The City Council has rejected a $100,000 from the Tourism Board and has vowed now to take, "all available options" to force government to give up all $374,000 that it is owed. This comes after a week of contentious back and forth between the City Council and the BTB. When a truce was reached on Tuesday, the council expected that the BTB would forward all $374,000 in arrears. But not so fast, the BTB said the money is tied to a project and it has to see proof that the project is coming along. Well that doesn't cut it for City Hall. Today Mayor Zenaida Moya told us that if the gentlemen lawyers can't reach an agreement there are alternatives that CITCO can employ.
Zenaida Moya, Belize City Mayor
"Our position was that unless they give us the check for the full amount as they had indicated they would have done on Tuesday, we would not accept anything else unless of course it is for more but clearly not less than the $378,000 because it is a slap in the face. The whole reason why the Belize City Council even backed down or held off, temporarily held off any actions that it would have taken was because we were informed by the Leader of the Opposition, by our Party Leader, that a deal was struck between the Minister of Tourism Mr. Godfrey Smith, and the Prime Minister Mr. Said Musa and himself.
I must inform and it must be noted to all that three of them are lawyers but they are not just regular lawyers, they hold very high and prominent posts, posts that we should take, we should in fact hold them to their word when they speak. So clearly when we have both the Prime Minister, the leader of the land, and the Minister of Tourism backing down and not living up, not honoring that particular agreement, it leaves the Belize City Council and clearly the UDP with no other recourse but to state that we are not going to be accepting that check for $100,000.
We have been undergoing a lot of abuses and victimization from central government, from the time we took office as a City Council. And we have been dialoguing, we have been meeting, we have been trying to go the proper route. Really really we have been doing so over the past ten months but to no avail.
We feel that enough is enough and clearly our party has indicated the same position so whatever happens shortly, I must say that it is something that would have been brought clearly by the arrogance and clearly the disrespect of the PUP and their government.
We had already indicated if we did not get the monies, we would have been going the route of mass demonstrations. And thereafter whatever the Belize City Council is legally obligated to do or can actually do within its authority, it certainly looks like we will be going that route."
There is no indication when CITCO will make its first move but with the current atmosphere it would definitely be during a cruise ship day. Yesterday the Council's position was bolstered when the National Trade Union Congress of Belize sent out a release supporting the City Council and other local government bodies call to receive a larger and fairer share of public revenues to maintain and enhance the infrastructures of municipalities.
