Dear Editor,
NOTWITHSTANDING all the offers of amnesty by the Georgetown City Council, that will wipe off all interest owed on outstanding property rates by delinquent property owners, and aside from all the long winded nonsensical and meaningless missives appearing in the letter columns of the dailies, authored by the Town Clerk in a feeble attempt to justify their bloated expenditure, I believe the Georgetown City Council will have a herculean task convincing property owners why they should pay property rates to the municipality.

With the central government having just picked up the tab of over 400 million that was owed to the two major garbage contractors in the city, for tasks given to them by the Council, but for which the municipality failed to pay them, and with central government’s decision to underwrite the costs that will be incurred by retaining these two contractors going forward, then it is crystal clear that it is our VAT and other taxes paid to the government that is being used for refuse collection and disposal in the city and not property rates as it should be.

With the Georgetown Municipality having failed for years now to build new roads and or maintain existing roads in the Garden City, an unquestionable municipal responsibility which has become a responsibility of central government, shows evidently once again that it is our state taxes and not municipal rates that is being used to foot the bill.

Another pellucid example concerns security in the city. There is a security department staffed with a large retinue of officers and ranks, yet it is the national police that has to secure the city with foot, bicycle, motorcycle and car patrols. All the City Constabulary seems to do is chase vendors, bodyguard the Mayor and Town Clerk and uncover inappropriate conduct by senior officers late at night in the boardroom of the Engineer’s Department of City Hall.

Again, state taxes are used for a service that ought to be provided by the Council. And there are countless other examples: like the Council shutting down a number of Day Care Centers, failing to process meat in a hygienic and humane way, creating a jungle in the cemetery, having no landfill or incinerator of its own, leaving the defogging of the city to the Ministry of Public Health etc. Are citizens expected to pay property rates just to allow the ‘Fantastic Four’ to fly around the world?

Regards
James Mc Onnell