WHILE five of the six municipalities gathered in the Local Government Ministry boardroom yesterday to report on budgetary estimates for 2015 before the November 15, 2014 deadline, the Georgetown Mayor & City Council (M&CC) was singing a different tune. “The Georgetown municipality had some political issues in the preparation of our 2015 budget,” Acting Town Clerk of the Georgetown Mayor & City Council, Carol Sooba reported as she was called to present the capital city’s budget.
Sooba explained that while there were several meetings of the Finance Committee to produce the approved budgetary estimates and expenditure, “There was a change of our Finance Chairman, Councillor Junior Garrett, [who] was removed for some reason or the other. And we are without a Finance Chairman.”
Efforts to remove the Finance Committee Chairman were first realised in May 2014 when the Mayor and Councillors held an ‘unlawful’ statutory meeting in the compound of City Hall after they had been refused entry to the Chambers by then Town Clerk Carol Sooba. During this meeting, motions of no-confidence were passed against the Finance Committee Chairman as well as the Town Clerk.

While the Council did not have the power to remove the Town Clerk (Ag.), they did however have the power to replace Councillor Junior Garrett in his capacity as the Finance Committee Chairman. Another Chairman has not been appointed since.
Acting without a Finance Committee Chairman and desperate to complete a draft budget, Sooba said that the City Treasurer and other Staff came to the rescue and “were able to produce our budget.”
However, the efforts fell by the wayside as she said “the political arm decided that they would do delaying tactics back and forth.” She added that “there was an extraordinary meeting set for Friday last and the Deputy Mayor [Patricia Chase-Green] and others did not attend that meeting.”
The Town Clerk was forced to present a Draft of the 2015 Municipal Budget that had not been approved by the Council to the gathering of Local Government officers from the six municipalities and other officials from the Local Government Ministry.
Beginning in the second quarter of the fiscal year, the budgetary cycle will see Town Clerks, according to Municipal Services Officer at the Local Government Ministry, Fabian Jerrick, “issuing a circular to the Council as well as to all departments.
Since the local government system sees Councillors being drawn from various constituencies, those Councillors are expected to consult with constituencies on matters of urgency. Departmental budgets are created at the same time, he added, “after which a draft budget is then submitted to the Finance Committee by the Municipal Treasurer.”
The Finance Committee is expected to scrutinise that budget based on information gathered from constituents. “There is where both the Council aspect and the Administrative aspect are then combined after which you have the first public meeting.”
These processes, in the case of the Georgetown Municipality’s 2015 budget would have been effectively disregarded since the Finance Committee, to this point, as previously stated by Acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba is still without the appointment of a Chairman.
After a public meeting would have been held, Jerrick continued, the draft budget is then taken back to the Finance Committee for consideration by both members of the Council, headed by Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green, and the City Administration, headed by Town Clerk (Ag.) Carol Sooba.
The last two steps involve an approval of the budget which is then subjected to assent by the Finance Committee Chairman and the Municipal Treasurer then for final approval by the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development.
Meanwhile, Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker at the meeting yesterday expressed disappointment since, he recalled, this is not the first time the Georgetown Mayor & City Council has been faced with such a situation of budget clashes between the Council and the Administration. (Derwayne Wills)