Mayor Bradley on Servicing CitCo’s BML Debt

Darrell Bradley

We also asked the Mayor for an update on the debt situation with Belize Maintenance Limited. When last we checked, the Council had been unable to make a lump sum payment on August twenty-ninth. That payment should have been for five weeks of arrears. But according to the Mayor that’s water under the bridge. There is a new agreement, the only one formally signed, between the Council and BML. And according to Bradley, they are keeping to their commitments where the new agreement is concerned.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“There’s only one agreement that we’ve signed off on. There’s been a series of discussions that we’ve had with them. There’re ongoing discussions that we’re having with them in terms of working out peripheral issues because we do have a substantial judgment that they have against the City Council that we’re dealing with. There is one agreement that we entered into about two weeks ago that was signed off by myself and Mr. Chebat who is the attorney for BML. And that committed to specific dates and the first payment date is the last day of this month when the five weeks are to be paid, and then we’re also supposed to make a payment of three weeks on the ending of October. We also committed that we would have made two fifty-thousand dollar payments which we have already, and we agreed with them that we are not going to pay them anything less than ten thousand dollars every week. All of the agreements that we have made with them which the date has passed for performance…we’ve always performed, so that right now we are paying them the nominal amount of ten thousand just to assist with their cash flow. We recognize that it’s a substantial amount that we owe them, but we’re trying to service the debt as best as we can and we anticipate that we will be in a much better position come November when our so-called high season is upon us, and then we can retire the debt sooner. In our agreement also it says that we are supposed to pay off everything by the last day of February. All our projections and analysis show that we will be able to do that.”