“Dark Days of Summer” Ahead for CitCo

Bernard Wagner

We also asked Mayor Wagner about the flow of the tax revenue coming into the Belize City Council. He says hard times mean it is harder to collect taxes owed and the provision of services will suffer. 

Bernard Wagner, Belize City Mayor

“Tax collection has been way below average, way below average. Sometimes myself, I must really look at how we will get through the dark days of summer. Dark days of summer I call it, the July, the August the September. Residents’ expectation remains the same. They want infrastructure, they want street. They call you about canals. They call you about drains. They call you about streets. But the reality is that things are hard. And so what you expected four five years ago in terms of infrastructure has to be curtailed, has to be brought down, because there are different priorities right now. People’s concern is about putting food on their table. So the priority of paying property tax is way down the list. And that is the reality that we face and the reality that residents will sometimes have to grapple with. That there are just not the resources there to fix very drain, to fix every street, to dig every canal. So we will really have to temper our expectations as residents and also as a council.”