THE public and the media have become sick and tired of begging the Georgetown City Council to do their work and address the various problems of the city, but all complaints are ignored. Yet we have to keep complaining or the continued brutish ignoring of the public will become an accepted norm. Over the last week, for example, I visited the City Hall five times to pay taxes for nine properties belonging to different persons amounting to nearly $1M.
Each occasion, except Saturday January 30, 2010, I waited much over an hour without being attended to. No one cared to collect the money. On Saturday 30th January, during the time they told the public they would be open for business, there was no one in the office, though the door was open. A security or office assistant whom I saw hovering about the place told me that the office was closed for business.
City Hall keeps complaining every month that they are hard-up for money but one of the main reasons why the citizens are unable to pay is that the City Treasurer’s office runs a non-system which is ineffective, inefficient, time-wasting, insulting and disgusting. And it seems the government condones this nasty oppression and harassment of the public since ever so often they dole out public funds to the City Council to get them off the hook without giving them a collection schedule and collection targets.
If the City Council asks for it, some citizens would be able to give them methodologies of efficiently and speedily collecting. I, for one, will be willing to do so but my suggestions would have to be carried in the media.