AFTER hearing once again about the happenings at City Hall on the June 13 edition of Prime News, I am now even more convinced that there should be a decision to implement an Interim Management Committee immediately to oversee the functioning of the City Hall until elections can be held. Prime News carried two separate stories on  City Hall: The first one focused on the phone bill owed by the institution, and the other stated that the entity is looking at ways of broadening its financial base by taking on contract work at its workshop, and selling off unserviceable equipment and vehicles.
The first story about  City Hall’s phone bill amounting to $1.2M was a shocker for me. The City Hall, every few months, finds it hard to pay its workers; the people who work to keep the city clean and complete their projects for which citizens pay taxes.
How can the entity function effectively when it has this much waste? If the City Hall pays $1.2M per month, then that’s $14.4M a year. The City deals with locals; they do not effect major projects that would require persons calling overseas for several hours. So how can the entity accrue that much money on its phone bill alone?
Although the newscast didn’t say it, I am sure that the Mayor’s phone bill accounts for half of that figure, because I am sure that the Council pays his cell phone bill, his home phone bill, his office bill, and just maybe even his family’s cell-phone bills.
This is gross mismanagement by the Council and the Mayor. Instead of urging the Council to find ways of expanding its revenue base, he should take some courses in management and learn to effectively manage the money that the Council currently collects, because from all indications, he is a poor manager.
The Mayor of the Georgetown municipality is incapable of managing anything, and we have seen time and again how his incompetence has affected  City Hall and its workers. If the Council were to expand its base, how will that help? As it stands, the Council cannot manage the money it currently collects.
The news report said that the Council is $988M in overdraft, and owes GPL $600M. I don’t understand how things can be this bad at the Council. We have seen in the past, the Council saying that most of its money goes to paying staff. I am sure that if hundreds of millions of dollars have to be spent on paying staff, then any good manager would know that if your expenses are more than you earn, then there needs to be some cuts. The Council never seems to have money to pay its workers who are on the streets working hard everyday to clean the streets, but yet it spends billions on paying staff that are sitting in their offices and doing nothing.
It is time that the residents of the city call for the removal of the Mayor Hamilton Green, because so far, he has had a dismal history of management. Green should do the right thing and resign.