City Hall’s rates not consistent with services – Councillor

As the Mayor and City Council suffers from a deficit budget every year, some members have shared their opinion that the municipality is not charging adequate rates for the services offered.
During a recent engagement at City Hall, Councillor Ivelaw Henry told a Trinidadian-based team that there are many established buildings which are paying pintsized rates.
“The rates and taxes are not consistent with services given. There are many buildings within the area that are paying next to nothing. I’m saying that you have five story buildings paying cottage rates,” Henry shared.
This is coupled with their deficit budget— a shortfall by millions of dollars. As a result, liabilities amount to billions of dollars.
“We’ve been working with a deficit budget from the time we started. It’s just below $3B, but every year you have like $200M to $300M in deficit. What happened previous to the budget is you have a liability situation which carries onto now. They have billions of dollars in liabilities within the municipality”.
During the Commission of Inquiry last year to dive into the operations at City Hall, it was heard that Giftland Mall had not paid any taxes to the Council for four years. The company stated that it was awaiting an agreement to carry out the demanded payments amounting to over $25 million.
However, earlier this week, City Treasurer John Douglas insisted that the Council is involved in activities which bear no financial benefits to the Council. On the other hand, they are heavily dependent on rates and taxes to subsidise their operational costs. For this, the municipality should need to implement other revenue streams.
“We need to be more diverse in our revenue streams. We’re too dependent on rates and tax, which have shown over the years that rates and tax cannot carry this organisation for that is required. You look at solid waste. We pick up the waste, it costs us hundreds of millions per year. We don’t get no revenue stream from solid waste,” he shared.
Other highlighted areas where the Council does not benefit include waterfront activities and increased security presence.
“The population in the city is growing. Street vending is growing. Hence, the need for more security…We don’t get no earning from those vehicles traversing the city. You have boats, ships using our waterfront. We don’t generate any revenue from any such activities”.