At its last statutory meeting held on April 8th, the Mayor and City Council [M&CC] raised the issue of the outstanding works yet to be completed on its Administrative Building.
At the commencement of their discussion, Mayor Alfred Mentore called upon the council’s Treasurer to provide an update on the Council’s budget preparations. He responded that the Council will receive the budgetary layout this week.
Mentore then asked if any money remained from the 2023 budget that had been allocated for the completion of the Administrative building on Charlotte Street. He said that the 2024 budget ought to have monies also allocated towards the completion of the building “even if it is just two floors”. “I am putting on notice that whatever we do we have to allocate funds for that.”
Town Clerk Candace Nelson informed Mentore that there were discussions about the 2024 state subvention being directed towards the completion of the building, however, that discussion included the suggestion that alternatively, the subvention can go towards the acquisition of garbage trucks. At this point Mentore then questioned if monies remaining from the 2023 budget can be used instead.
APNU Councillor Clayton Hinds informed Mentore that “when the works had stopped on that building there were monies in an account; the monies were not used.” He then posed a question to the council, “This question is a critical one. I would like to know whether the monies that was put aside to carry out the works on that building, where is it?” Mentore interjected saying that the question was answered before and that the monies that came from government were used for that purpose. “We as a council were supposed to have allocated monies… budgeted funds towards that.” He reiterated that the council now has to allocate monies towards the completion of the building from the 2024 budget, “We have to ensure it is something we don’t miss in our budgetary cycle”.
PPP/C councillor Patricia Chase-Green informed the council of a few uncertainties that she had about a “$25m dollars” which was allocated for the completion of the building although she was not sure of the year. According to Chase-Green, who has served on the council since 1994, “I can’t recall if it is 2022 or 2023… this missing $25m dollars… the year was coming to an end and the building wasn’t complete… if my memory serves me right is that instead of sending the money right back to the ministry, the contractor was given that monies to do works.” Chase-Green, a former mayor, said that she was part of a sub-committee tasked with finding the missing funds. Mentore said that what he was certain about is that the monies were granted by the Ministry of Local Government and allocated towards the contractor.
The City Engineer when called by the Mayor to provide an explanation said, “The contractor was paid a certain amount of monies. When the stuff were measured, the monies paid to the contractor and works completed were not enough which led to a quantity surveyor having to do submissions of his findings at a finance committee meeting. It is actually the same cost that we would have said… I believe it’s about 6 or 7 million dollars.”
The Mayor thanked the City Engineer. Mentore told the council that repairs are all that need to be done now during this budgetary cycle. “We have to allocate funds towards that to at least finish the building or three quarters of it.” Mentore also explained that the M&CC has overpaid the contractor for the works done on the said building and that of the $25m that was allocated, “most of it we paid to the contractor.” Councilor Chase-Green exclaimed “wow” twice to which the mayor responded, “You could say ‘wow’”.
APNU councillor Leland Saul then proffered, “We had an engineer monitoring the project throughout the phase. He must be disciplined… we cannot allow these things to happen.” Saul wanted to know what will happen since the council cannot allow these occurrences to continue and recommended that the Human Resource Committee deal with it.
“It’s [happening] too often,” he stressed, “dereliction of duty and I hope that this matter will be brought in front of us,” Saul declared. Mayor Mentore agreed that the issue is something that needs to be addressed and said that the contractor and supervising engineer should be held responsible. “It is something to be addressed and looked at,” the Mayor said. The Town Clerk then indicated to the Mayor that the Council is yet to decide on how to recover the difference. She questioned whether the Council will ask the contractor to do additional works on the building. Mentore said the matter will have to be “pronounced” on or legal actions will have to be taken.
