BY way of a majority vote on Monday, the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) agreed that the new team to re-negotiate the contentious parking-meter contract with Smart City Solutions (SCS) will consist of nine members now, including Town Clerk Royston King.  Mayor Patricia Chase-Green last week asked councillors to submit the names of persons to serve on the new team when the statutory meeting convened yesterday. However, Councillor Junior Garrett suggested that this should be done only when the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the committee become available.  A decision was subsequently taken for the written TOR to become available by the next statutory meeting, in two weeks’ time, or later if necessary.  In the meantime, Chase-Green, along with Councillors Heston Bostwick, Oscar and Welton Clarke, Garrett, Jameel Rasul, Akeem Peter, Trichria Richards, James Samuels, and Philip Smith voted that the nine-man team should consist of seven city councillors, two members of the public, City Treasurer Ron McCalman and the Town Clerk. McCalman and King will be serving in an advisory capacity. The five other councillors who were present at the meeting (Councillors Gregory Fraser, Ivelaw Henry, Bishram Kuppen, Andrea Marks, and Sophia Whyte) were in abstention.

People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Councillor Kuppen was the only one who objected to the town clerk serving on the new committee, citing the sensitive nature of the issue.  “The town clerk should not be part of the negotiating committee, even sitting as an advisor,” Kuppen said. “The initial problems that came from the contract came from the actions he took, in that the contract was never tendered; the transparency and impact studies were not done and I think that he should have rightfully recused himself because he was not part of the previous negotiating committee. Why should he be part of this committee?” he told the Guyana Chronicle following the meeting.  He further opined that it is highly prejudicial that King will be part of a  committee, where he would be able to influence its discussion or the direction that it takes.

At a special session last week, where councillors were allowed to discuss the report by the previous re-negotiating committee, 13 of 25 City Councillors voted in favour of setting up a new committee to start a fresh process of negotiation with SCS, the foreign company that was granted a concession to install parking meters in Georgetown. The contract that the M&CC entered into with SCS came under heavy criticism from some City Councillors, who called for a complete revocation of it, while some others suggested waiting on the outcome of a court case that has a bearing on the matter. Ultimately, they reasoned, the M&CC will have to go with the decision of the court, regardless of what the Council decides now on the way forward. The majority, nevertheless, voted in favour of renegotiating with SCS under some new rules.

For instance, SCS will now be obligated to provide required documents before any negotiations can take place.

Member of the Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM), Don Singh told this publication that the M&CC is going ahead with re-negotiating an illegal contract. “Now I don’t know how that works. We at MAPM are 100 per cent sure that the court case will justify our position that monopoly laws were broken; procurement laws were broken, and the general contract is illegal. So they will be faced with further problems down the road by taking this action,” Singh said.

Another member, Luana Falconer, commented that it was shocking to see that it did not matter to 13 councillors that the contract with SCS is illegal. “Where in the world is negotiating an illegal contract okay? These people are not thinking; this is madness! Everything about the whole process was wrong!” she said.