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Eight areas in which the City Council can save millions
Dear Editor,
These days all one hears from the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown are demands for more income, for new revenue streams and for more financial burdens to be placed on the backs of the poor citizens, many of whom are pensioners, unemployed or struggling to make ends meet.
How about if the Council tries a new approach, and that is to exercise fiscal restraint and reduce its expenditure rather increase its income. Here I would like to put forward just a few of over a hundred suggestions that can save the Council tens of millions each month:
1. Curtailing those frequent and unnecessary trips overseas by municipal officials with the provision of per diems and in many instances airline tickets which costs the citizenry substantially and for which hardly any tangible benefits are ever seen.
2. Terminating the lease arrangements with private companies for the provision of luxury toilets and portable toilets around markets, residences of Council’s officials, and other municipal locations replacing them with permanent public conveniences built by the Council.
3. Bringing to an end the leasing of a motor car for hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for a senior officer.
4. Eliminating the considerable entertainment expenditure that is incurred by the administration of the Council, including frequent lunches and dinners at high-priced restaurants.
5. Getting rid of the special contractor who the Council has engaged within the last year to weed our parapets and clear our drains, and who has earned hundreds of millions of dollars to date, by having him replaced by municipal workers who did the job in the past, but who are currently left to idle.
6. Purging the Council’s human resource base of the scores and scores of children, nieces, nephews, cousins, other relatives and friends of some senior administrators, Councillors who have returned from the last term, and the Mayor; who are being paid super salaries for hardly doing anything.
7. Ending of the illegal, subjective and corrupt granting of interest waivers that are being granted by ‘The Fantastic Four’ to special property owners who are not entitled to such discounts, and which is costing the City Hundreds of millions of dollars.
8. And finally, forthwith, withdraw the security and other staff and attendants that are currently being utilized by the former Mayor, paid for by the Council. Surely the Municipality should not carry the wage and other bills of the aforementioned. Still awaiting the forensic audit at this organization.
Riley Matthews
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