It is a comforting thing that sections of the citizenry have opted to hold City Hall to account in the parking meter brouhaha, if only to make the point that its behaviour in the matter of the rolling out of the project runs counter to the very commitment that it made to democratic conduct when it took office to replace a predecessor administration that had itself been accused of, not infrequently, acting as a law onto itself.
So tasteless have been the instances of arrogant and intemperate behaviour by the backers of the project, that public opinion has been pushed to a point where it no longer seems to want to debate the pros and cons of the actual project; its anger is driven by the sheer feistiness of the Mayor, the Town Clerk and company.
It is true – and that is a good thing – that central government, under normal circumstances – is not authorized to halt the project though it seems, somehow, as though its backers at City Hall were embracing that fact as a substantive part of its public relations initiative, throwing it in the face of both their critics amongst the citizenry and the political administration itself. This kind of incremental brazenness, however, does not appear to be serving the Mayor et al in good stead and it is now not difficult to see how City Hall and the political administration – and specifically the President – might yet lock horns on the matter.
Tactically, the President appears to have zeroed in on what would appear to be the key weakness of the parking meter project – the inordinate financial burden its service charges seek to impose on vehicle owners. Whether through insensitivity or indifference, the people who set the toll would appear to have overlooked the fact that many, perhaps most of those who can afford what they are asking, don’t customarily park their cars in the capital anyway. Many of the vehicle owners who park in the city are what one might call pretty average citizens and they have made it clear that they will be unable to afford long-term parking in the city under the parking meter regime.
The posture of City Hall has made it appear as though its preoccupation is with the cash cow potential of the parking meter project. It does not appear to have taken account of the affordability of the exercise. President David Granger has and he has told City Hall so unambiguously. In effect, what he has done is to place the backers of the project where they are faced with a choice of dismissing the President’s sentiments on the issue – which, the independence of City Hall notwithstanding, would clearly not be a good thing for central government/local government relations, or addressing the matter of the rates.
But that is not City Hall’s only problem as far winning the backing of central government and the President is concerned. There is the public traction which the Deputy Mayor and some councillors have secured based on their objection to what they say is the absence of democracy and transparency in the process. Then, too, the President has committed himself to working with the municipal administration on the condition that its operations are democratic and transparent, conditions which, it would appear, place the parking meter project under scrutiny not so much for its own sake but for the manner in which it has been handled up until now.
That, it would appear, gives the backers of the project something to think about. The Mayor, the Town Clerk and the Treasurer among others, may be correct in saying that as far as the implementation of the parking meter project goes, they are not under central government’s orders so to speak. When it comes to other forms of support, however, particularly the financial bailout City Hall may well find itself seeking unless it gets its own financial administration act together, that is an entirely different story.
