused our councillors and staff members to be fearful of their lives. We will not be intimidated by those members, all we want is to ensure that in case of an emergency that all doors were open and you can witness that the doors are closed.”
According to the deputy Mayor “this building is a public building, statutory meetings are public and we ought to have access to and from the meeting as we so desire.” She said that Sooba refused to bring the register forward so that the list of councillors present could be recorded to ensure that a statutory meeting will be held, and it was not there even though seventeen councillors were present.
Meanwhile, de facto Town Clerk Sooba speaking to Kaieteur News said that “the statutory meeting was cancelled because Mayor Green said that I was an interloper, he said due to the Chief Justice’s ruling and based on the configuration around the table there is an interloper, which means he was referring to me and also the doors were locked.”
With respect to the doors being closed, she said that “Councillor Jordan and [acting Town Clerk Royston] King went over in the constabulary office and stole the keys so this door that could not be opened and we didn’t get to change the lock, he (Mayor) said that this must be opened for the members of the public and because the conditions weren’t good enough for the statutory meeting it was adjourned.”
According to Sooba, “the Mayor didn’t allow me to say prayers. He was calling for the time book but he did not recognize me as Town Clerk. He didn’t acknowledge me, and as a result he called off the meeting. But as we walked out it is conducive for him to have a press conference, so it is conducive enough for press conference but not for meeting.”