Oscar Arnold is Deputy as Councilors Get Portfolios

The assignment of portfolios within the newly constituted Belize City Council has been finalized, with Oscar Arnold being named deputy mayor responsible for budgeting.  The exercise, according to Mayor Wagner, was carefully thought out and deliberate in order to find the ideal fit for each councilor.  While all ten members have been designated specific duties, the mayor himself assumes responsibility for anti-corruption, a platform on which they also campaigned.

Bernard Wagner

Bernard Wagner, Belize City Mayor

“We were elected on March seventh and certainly it took a little while for us to get the right fit.  We always felt that it was, we should ensure that we get the right fit and put people in positions where they are successful.  And so after mulling around, consultation and meeting with the councilors, we came up with that that we disclosed yesterday, where Oscar Arnold was unanimously chosen as our deputy mayor.  He also heads budgeting.  He will also head municipal court and special constables.  We have Albert Vaughn, a very astute councilor.  He will head works.  We have Dr. Candice Pitts.  We felt that she would succeed in the area of women and children, NGOs, sister city relations and after school programs, as well as foreign affairs.  So she would be able to lead in that area where it’s very close to her heart.  Micah Goodin, very bright young man, full of energy, [whom] we felt [was] technologically savvy.  We felt that management information systems, leading that program and trying to improve that area, along with youth and sports and training of the staff, he would be able to make some progress in that area.  We have Delthrude Hylton, she use to work with BERT, Councilor Deltrude Hylton and she will head the public health.  Allan Pollard, the youngest of the group, twenty-three-years-old but by no means not savvy enough in terms of his intelligence.  We felt that we wanted to bring new life into the traffic department and so we gave him the portfolio of traffic, along with community participation, public relations and special events.  All of those areas, we felt that he could succeed given his youth, youthfulness and given his networking capabilities.  Ryan Elijio, he’s a teacher, still teaching and we felt we wanted to ease him in as much as possible, so we gave him the area of tourism.  He’ll be working closely along with myself in that area.  He also takes on zoning and planning and the local building authority.  We also dealt with Javier Castellanos, he’s a business owner, so we felt the area of economic development, small business, trade and investment would certainly be an area where he felt comfortable and would be able to lead any sort of development, economic development on a local level.  Aisha Gentle, she’s from the Port Loyola area, activist in that area, has worked hard for this party and we gave her the area of market beautification, citizen engagement and parks.  Again, Aisha brings a lot of talent to the team, she’s people oriented, she’s grassroots.  So she should be able to succeed tremendously in that area.  And finally, we have Michael Noralez, a retired public servant, [spent] many years in the public forum.  He will head sanitation, CEMO, security, flood mitigation and climate change.  So that in a nutshell captures where the councilors stand.  For me, I’ll be leading the finance, administration, human resources, anti-corruption.  That is a platform that I want to personally take on, along with CARILED which is the local development platform.”