Deputy Mayor Robert Williams believes that citizens would be far more appreciative of the municipality’s shortcomings if they were more aware of its challenges
Deputy Mayor of the embattled Georgetown City Council Robert Williams says he would be the first to concede that the municipality is not without its shortcomings.
He believes, however, that critics of the council are likely to be far more understanding of its difficulties if they were to seek to secure a better understanding of the constraints under which it has to function.
Rates and taxes are the “lifeblood” of the municipality, the primary source of its income and Williams says that over the years the council has been hamstrung by the level of indifference on the part of both residential and commercial property owners towards the payment of rates and taxes. Defaulters, he believes, have turned their backs on their civic responsibility.
“Every single country, city and local democratic organ in any part of the world is required to collect taxes from property owners,” Williams says. Those taxes are intended to fund the delivery of services and to enhance the environment in which the taxpayers live. It follows that the quality of those services, the quality of the environment, will be impacted by the preparedness of the citizens to pay their rates and taxes.”
The deputy mayor says that not all of the citizens of the capital appear to appreciate the nexus between the payment of rates and taxes and the quality of the services they receive. Some citizens, he says, simply do not contemplate the issue of rates and taxes in the same manner that they contemplate the payment of their electricity and telephone bills. “In effect, some people simply take for granted the services that we provide.”
According to Williams, the Georgetown municipality provides more than 18 different services to the capital including garbage collection, maintenance of more than 1,000 miles of roads and 800 miles of drains, the running of Day Care Centres, the upkeep of a cemetery, the maintenance of street lighting and the operation of a City Constabulary in order to enforce the city by-laws and the protect more than 40 City Council-run premises. These services, he says, “are there, and people expect them to be there.
“What delinquency in the payment of rates and taxes effectively means is that a number of people are really getting a free ride.”
Williams says the current rates for property owners in all of the housing schemes are around $5,000 per year. “What is interesting is that if you ask them what they pay to weed the areas in front of their homes they will tell you around $2,000 to $3,000. If they do that ten times each year that amounts to between $20,000 and $30,000. Compare that with $5,000 per year for all of the services which the council has to provide.”
The deputy mayor says that what is interesting to note is that since 1997 and despite the significant increases in the costs of providing the various services, there has been no increase in taxes. “In effect, if you were paying $5,000 in property taxes in 1997 you are paying the same amount 12 years later,” Williams says.
Recently, the Georgetown City Council published the details of hundreds of defaulters in sections of the media in a ‘name and shame’ campaign which, and Williams says, resulted in some measure of response. The council, he says, has been able to continue to provide the services which it does only because it has been able to secure payment of significant sums from some persons who have been delinquent for several years.
He explains that while the council’s collection rate has risen from around 40 per cent in 1998 to between 75 and 80 per cent this year there are still a number of defaulters who continue to escape the net. Despite the significant increase in the council’s rate collection, its revenue flow remains inadequate.
The deputy mayor says the circumstances have compelled the council to secure a $50 million overdraft from a local commercial bank. “Our expenses now include servicing the interest on that overdraft,” he added.
The Georgetown City Council has come under sustained official pressure over what both citizens and government officials say is its inability to service the capital effectively. The primary targets of that criticism have been pot-holed streets, clogged drains and canals and garbage-infested
streets. Private contractors recruited by the council to provide a garbage collection service have frequently withdrawn their services over the failure of the municipality to meet their payments in a timely manner while late payment of salaries to City Hall staffers has become commonplace.
Sustained calls for an investigation into the running of City Hall led several months ago to the setting up of a Commission of Enquiry. Both the City Treasurer and the Town Clerk were sent on leave and the outcome of the enquiry contained in the Burrowes Report recommends an overhaul of the council’s operations.
Williams concedes that there are shortcomings at City Hall. He believes, however, that “life has been made far more difficult by delinquent taxpayers. “The simple truth is that the services that we provide have to be paid for,” he says.
As if its current woes are not enough Williams says what also concerns the municipality is the wait it has had to endure since 2002 for the implementation of a new property valuation that will effectively allow for an increase in rates and taxes. “The fact that the valuation has not been completed and submitted to us also means that we are unable to capture increases in rates which are due on those residential premises that were paying 40 per cent (of the assessed value of the property) as taxes but which are now operating as businesses and should be paying 250 per cent as taxes,” he said. The shortfall in denied revenue is staggering.
Williams says the valuation report which was completed under the IDB-funded Urban Development Programme is currently “either with the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Local Government. We have raised this matter with the President, the Finance Minister and the Local Government Minister and the bottom line is that we have still not been able to secure the report. As soon as we receive it we will be able to capture those properties that were reassessed since 1997.”
The deputy mayor says that to be asked to provide services at current prices with the same revenue base as was available in 1992 “in circumstances where we are not even able to collect all of that revenue is simply asking too much.”
The slow pace of litigation has made resort to the courts a ponderous process. “The problem here is that we have no choice. While GT&T and GPL can disconnect their services we have no option but to move to the courts,” he notes.
The list of defaulting properties that have been published in the newspapers has posed its own challenges since, as Williams explains, even if the ownership of some of those properties may have changed overtime it is the current owner that becomes liable for the taxes that may have been owed previously. “Taxes are levied on properties, not on persons. Irrespective of who owns the property, if the property owes taxes even the occupier can be taken to court.”
Then there are those businesses which Williams says have been wound up and which are still in default. He is unsure as to whether the council will ever be able to collect those taxes.
