Six months after the city of Georgetown began implementing its 2016 Budget, the council has failed to formally present the budget for approval or to make it available for inspection by the general public.
This failure is in direct contravention of the stipulations of the Municipal and District Council’s Act and raises questions about the legality of the city’s expenditure this year.
According to Section 155 of the Act, copies of the estimates [budget] approved by council shall be open for public inspection at its offices and notice thereof shall be published by council and the notice shall refer to the right of inspection.
Section 156 of the Act further provides for the public to inspect a written report containing accounts of all monies received, expended and applied during the preceding year.
Several attempts made by Stabroek News over the last few months to ascertain why this stipulation has not been adhered to has failed to generate a coherent response.
Chairman of the Finance Com-mittee Oscar Clarke told Stabroek News that the previous council failed to publicly table the document because local government elections “caught up with them”. Clarke was a member of that council. He could not state why this present council has also failed to do so.
“We were supposed to have done it but the elections caught up with us and we weren’t able to. Since this new council came in there has been no discussion about tabling the 2016 budget,” Clarke said.
Town Clerk Royston King when questioned offered the same explanations. When asked if the Town Clerk’s office has any intention of suggesting this item be placed on the agenda for council’s statutory meeting anytime soon, King offered no response.
Though this stipulation has not been adhered to, the council is currently pursuing a half year review of the budget and drafting the 2017 budget.
According to Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, the Finance Commit-tee “will be looking at which projects have been successfully completed in the first half of the year and which projects are still to be completed so the work programme can be adjusted if necessary.”
City Hall has admitted to being in over $200M worth of debt on projects which were not budgeted for.
According to Town Clerk Royston King “the municipality is indebted to all its contractors.”
Clarke has also told Stabroek News that the council is expected to have a large deficit on the 2016 budget.
“We had a deficit in 2015 and we are expecting a larger deficit in 2016,” he said, adding that the city has applied to central government for assistance in meeting its financial commitments.
