And in other news, the Belize City Council is ending this year on a higher note than last year, financially wise. According to the mayor, their revenue collection has increased significantly, however, there are still owed millions of dollars by city residents. And he says you can't expect better streets and infrastructure if you don't pay your taxes.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"Significant, big difference. When COVID hit us, our revenue fell in the neighborhood of 28/29 million to roughly 22 million so we were in the deficit between 7-5 million in revenues that did not come in. We are still owed by the residents of this city, over 30 million and I will continue to harp on that. We want to continue to encourage residents, property owners, businesses that we need the revenue to try and drive the change you see on your streets, your infrastructure, but if we don't collect how will we be able to really make some impact in terms of infrastructure. I know many of the streets in Belize City are in a deplorable condition and I will tell you straight up, we haven't been able to do the number of streets we would want. First reason, we have had horrible weather, the weather has been brutal, this entire year we didn't have any stretch of dry season and so that has really impeded our progress in that area, hopefully as we jumpstart in January, we are able to get some measure of infrastructure done in the city."
