The Belize City Council will get a check for a little more than $370,000 from the Belize Tourism Board tomorrow. Mayor Zenaida Moya confirmed this to us today. The money represents payments for November, December, and January, arrears which the BTB had not paid in accordance with the memorandum of understanding it signed with the Council. The money comes directly after a cruise tourism crisis was averted last night when the head-tax standoff was broken by United Democratic Party Leader Dean Barrow. Mayor Zenaida Moya and her Belize City Council threatened to take unspecified actions, presumably to disrupt cruise tourism busses and thereby force the Tourism Board to give the council one U.S. dollar from the head tax charged to each cruise visitor who enters Belize. With 3 ships docked and as much as 7,000 cruise passengers traveling on 60 busses - today could have been a category 5 embarrassment for cruise tourism. But it wasn't. For answers to why, Keith Swift takes us back to yesterday.
Keith Swift Reporting,
With three ships in port - today thousands of cruise visitors embarked on tours in as many as 60 buses.
And those busses moved freely across the city - without hindrance and with the usual assistance of City Council personnel. But all that is, might not have been and the forecast for today had been ugly...until this announcement was made at 6:30 last night at City Hall by Mayor Zenaida Moya.
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
[Monday evening] "The Minister of Tourism and the Prime Minister have agreed that the monthly disbursements calculated with reference to the US$1 from the head tax, and which were not paid by the BTB in accordance with a monthly scheduled it had submitted to the council, is to be immediately returned. Those disbursements total $824,466.80 for the period September 2006 to March 2007, but had been unilaterally suspended by the BTB in October 2006...The council has also undertaken to call off the actions scheduled for tomorrow, in order to give an opportunity for the new agreement to work."
Under that agreement - the Tourism Board will transfer to the City Council about $824,000 as funds to build an arts and craft vendor market. The accommodating Mayor Moya at 6:30 was a far cry from the militant Moya who at 1:30 demanded the US$1 head tax which she said her council would get - and not money from an MOU.
Zenaida Moya,
[Monday afternoon] "Whatever MOU was signed, when they will dictate to us what we must and can do with the money, we take offense to that. This Belize City Council is an elected body. We do not feel that we should be receiving a portion of what the BTB feels they should give us. So what gives them the right to dictate how much money this elected body should receive?"
That is of course the same MOU they agreed to accept last night. So what changed between 1:30 and 6:30? That's the question we asked the mayor.
Keith Swift,
You said you were against this MOU because you don't want to be taking orders from any BTB Director. What has changed between 1:30 and now, being 6:30?
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
"Keith in terms of that MOU, what we stated was that 1) they were directing what we should spend this money. At the end of the day we do not want the situation to continue, that we have to continue be getting money from BTB. That stands, that is why we stated that this does not prejudice us from going full speed ahead in terms of getting our US$1 passed into law."
That change of heart also has to with the intervention of Moya's party leader Dean Barrow. Barrow, at the request of tour operators, advised the council to
retreat from their hard line.
Hon. Dean Barrow, UDP Leader
"I checked with the Mayor and she and I agreed that subject to what the council had to say, it would be perhaps a good thing to ratchet down the tension, to give any commitment that the Prime Minister would make a chance to work and I think that is what happened.
So basically all that is happening is that, as I understand it, the Mayor and council are signaling their willingness to give peace a chance but if it turns out that there is any bad faith or if genuinely there has been some misunderstanding which results in the council not getting the money that had already been committed, then we resort to all the options that we had first threatened."
And that's fine by Mayor Moya who says all her council really wanted is their money.
Zenaida Moya,
"Clearly if we had already received this checks, I don't see why this council, and I don't believe this council, would have had to resort to all the campaign that we have had to do."
Hon. Dean Barrow,
"Under the MOU, for monies to be disbursed, it appeared that the council would have to prepare projects. So what the Mayor was reacting against was this notion that she had to go cap in hand on a monthly basis. What we are agreeing to now is that fine, the council is prepared to put in the arts and craft vendors' market. Subject to that, these monies are to be disbursed on the fixed basis with no other conditionalities. So the undignified business of going cap in hand on a monthly basis to the BTB would be absent and I think that is a fundamental distinction."
Zenaida Moya,
"We just want our US$1. Our party leader has made it clear that he would be willing to go to the House and ensure that he fights on behalf of the residents of Belize City for this US$1 to be passed into law."
And that perhaps will be the real battle ahead.
Leader of the Opposition Dean Barrow has said that if he has to he will table a bill in the House of Representatives for the City Council to receive the US$1 from the head tax. Again as per the MOU, the Belize Tourism Board will pay the City Council US$824,000 build the arts and craft vendors' market. That amount is part of a $1.3 million payout to City Hall. No word on when or if that vendors' market will be built.
It's worth noting that expecting the worst, the police riot squad arrived in the city with their gear last night. They returned to Belmopan today.
