In December of 2013, relations between the Belize City Council and the Belize Waste Control became tense and strained to the point where Waste Control wanted a bench warrant issued to jail the mayor!
Things got very tense when City Hall owed the sanitation company 15 weeks in arrears, and that was in addition to the 653 hundred thousand dollars that the Council had outstanding for a judgment debt that Mayor Bradley had committed to pay by December 20.
Mayor Bradley has finally cleared that debt, which previous councils ignored for over 10 years, and he's even brought down the arrears from 15 weeks to 5 weeks. But BWC says that's not enough.
They took the council to court for the rest of the arrears, which the Mayor says is unreasonable.
Mayor Bradley and attorneys for BWC appeared before the Chief Justice today in chambers where he outlined how the council will catch up with those 5 weeks. Afterwards, we asked Bradley for an interview, which he told us that he couldn't grant because he was late for a meeting. He did give one to our colleague at KREM News, where he explained in detail why he claims that BWC is being unreasonable:
Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City Council
"Waste Control is actually taking the City Council to court again in relation to the arrears that we admittedly owe them. We are discussing a payment schedule. As was indicated to members of the media, we were 15 weeks behind, I think think, this was mid-December. We're now at the point where we're now between 5 and 6 weeks behind in arrears. So, we are planning on settling that. I had indicated to them from the begining that we would equalize this by March, which is what we do every year. They have taken the step to sue us, even though we're paying on the day. I thought that that was unreasonable, and in bad faith, but it's their right to sue us if they so choose. So, of course, we made representations on behalf of the City Council. There is a certain portion of what they sued us for that we admitted that the contract provides that, at any given time, we can be in 4 weeks in arrears. So, technically, we're not in breach if we are 5 weeks in arrears. I mean, we only owe you one week. So, they are saying, 'Well, pay us all the 6 weeks.' But the countract lawfully provides that we could be 4 weeks in arrears. So, what we have said to them, is that, we are willing, and we would have brought this within a 4-week period by the end of this month, so that we would be within the terms of our contract. And we're trying to work that out, we're supposed to go back to court at 3 o'clock this afternoon to indicate to the judge whether or not we are agreed in terms of payment terms, and going forward in bringing this court matter to a close."
Alindy Marisol Amaya - Editor, Krem News
"But is it clear, and is it even the intention of the Council to always week it within 4 weeks?"
Darrell Bradley
"No, but the contract provides for that, and this is what I was saying from the very beginning. When you're dealing with a service provider like a sanitation company, and you're dealing with an entity like the Belize City Council, we're a governmental body. We process significant amounts of cheques every single day. It's usual that you would be in arrears. We do advertisements with Amandala Newspaper, and we're usually in arrears. When you send us an invoice, we don't make the cheque the same day. Sometimes, it takes us a week to pay you. It's usual when you're talking about a cheque payment of $57,000 per week to be in arrears. You don't pay that in the week; nobody has a system that efficient. So, the contract lawfully says that you could be 4 weeks in arrears because it contemplates what the sanitation service company does, and what kind of entity the City Council is. So, of course, we don't want to always be at 4 weeks, but if we're at 2 weeks, we consider that to be an acceptable limit, within the contract. And, we're trying to tell them, deal with us in good faith. We're trying to pay this thing down. It was at 15 weeks; now, we're at between 5 and 6 weeks. We're telling you in terms of agreeing to a payment schedule, that we're going to bring it down to a zero balance by March."
