Garbage tax on water bill to be reality

Darrell Bradley

The intensive work project in the city is necessary, and actually long overdue, but the reality is that the Belize City Council does need to service the Bond to ensure the continuation of the project, and that means that revenue collection has to be streamlined and enhanced. And one way in which the Council plans to collect more revenue is a garbage tax. It’s been talked about for some time now, but word from Mayor Bradley today is that for all intents and purposes it is a done deal.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“It’s a done deal in the sense that we are meeting with Belize Water Services Limited and we are meeting with the Solid Waste management Authority to finalize the implementation of it. We are having a public forum Thursday of this week at the YWCA and we’re going to hear concerns from residents but that’s a thing which we have been talking about several months and it will become a reality. We have halted because we want to be sure that we are charging exactly who we should be charging and we wanted to allow maximum amount of time for public criticism but that’s thing which is going into effect. It is necessary on the part of the municipality because we need it to service the bond and the Solid Waste Management Authority needs a portion of it to continue their Solid Waste Management Project.”

Reporter

“What kind of fees are you looking at?”

Darrell Bradley

“Well the business part of it, we have not finalized as yet. There will be a tipping fee on top of what businesses pay and it’s going to be a very, very small fee. I understand that that fee is going to be around five dollars but I don’t want to speak before all parties have been able to agree on the amount. What we’re looking for the residential garbage fee, we’re looking for a fee of twelve dollars.”

We’ll have more from Mayor Bradley in Wednesday’s newscast.