The City’s governance structure is outdated

Oct 27, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Georgetown City Council was designed to manage a much smaller city, with fewer businesses, buses, hire cars and market vendors. The city has expanded beyond its traditional boundaries; markets are now larger; the number of vendors and motor vehicles has multiplied tens of times; zoning is being flagrantly ignored and the Council is no longer able to provide basic sanitation services and the upkeep of cemeteries.
No amount of commissions of inquiry, new municipal elections, new mayors and new sources of revenue will change the fortunes of the Council. The problems at City Hall are structural in nature only to be addressed through a change in those arrangements.
No number of recommendations are going to alter the manner in which Council operates. The PNCR has historically dominated the management of the Council. The PNCR has seen the city as a turf to be protected. The priority has always been to keep the PPPC at bay.
After the last local government elections, when the PPPC could only muster 2 seats on the 30 member Council, the PNCR saw the Council as its trophy, to do with as it pleases. New local government elections, even with the AFC contesting independent of the APNU, is not going to shift the balance of power within the Council.
The PNCR will continue to have a free rein and without any checks on its power within the Council, it will continue to run roughshod over the affairs of the City, like it did in the manner in which it handled the parking meter contract.
Local government leadership is poor. It is difficult to attract quality personnel to run for municipal office. After you fill the position in ministries and in regional administrations, not much talent is left within the political parties. Those outside of the party politics and who can substitute do wish to become entangled in our nasty and vindictive political culture.
Georgetown is the heartland of the PNCR’s support. The only way to be assured of a seat is to join the PNCR ticket.
The number of pavement and roadside vendors, the number of hire cars and minibuses and the growth of the business community in the city is all too overwhelming for the Council. They simply cannot manage.
The City’s boundaries need to be re-drawn to what they were before Independence and a separate body needs to be established for the new wards and areas which were created over the past fifty years. Illegal vending needs to be completely outlawed and those involved in illegal vending need to be removed. Vending is encouraging too much corruption at City Hall.
The Council is ill-equipped to approve building construction. This function should be removed from the Council and handed to a government agency but not the Central Housing and Planning Authority which is a bureaucratic albatross which needs to be dismantled. The markets should be formed into corporations and be restored as places where business is brisk.
The Council should give up some of the other services which it undertakes such as day care centers so that frees itself from services which do not make a profit. The cemetery should be closed. It should be condemned.
The minibuses and parks should be privatized at premium leases. And so too should be selling spots on the pavements. It was quite a laughable matter to read, the other day, that the Council was renting spots, to displaced vendors, at one of the busiest locations in the city, for a mere $7,000 per month. That should have been $7,000 per day not per month. The Council is shortchanging itself.
But that is what you will get in an unmanageable situation. The present governance arrangements, do not allow for effective governance of the City. New elections and a new council will not change anything at City Hall. Democracy means little when one party is so dominant at City Hall.
The people of Georgetown should vote with their feet on November 12, They should stay home as a protest and as wake-up call to those who will manage City Hall.
The British knew what they were doing when they kept the City small and properly zoned. We need to return to that system. Imperfect as it was, the city was better managed back then.

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