GEORGETOWN Mayor Hamilton Green recently wrote the Minister within the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Mr. Norman Whittaker, asking for the immediate removal of acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba. This newspaper has seen a copy of the Mayor’s letter, which cited Sooba’s behaviour as one that could lead the municipality into outright anarchy.    Over time, Green said, Sooba has been acting “strangely”, and the latest instance had to do with him requesting her to call a meeting with municipality staff to discuss City Hall’s unfavourable circumstances. Green said he sent her the memo dated April 10, 2013, and asked her to call the meeting on April 15, but Sooba responded that that time was too short for her to convene the meeting.

In her memo, the mayor said, she told him he was one of the persons who had contributed to the deterioration of the city, and she urged him to cease “impeding” and “obstructing” the work of the Town Clerk. She also urged him to desist from “intimidating” the Town Clerk when it seemed impossible for her to comply with his agenda.
It was Sooba’s response that prompted Green to immediately write Minister Whittaker.

A few months ago, a majority of the councilors had voted in favour of a motion, moved by Councillor Monica Thomas and seconded by Councillor Gregory Fraser, expressing no confidence in Sooba. Among the things that motion had said was that Sooba lacked training, knowledge, competencies, professionalism, and human relations’ skills. It charged that Sooba’s “unprofessional” behaviour had placed the council in an embarrassing position.

Sooba is, however, contending that the motion was moved because councillors could not get their way with certain interests, such as with pensions and gratuities that they had included in the budget for $15M. She said the councillors who had moved the motion were not aware of their roles, and they had certain interests that she could not satisfy. According to her, many of them who had requested pensions and gratuities in the budget were upset that she had taken those out of the budget, because the law does not so provide, she disclosed.

“Whatever goes into the budget must have legality. I can’t take the tax-payers’ money and give it to them,” she contended.

Apart from pensions and gratuities, for which the councillors had set aside $15M in the budget, Sooba said there are many other similar interests that she had refused to grant. “I’m not a town clerk that would compromise and break any law. I can’t budge. All of them want something out of this poor town clerk,” she offered.

Sooba said the money that goes into the Council has to cover a host of other important things, such as garbage disposal and cleaning of the streets.