– Councillors vote to adopt recommendations of re-negotiating committee

“YOU can put on lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day, it’s still a pig,” Deputy Mayor

Lionel Jaikarran remarked on Wednesday afternoon about the controversial parking meter project that the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) wants to move ahead with, even in view of a High Court ruling that essentially rendered the by-laws illegal.
At a special meeting called to discuss the recommendations coming out of the recently concluded negotiations between Smart City Solutions (SCS) and the Council’s re-negotiating committee, 15 councillors voted to adopt them; four voted against, and two were in abstention.

This means that the adopted recommendations will now form part of the contract between SCS and the M&CC and that the Communities Minister will have to sign off on a new set of by-laws.
Town Clerk Royston King told the Guyana Chronicle after the meeting that although he cannot say for sure just when paid parking will resume in the city, the City Council is definitely moving ahead with its work and does not see the recent court ruling as putting a damper on the project.

“I am not aware that the matter has been put on pause by the courts. There is a difference between the by-laws and the contract,” King said.
He agreed that the by-laws are what give enforceability to the contract, but maintained that the two are not the same. “The court pronounced on the perceived procedural error with respect to the processing of the by-laws, but the decision of the court has nothing to do with the metered parking contract.

“In my own view, all the court perceived was that there was a procedural error. And a procedural error can be corrected. The content of the by-laws was not in question. What was in question was the processing of the content of the by-laws; so it’s not the substance of the by-laws that was in question, but it was the process. So what we need to do is correct the process. Nothing was said about the substance,” King said.
An appeal to the ruling was filed last Tuesday, King disclosed.

Took advantage

In his remarks, the Deputy Mayor maintained that at no time was the parking meter contract voted on at a statutory meeting and that the project was shrouded in secrecy from the very beginning.

He also referred to the “outrageously” unfair split in profits where it is proposed that SCS will be getting 80 percent and the City Council, 20.
Jaikarran also argued that since the matter is before the court, he personally feels that the City Council should not go ahead with any negotiation. “Smart City is not the solution. You can put on lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day, it’s still a pig.”

People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Councillor Bishram Kuppen feels that the SCS team capitalised on the “inexperience” of the City Council’s team and got the Chairman of the negotiating committee to agree to a number of questionable terms.
Kuppen referred to the fact that it was central government which caused the suspension of the by-laws and not the City Council itself. He said a good conscience will not permit him to support the contract.

Alliance for Change (AFC) Councillor Sherod Duncan similarly pointed out that it was the government which stepped in to halt the project because it saw the flaws in the by-laws, which the city council failed to do anything about.

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green indirectly referred to Duncan as disrespectful when he said he would describe the project using the same word that US President Donald Trump used recently to describe Haiti, El Salvador, and some African nations.
Duncan claimed that SCS has not put down a single parking meter anywhere in the world and has proven its inexperience by placing them in front of schools and hospitals. “SCS is a bogus, sham of a company,” he said.

Chairman of the City’s Finance Committee, Councillor Oscar Clarke, offered that the contract with SCS is a binding one with the city, “…whether we like it or not.”
Councillor Alfred Mentore said he was not afforded enough time to peruse the committee’s report and gain feedback from his constituency because it was only provided to councillors on Tuesday afternoon.

He said he ought to be “thorough and shrewd” in what he does because he is representing all those in his constituency and that they should have been afforded an opportunity to make their input.

In supporting the project, Councillor Monica Thomas said there are some people who simply want to see the City Council fail.