Dear Editor,
Over time, the majority of Councillors expressed grave dissatisfaction over the strange behaviour of the acting Town Clerk, Ms Carol Ryan Sooba, and out of sheer frustration did something unprecedented by leaving the council chamber as long as Ms Sooba was occupying the chair.
The background to Council’s frustration is as follows:
* When the position of the Town Clerk was vacant in July of 2012, the elected Mayor and Councillors did not identify Ms Sooba as the officer to act until the process to identify a Town Clerk was completed.
* Ms Sooba was identified by the Minister to act as Town Clerk
* In spite of his misgivings and the concerns expressed by members of staff and Councillors, the Mayor sought the cooperation of the Town Clerk (ag) and was at all times willing to establish a harmonious relationship in the interest of the city. However, it soon became clear that this was not possible since the Town Clerk (ag) is consistently flouting decisions of Council and obviously wishes to manage the affairs of Council like a dictator. This culminated in a very disrespectful and insubordinate letter in a reply to the Mayor’s request for a meeting of all staff to discuss the restoration of Georgetown.
* As a result of her memo, the Mayor by letter requested the immediate removal of the Town Clerk (ag).
*As a result of that letter, the Minister summoned a meeting in his office on Monday, 15th April 2013, and three issues emerged,
1. The Minister asked us to withdraw the request for the immediate removal of Ms Sooba since he promised to speed up the process of identifying a new Town Clerk as a result of the applications he had received. We expressed some disquiet but perforce that was the Minister’s position.
2. The Minister deemed Ms Sooba’s memo to the Mayor as insubordinate and unacceptable. As such he asked her to withdraw the said memo dated April 12, 2013 and make an
apology. Ms Sooba’s response was that she will consider the Minister’s proposal.
3. The Minister advised Ms Sooba that she should only deal with the media on administrative matters and recommended that she utilize the PRO more. In other words, she should not engage the media in extraneous matters.
It is to be noted that after weeks, the Town Clerk has neither withdrawn the letter nor apologized, but in fact, summoned a meeting of the media for 10am on Friday, 10th May, 2013 and the Mayor was advised half hour before. At that press briefing the Town Clerk dealt with issues which are currently under consideration by the Council.
The straw that broke the camel’s back are two recent events:
1. In the case of minutes of a previous statutory meeting related to the motion by Councillor John, the Town Clerk sought to reverse the vote count ‒ a clear falsehood and deception.
2. The Minister requested a representative of Council to sit on the interviewing panel to consider the vacancies for four senior positions. When the Mayor sought, by round robin, to identify the Councillor to represent the Council on that interviewing panel, Ms Sooba told the Mayor that she was instructed by Minister Whittaker that the person should be identified from among the administration (her staff).
In conversation with the Minister as recently as this morning [yesterday], that proved to be a total untruth.
Councillors feel strongly that we could not go on; the Town Clerk (ag) is not only arrogant and disrespectful but mendacious.
Yours faithfully,
Hamilton Green
Mayor
