Anyone who listened to or read of the press conference held last Monday by the Mayor of Georgetown, Patricia Chase-Green on the visit of her team to Mexico in connection with the parking meters project would instantly come away with the view that the city is a hotbed for machinations more associated with some medieval enclave rather than a municipality born of democratic elections and aspiring to transparent, open and accountable governance.
The mayor’s explanation for no disclosure of the controversial contract on the grounds that it was a “private document of the administration” is redolent of the most antediluvian thinking. There can be no such thing as a “private document” when it pertains to the interests of hundreds of thousands of the city’s denizens, mandates that they pay tolls and utilises public spaces and property. The mayor and her team have that completely wrong. Even more ludicrous was the mayor’s declaration that the contract was locked away for fear of the idea being stolen. It wasn’t much of an idea in the first place and who could really impose a parking meters deal on the city without its acquiescence? Oh yes, the PPP/C could but they are gone now. The new council faced no risk whatsoever of the parking meters idea being hijacked from it given that it now has a friendly government in place.
What was clear from the sequence of events and the outcome is that there was a clandestine plan in place at the former city council to favour National Parking Systems/Smart City Solutions (NPS/SCS) with a deal for the parking meters. Thus far nothing has been presented by the city that remotely answers two pivotal questions: are parking meters needed and if so who is the best provider of this service and in what form?
It is unfathomable that the Mayor who was elected as Chief Citizen on April 1st this year following the first local government elections since 1994 would have the audacity to tell a brand new council that they must rubber stamp a secret contract sealed in November of 2015 with NPS/SCS. Can the mayor indeed be so insensitive to democratic norms to believe that a deal born of a period that represented the atrophying of local government could be foisted on a council that was meant to signal a rebirth and the embedding of transparency? And exactly who on the 2015 council blessed this deal and why wasn’t it submitted to the full council then for discussion before being finalised? Did the city’s lawyers examine this deal for legal jeopardies before signature? If so where is this validation of the deal? The most that would have been tolerable was for the newly-elected mayor to present to the new council the proposed terms of the deal as crafted last November for full examination prior to a final decision.
This was unfortunately not done and the handling of this matter has already tainted the new council -or at least some of its leading lights – as being unworthy of this new dispensation. It must have dawned by now on the Mayor, the Town Clerk and the two other councillors that journeyed to Mexico and Panama that one never signs a contract and undertakes due diligence thereafter. This is even more scandalous in a contract that reputedly binds the city for 50 years and engenders the charging of tariffs over this period with likely escalator clauses and no known basis on which decisions are made and challenged. This is thoroughly unacceptable and cannot stand.
As the Sunday Stabroek editorial of June 19 said:
“Given the lack of public consultation on the proposed meters; the absence of debate on the pros and cons; the failure to lay all matters connected with the project before the city council; the apparent lack of research on options regarding who should be contracted to implement the project; the seeming insubstantiality of the company which was selected; and the clandestine nature of the contract with that company, the only sensible thing at this stage is for the whole parking meter programme to be suspended, if not aborted altogether.”
A cautionary tale for any attempt at an imposition of the parking meters deal is the fate of the East Street paid parking lot which was established by the council in January but which has been largely boycotted by residents.
As the condemnation of the deal from all sectors mounts, Mayor Chase-Green has only one clear choice: put the parking meters contract on hold with the intention of cancelling it. If after further discussion with the council and the city’s stakeholders the view remains that parking meters be proceeded with, then the city should embark on an entirely new process and invite proposals in a manner that would cohere with the transparency and fairness that must govern this council.
If the Mayor declines this course of action, it will be left to the councillors of the city to establish where they stand on this absurdity. Fifteen of these councillors represent constituencies and it is their bounden obligation to seek the views of those who reside in their areas on this project. The majority of the remaining 15 have been appointed by APNU and they will have to decide where they stand on principle and fairness. Those on the council who oppose this deal should seek an early opportunity via a motion to voice their concern and invite debate. A vote on such a motion would set out clearly to the public on which side of transparency these councillors stand.
There is also a role in this matter for the APNU+AFC coalition as distinct from the executive. The last thing the coalition should want is behaviour at the local government level that disregards fairness and openness in contracts of this kind. It would be the coalition’s responsibility to seek explanations from its councillors on where they stand and provide its views while allowing them autonomous action. The constituent parties of APNU in particular should be concerned at the turn of events. Interestingly, the last edition of the New Nation, the organ of the PNCR and the main component of APNU, carries a full-page advertisement on the virtues of the NPS/SCS parking deal.
Just months into a fresh mandate that holds out so much hope and promise, the city council finds itself mired in a transaction that cannot pass muster. It must extricate itself from this soonest.
