A team from the Ministry of Local Government and the Municipality Service Department is currently working with the town clerk, treasurer and senior clerk of the Linden Municipality towards the completion in a week’s time of the town’s 2013 budget estimates.
The goal is to have the budget completed and submitted by next weekend the Government Information Agency (GINA) said in a press release yesterday.
The first working session with the municipal service officers, Floyd Patterson and Fabian Jerrick, was held on Wednesday in the presence of the Permanent Secretary of the Local Government Ministry, Collin Croal.
Croal explained that the exercise, which will stretch until the end of the next week and which started in Linden, is to give support and advice to the municipality workers in finalizing the 2013 budget estimates and that November 15 was the official deadline for the six municipalities to submit their 2013 budget estimates. Some of them, the release stated, had just presented a draft and this included Linden.
Croal also said that Minister within the Ministry, Norman Whittaker, had taken the decision to assign the officers of the ministry’s municipal service to work with the municipalities in completing and finalizing their 2013 budgets.
Meanwhile, Patterson said that municipal workers are computing some figurers which were submitted in draft and are looking at introducing new initiatives to broaden the municipality’s revenue base. Among these is a fourth shift at the Linden toll booth to capture the loss of revenue from those leaving the town in the night and heading to Georgetown with lumber, the release said.
