Fresh from a sobering enquiry into the operations of City Hall, the Georgetown municipality has used its 2010 budget to signal an intended shift in its management style that promises to include a re-evaluation of its ‘business dealings’ with private contractors recruited to support the delivery of some of its core services to the capital and its environs.
A five-page introduction to this year’s municipal budget published as part of an overall 67-page presentation signals an apparent preparedness by City Hall to take a tough line with contractors recruited by the municipality and whom, the document says, deliver shabbily done work, “not according to any technical or professional standard.”
City Hall says it will take “a new approach” to its engagements with private contractors, which approach, according to the budget presentation, is aimed at ensuring that the municipality secures more value for money.
The promised tough line on sub-standard work by private contractors signaled by City Hall coincides with what Chairman of the recent Commission of Enquiry into the operations of City Hall Keith Burrowes says is an effort to push the Council in the direction of “significantly” raising delivery service standards in the capital. Following his completion of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry Burrowes is currently overseeing efforts by City Hall to evolve and implement a new management culture, underpinned by a more professional approach to managing the city’s resources. Burrowes insists that relationships between City Hall and the urban business sector arising out of contractual arrangements must, of necessity, be underpinned by measures to
ensure that that both private contractors and officers of the municipality can be held to account in pursuit of the delivery of higher service standards.
Last year and in previous years, lack of capacity to independently execute its solid waste disposal responsibilities forced the Council to rely heavily on the resources of private contractors, pushing its 2009 solid waste disposal bill to more than $300m. As the Council fell behind in its payments, the private contractors periodically withdrew their services resulting in temporary disruption of the urban waste disposal regime.
Meanwhile, there are also indications in the 2010 budget that City Hall’s “partnership with the private sector will extend beyond overseeing the efficient delivery of services to the capital by contractors. If the municipality is to improve the quality of its service to the capital it will have to rely on the support of the private sector in several other critical ways. In its assessment of the factors affecting municipal service delivery in the capital, City Hall’s 2010 budget cites some causes that are attributable, either wholly or in part, to delinquency among private sector entities. The budget, for example, cites a reckless urban waste disposal culture, for which sections of the business community are partly to blame for the City’s drainage problems. Noting that 70 per cent of annual blockage of drains is as a result of plastics the budget states the business sector is “the major generator” of plastic waste.
The City Hall budget presentation also points an accusing finger in the direction of the private sector for the environmental and sanitation difficulties facing the capital, citing tardiness in the registration of several urban business houses including hotels, barbers and hairdressers as a factor that impacts on the effectiveness of the monitoring function carried out by municipal functionaries.
The budget presentation also points to initiatives undertaken in 2009 which had already commenced a process of building partnerships with the private sector including the completion of the Water street New Vendors’ Mall for itinerant vendors and the relocation of 150 vendors inside the Mall, the inspection and registration of food establishments in the city, the examination and licensing of urban food handlers and the licensing of more than 200 barbers in the city.
The current focus in this year’s municipal budget on creating a “partnership” with the urban business community comes in the wake of previous efforts on the parts of the Council to work with the private sector through both the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and the Private Sector Commission (PSC) in various areas including the relocation of street vendors and the problems associated with the indiscriminate disposal of commercial waste. The completion of the Water street arcade has brought only limited alleviation of the problem of street vendors while the two urban private sector umbrella organizations have been less than successful in their appeals to downtown business houses to cultivate more responsible waste disposal habits.
One issue that could challenge efforts to create an enhanced relationship between City Hall and the private sector is the protracted delinquency of some business houses in the payment of outstanding rates and taxes. Burrowes himself has pointed out that the success of this year’s efforts to effect levels of rates collection that will help finance the City’s expenditure under its 2010 budget will depend as much on the cooperation of ratepayers in the commercial sector as on the efforts of the municipality to effect collections.
