Are Caye Caulker’s Finances in Order?

Seleny Pott-Villanueva

Village council elections will be held in Caye Caulker on June twenty-sixth, when three slates, including an independent ticket led by incumbent chair Seleny Pott-Villanueva, will be contesting the leadership of that island community.  But going into the weekend vote, there are concerns among some villagers regarding the financial state of the council.  In a letter to Chairlady Pott-Villanueva, dated April sixth, the Ministry of Rural Transformation raised a number of concerns, among them was failure to submit monthly financial reports, as well as bank reconciliations. That was several months ago. News Five reached out to the village chair this afternoon about the letter, as well as the measures that have been put in place in the wake of those concerns.

On the phone: Seleny Pott-Villanueva, Incumbent Chair, Caye Caulker Village Council

“It is important to clarify, you know, as the chairperson of Caye Caulker, I do not have a full-time position in my office.  I heavily rely on the administrator for the day-to-day operations and financials of the office.  I am the overseer ultimately, so when this letter came in with these recommendations from the Ministry of [Local Government] and Rural Transformation, I had to have an emergency meeting and I had to reprimand my staff and my administrator.  The changes were immediately made and we ensured that each clerk was responsible for their day-to-day closeout and day-to-day deposits.  We had asked them to send reports daily, so that was one of the main changes that we had done. Back when this was happening, the administrator had asked for two weeks holiday, so she was out on holiday.  When she came back, probably there was a backlog of work and the office was also transitioning from manual to Quickbooks, so all of that could have led to the backlog.  But we’re happy to say that we made the necessary changes and we know that going forward we have everything in order with the [Ministry of] Local Government, they were checking on us from May to June.  So we did a close-off today and we’re handing over all our documents.  As you know, Quickbooks is a very reliable accounting system so that is implemented and we believe that everything is up-to-date now.”