All’s Well with City Hall’s Finances Despite Crowfooting of Mayor’s Vehicle

Darrell Bradley

In December 2013 the Belize City Council owed Belize Waste Control over five hundred thousand dollars, and that was whittled down to fifty-nine thousand dollars. That’s the amount which resulted in the Court’s Marshall crow-footing the Mayor’s vehicle last week to recover that debt. Now that would suggest serious financial woes at the Council, but Mayor Darrell Bradley says nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he maintains that the financial position of the Council has improved tremendously under his watch.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“Every single year we’ve been in litigation with them around this time of the year when the City Council isn’t really collecting any revenues from our own-sourced revenue which is our tax revenues. So that should be no surprise. What I want to assure members of the public is that we deal with our financial position very seriously. We have paid off a significant amount of our debt, debt that I inherited. One of the things which I would want to laud a little bit is that the first tranche of the municipal bond is being paid back now, and we have a surplus in the sinking fund at the Central Bank, and they are being paid back comfortably. We have paid four interest payments because that has been in place for two years now, and the first tranche was a two year maturity date, and that’s being repaid as we speak, so the financial position of the Council has improved tremendously from what I inherited. Notwithstanding that, I have always maintained that the cost for sanitation services is too high and we will always be in problems with the sanitation contractors through litigation or through some debt position, but when we come into our high season we always, always pay them off.”