And while the Ministry Of National Security was sending the Mexicans home, the Minister of Finance was meeting with the City Council. 9 Councillors and the Mayor traveled to Belmopan yesterday to meet with the P.M. in the Cabinet room. They were there to talk about the two crises gripping City Hall. The first is that the council is dead broke and was only able to meet its commitments with a $250,000 bailout from Government last Friday. The second is that the council is deeply divided over the Mayor’s one-hundred and eight thousand dollar a year salary. Two weeks ago, 9 of those Councilors took a decision that she should refund it. Those were the pressing administrative and political issues that forced the scheduling of the meeting. The Prime Minister today announced that they have found a financial and a political way forward.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“We had a very very useful discussion. I am certainly satisfied that there are real viable concrete plans for the council to deal with this solvency issue. Once that is so then government will be happy to assist. Politically, there was one councillor who wasn’t present, everybody else pledged to work together, to support the Mayor, and ultimately I felt that the meeting was extremely useful and provided some thing of a breakthrough.
On the question of the Mayor’s salary, it was agreed that the resolution of the council which had fixed the salary at $6,000 per month was and is a valid resolution and that is what must govern going forward. In terms of what the Mayor has already received, it is my sense that the council agreed to accept that the Mayor’s position is a genuinely held position, the Mayor’s position which is that there was a miscommunication and there was a misunderstanding because she had felt that the agreement was that her salary would not be less than what the previous Mayor was getting.
But going forward we certainly know that the salary has to be what was approved by the council way back in 2006, that is $6,000 per month.”
Jules Vasquez,
How does this help us? I understand that it helps the council and the house of UDP but how does it help those who live in the city and have a problem living in filth.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“Your penchant for the dramatic has dimmed not one wit. Living in filth, your words not mine. A number of the commercial houses, it is alleged, have paid people just to dump the garbage any old place. That situation has to be regularized and so the council will take on the responsibility for collection of the commercial garbage, no doubt through Waste Control because the Council doesn’t actually do the collection itself and will charge an appropriate fee so that this can get done. You made several value judgements in the question that you asked but they are value judgements that judging from the size of the convention, the good people of the city don’t share.”
The Auditor General’s office is supposed to finish with its audit in two to three weeks. The question at that time will be whether or not the Mayor will be made to refund the amount that she has been overpaid. It is an issue fraught with difficulty for the UDP. First, because of her convention win, Mayor Moya, probably correctly, feels politically invincible – and challenging her might be politically unwise. But as the UDP are fond of saying, right is right, and so we’ll have to see how it plays out.
The PUP we know are not so fond of saying right is right, but the party sent out a release today and it springs from that same moral high ground. The release says that quote, “While the United Democratic Party Government seems inclined to dismiss this matter, the PUP is concerned about the Mayor’s abuse of power.” It calls on the Ministry of Local Government to make the full report of their findings available to the public.
