Implementation Committee advances its work, but…
CHAIRMAN of the Implementation Committee for the Georgetown Municipality Commission of Inquiry, Mr. Keith Burrowes says the appointment of a Town Clerk and City Treasurer is critical if the recommendations of the Commission are to be implemented to help boost the capacity of the Mayor and City Council.
Burrowes said yesterday that the dearth of skills that these two vacancies present is stymieing the work of the Implementation Committee, which continues to make strides in its quest to turn around the fortunes of City Hall.
The Inquiry, whose report was presented to the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor and City Council in 2009, was deemed necessary after the 2008 Auditor General’s report raised several issues about the management of the City’s affairs with regard to transparency, accountability, efficiencies and revenue collection.
The Terms of Reference also required Burrowes as Commissioner of Inquiry to pronounce on the culpability, if any, of the Town Clerk and the City Treasurer in the areas of investigation, and to report to the Local Government Minister. The report of the Commission of Inquiry recommended the removal of Town Clerk, Ms. Beulah Williams and City Treasurer, Mr. Roderick Edinboro, and these recommendations were acted upon.
Burrowes addressed the misconception that the Municipality will see an overnight reversal of fortunes with the acceptance of the Commission of Inquiry’s report. “I want to clear the perception that with an inquiry completed and [recommendations implemented], we will see an immediate impact on revenue. That is not the case,” he said.
Rather, he said, he still expects to see the same kind of problems in the first half of this year, with change coming in from next year.
With the Implementation Committee, together with the Finance Committee of the Mayor and City Council, having identified areas that could be looked at for enhanced revenue garnering, Burrowes said: “We anticipate that all things being equal, that the result of the work of the Commission of Inquiry will be better revenue collection in the second half of this year and into next year.”
He, however, explained that while there may be other avenues for revenue collection, the very issues that had hitherto caused collection to be poor may well come up. He is of the view that City Hall needs to fix what it is doing first, before thinking of other potential revenue-earning activities.
Noting that the Implementation Committee has put in place a new database at City Hall, and at no cost to the Council, Burrowes said the reason they did that was because in the past, information submitted to the Council tended to be incorrect.
He said that once information is validated, the Council will be in a better position to know what to go behind for revenue collection; that the new database will allow for emphasis to be placed on services that the City provides, and not the departments of the Council. “The present arrangement not only compromises on service delivery, it also facilitates irregularities,” he said.
The database system, he said, will ensure that the Council will have all relevant information on its clientele as it relates to business with the Municipality. Citing an example of how the system is intended to work, Burrowes said that a barber may be paying his fees for necessary licenses from the City to ply his trade, but with the new database, the Council will know if that barber is also defaulting on his obligations to the Council with regards to a building that he may own.
Noting that there are a number of residents in the City who are not paying what they are supposed to pay in taxes, Burrowes said: “We are hoping that very soon, that issue could be addressed.” As if to press home the point, he noted that over the past two to three years, Georgetown has seen significant increases in the number of businesses.
He said that the Implementation Committee is seeking information from the Supreme Court Deeds Registry, “since we are of the view that there are over 300 taxpayers (to the City) who pay 40 per cent of the assessed value [of their property], since the Council [in the past] has not taken many steps to ensure that they pay 250 percent as they should. We expect another $200 to $300 million in revenue and we are working on this.”
The Implementation Committee, he said, is also working with the Privatisation Unit to ensure properties disposed of by the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) are assessed for the taxes due to the City. “I was appalled that the Council does not have any kind of mechanism to monitor the disposing or sale of businesses in order to ensure Compliance Fees are paid,” he said.
The Implementation Committee, he said, will be going back to January 1, 2010 to identify, by going through the Official Gazette, properties that were disposed of for which Compliance Fees were not paid. “We intend to hand over this information to the City Council this week,” he said.
On the issue of indebtedness, Burrowes said that there is urgent need to establish a debt recovery unit within the Council, and that the Implementation Committee has identified a number of people to work on this matter.  “We anticipate that there will be increased revenue streams from debt recovery,” he said.
Budget 2010, the first since the findings of the Commission of Inquiry, recommended that the 2009 revenue shortfall needs to be clearly researched and thoroughly understood, so that lesson swill be learnt as to how to avoid this situation from recurring in 2010.
The 2010 budget noted that Budget Revenue can easily be jeopardised, leading to failure to provide the core services of the M&CC and service delivery targets. It noted too that since there has been no significant increase in budgeted revenue year over year, it needs to be carefully monitored, prioritized and protected.
It said that revenue initiatives as outlined in the Budget 2010 documentation needs to be aggressively pursued, and that expenditure and cost control as outlined in the Budget 2010 requires implementation.
It noted too that the City must focus resources in the areas of material amounts of revenue generating areas and expenses, since constraining factors such as financial and human may further constrain the achieving of targets.
(NB: This is the first in a series of articles on the implementation of recommendations made by the M&CC Commission of Inquiry)