THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) hopes to rake in an initial $50M into the City Hall Restoration Fund, which was officially launched on Wednesday evening at the Pegasus Hotel.

Consultations with the European Union (EU) have pegged the entire sum to restore the historic building at US$4.3M with Town Clerk Royston King, rounding the figure off to US$5M to cater for supervision expenses.

King anticipates that the money towards the fund will come from pledges, commitments and donations and, although the Government has not yet pledged a sum, he is confident that this will happen soon.

“I’m sure that Government will make a substantial contribution to the restoration of that iconic, historic building City Hall,” he told this newspaper.
Meanwhile, a consultation process with interested parties is set to begin next week, King said.

“We will invite stakeholders and other interested persons to sit with us and to talk with us and to discuss the model we can use for financing and restoring City Hall. This evening is part of a wider plan to provide finances for the Council to restore and preserve the City Hall building. It is of great significance to the City, it’s part of our heritage and I think we need to do all that we can, not only to restore, it but to preserve it,” the Town Clerk said.
The launching of the Restoration Fund was attended by Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, former Mayor of Georgetown Hamilton Green, Finance Committee Chairman Oscar Clarke and several others.

In her remarks, Chase-Green told of her experience during the tremor which hit Guyana on Tuesday afternoon, stating that such unexpected occurrences should further intensify the need for the restoration of the building.

“Yesterday afternoon at 5:30hrs, sitting in the City Hall chambers with the tremor, it was the most frightening experience I have had because I was in a meeting with Council Clarke, town clerk and the city engineer. But when I first felt it, I thought it was I who was feeling sick but then I said something is wrong…. We got up, the entire building started to rock and I was saying ‘don’t run, don’t run before it collapses!’ We were able to get out but it makes it more challenging now that… we really need to fix City Hall and bring it back,” she said.

The mayor further urged the public to pool all efforts towards restoring Guyana to ‘the Garden City’ it once was by taking care of their surroundings and being good well-standing citizens

“As we celebrate 175 years, I ask each and every citizen to work with us. Let us not relax… I appeal to you to let us please ensure that our surroundings are clean… pay your taxes, take advantage of the amnesty that we have so this City, you can be proud of,” she said.
The M&CC has started the 175th anniversary celebrations of Georgetown becoming a City on August 19 and will continue until August 25.