–to pay garbage contractors

THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is trying to finalise arrangements to begin charging a separate fee for commercial waste.

This is especially so after Town Clerk Royston King said the municipality is finding it increasingly difficult to honour its financial obligations to garbage contractors.

As the situation stands, the Council has been trying to keep up with current bills for garbage collection, although it has outstanding amounts for the years 2015 and 2016.

King said it is extremely difficult for the Council to sustain payments to these contractors at the moment, because the municipality is being asked to do more with less resources.

He referred to the fact that the Council is now doing more drainage works than it did before. Although help has been forthcoming from the Ministry of Infrastructure, it is often inadequate, King noted.

He called for the commercial fee to be implemented as soon as possible, and for the container-fee issue to be sorted out.

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green undertook to call the Minister of Communities today in an effort to resume talks on the container fees.

She said that notwithstanding the challenges at the moment, the current payments will have to be maintained at all cost.

Regarding the removal of commercial waste in the city, Chase-Green had previously said that City Hall cannot afford to keep up with the $1.8M it costs weekly to do the job.

As such, the municipality, through its Solid Waste Management Department, headed by Mr. Walter Narine, had scheduled a series of meetings to talk with businesses on the way forward regarding garbage disposal.

Chase-Green had said that the City Council is at the moment cash-strapped, and has reached its “boiling point”, in that it simply cannot afford the cost to remove commercial waste.

She referred to the building at the corner of Regent and King Streets, which formerly housed the Acme Photo Studio, but which now houses more than 10 stores. She said that although the waste there has increased significantly, the fee being charged has remained the same.

“Businesses want to use every little space in front of them, but doesn’t want to pay the Council anything,” Chase-Green said.

Narine had made the point that Georgetown represents 30 per cent of the country’s population, and has another 10 per cent passing through each day. It was on that score that he appealed to businesses to keep waste receptacles on their premises, not only for their benefit, but for that of their customers.

He’d also called attention to the practice among businesses to sweep dust into the drains, which results in a host of problems that have to be taken care of by City Hall. This, he noted, is notwithstanding the fact that many businesses do not remit their rates and taxes to the Council in a timely manner.

The Town Clerk had noted that even if citizens pay all of their outstanding taxes, the Council will still fall short of enough money to cover everything it has to do.

“We can no longer ask businesses to pay one flat tax; one property tax that has to cover garbage,” he said, adding:
“Those who use more of the city’s resources must pay more; it’s only fair.”

King said the implementation of a new fee is in order, because the service of waste disposal is a very expensive one that the council cannot afford at the moment.

“We do not have the money to sustain what we’ve started,” he noted, while referring to all the clean-up works that the Council has done in the past.