– renegotiating team may need to seek extension

GEORGETOWN Mayor Patricia Chase-Green has said that just as the public was unaware of any new developments surrounding the parking meter project, she too was in the same position.
However, she said should she have any questions or concerns, she will not hesitate to contact the seven-member team that was appointed recently to renegotiate the deal.
“I’m like you; I don’t know. Whenever the team sees fit to inform me, they will. If I have questions to ask, just like John Public, I will ask my questions,” Chase-Green told the Guyana Chronicle on Friday during an interview at her City Hall office.

Furthermore, she hinted that the team might need to seek an extension of the three-month suspension order from the government in order to get its work done.
The last thing the mayor said she knew about was that chairman of the renegotiating team, Councillor Malcolm Ferreira, had promised to issue a press release.
Ferreira had told the Chronicle last May 8 that such release would have been issued by May 10. To date however, the team has remained tight-lipped on their work so far.

The mayor reiterated that there was nothing sinister about the original parking meter contract and that she chose to recuse herself from the renegotiating team to prove just that. “I want people to see that I have nothing to do with it; there was nothing corrupt about it. I was accused of being corrupt. People were saying money was paid to us and all that, so I just decided I would take my hands off and allow people to investigate. I know I am clean. The team that negotiated in the first instance was not part of a corruption. They did not have anything under the table. We think we did everything above board and that was our best shot.”

Meanwhile, Councillor Ferreira told the Chronicle recently that the committee was not providing any updates on the project at the moment because the matter was one that could not be rushed and that he could not just make any pronouncements like that because he was part of a team.
Neither did he take kindly to the criticisms levelled at the committee in some quarters, for their refusal to provide any information on the new developments; all he was prepared to say was that remarks given in a rush were always twisted by the media.
Another city councillor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said when he approached one member of the renegotiating team for an update, he was told that the members were “sworn to secrecy.”

It is not clear why the negotiating team wants to keep the matter out of the media, especially since Town Clerk Royston King, had invited Ferreira to provide an update at the last statutory meeting, if he wished. Ferreira had at the time declined, and said he’d much rather issue a press release instead.
Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan, had communicated Cabinet’s decision for a 90-day suspension of the metered parking system, but the town clerk had opted to go after legal advice to challenge the minister’s order, resulting in a majority vote by city councillors to put such an order on hold.

Minister Bulkan was subsequently directed by Cabinet to immediately suspend operation of the by-laws, which govern the project.
The City Council thereafter approved a seven-member team to negotiate a revised parking meter contract with Smart City Solutions, the company to which City Hall granted the concession to install meters in the city.
Councillor Malcolm Ferreira was elected chairman of the team that comprises Councillors Noelle Chow-Chee, Carlyle Goring, Tricia Richards, Ivelaw Henry, Roopnarine Persaud and Heston Bostwick.