But politics aside, an immediate concern of the council tonight is cash. Mayor Moya confirmed to us that council is in what she calls slow season which has been compounded by unexpected expenditures. She however stopped short of calling her council “cash strapped.”
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
“The council, right now is the slow season. We are paying whatever we need to pay, the necessities. When it comes to dealing with different projects, we are not dealing with different projects, other than persons coming in and they are funding, privately funding projects. We are meeting our necessary obligations.”
Keith Swift,
So it is not a situation whereby next week checks will be bouncing? Let us say if for example if the subvention from government doesn’t come through next week that you won’t be able to pay the sanitation companies and employees.
Zenaida Moya,
“Well there is no reason why we should not get our subvention right and there is no reason why we should not get the monies outstanding to us so I see no reasons why any checks would bounce.
There are certain expenditures that have weighed heavily on the council. For example the 4 and a half mile building that we had to pay for which was $375,000. I mean they kicked us out, what could we do. We had to find a spot to place our workers. We also had the Commercial Center, the roof, the cost for them to do over the roof is $125,000. So again that is half a million dollars, $500,000 off the bat that we had to spend that it wasn’t budgeted for but we had to do it and it is something that has weighed in on the council but we are doing okay otherwise.”
Keith Swift,
Staff will be paid, BML will be paid, your bills will be paid?
Zenaida Moya,
“Yes we will honour whatever agreements we hold to the different contractors. We do pay I believe it is $101,000 per week to the sanitation companies and we will ensure that they get paid.”
That subvention from government is due on Tuesday. We note that none of the financials are audited and Mayor Moya says that is because countless requests for audits from the auditor general have been unanswered. Mayor Moya also informed us that she will be filing a civil suit for libel against the Belize Times for a headline with her picture and the caption “big thief.”
