The Municipal and District Councils Act needs updating

Dec 06, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
It is so embarrassing to have to repeat oneself, but one is resigned to the deafness that is so prevalent amongst our leaders, and more so their advisors. It continues to be a puzzlement as to why newcomer leadership to organisations of any kind, and more particularly public institutions, seem to convince themselves that they are inventing new wheels.
Why is it that they presume that there is no history, no record, no precedent; and consequently, in their innocence, they proceed to set directions devoid of any basis on validated facts? At the same time they appear to be oblivious to the possibility that there are citizens, including professionals, who may be better informed and therefore recognise the line -faults inherent in their communication exercises.
One must wonder therefore how so often there is little or no reference to the relevant laws on which the specific institution is founded so that there is a discernible lack of connectivity between those who aspire to leadership and those who pretend of followership. In the case of local government, for example, the Municipal and District Councils Act by which essentially these institutions are governed, makes no reference to ‘Communities’.
So that the groups recently targeted with the prospect of getting “together a dedicated taskforce…. to fast track this question of reform, and instituting a modern property assessment scheme, where tax burden can be more equitably distributed….” (KN Nov 20, 2016) must be extremely puzzled about its translation into productive action.
How many times does one have to publicise the fact that a most comprehensive valuation of the six Municipalities existing in 2004 was conducted under a donor-funded project called the Urban Development Programme. The latter was a highly sophisticated computerised exercise which, Google-like, captured every single structure in each Municipality, and developed a rational basis for an upgraded property tax system. The project extended over a two year period, and the Unit was intended to be fully incorporated into the well-established Valuation Division, then headed be Dennis Patterson, Chief Valuation Officer, father of the current Minister for Public Infrastructure.
Regrettably however, the authority in the then Ministry of Public Service at the time disbanded, in one fell swoop, the whole group of technicians involved. Consequently the continuity of the process was peremptorily disrupted. Notwithstanding, the records of the exercise were taken over by the Ministry of Finance where the Valuation Division now resides. A determined effort should be made to locate them. Incidentally the leader of that programme is still alive and professionally active.
The point to be made, however, is that proper taxation and its legal structure could not possibly be the responsibility of novice Councillors and their leadership. There could be no argument (political or otherwise) that any changes must be founded in the revision of laws, but by the competent authority only, obviously with consultation.
In the meantime the latter should pay heed to the urgency of updating the very Municipal and District Councils Act, wherein the apportionment of authority between Town Clerk and Council is much too diffuse, and the former, certainly in the case of the Mayor and City Councillors of Georgetown, such authority is exploitably exercised.
E.B. John