…And faces some accountability issues

But while Paz had a fiery exchange from her opponents over the land sales in the Caribbean Coves area, she also had to give accountability on certain decisions taken by her council, such as a loan guarantee for a former employee, a donation of around half a million dollars from businessman David Mitchel, and why was subsistence paid to Minister Heredia from council funds.

Elsa Paz
“During my term from 2003, we do not have any, any advances or arrears to any individual. So that was before we came into office.”

Marion Ali
“But you did guarantee a loan for a former employee, Michael Rodriguez.”

Elsa Paz
“Aha, that was under our administration. Yes, I do agree that we did the—I can recall that Mike Rodriguez was working with us at that time, he was an employee and there was a medical emergency and since he was working with us, we went ahead and got this loan for him for this surgery under the condition that his salary would be paid directly to the bank so we can pay off that loan. That was the decision that was taken, but what happen was that Mr. Michael discontinued to work with us and at the end of the day we stood with the bill. It’s not a big loan and the council decided to go ahead and pay that money for him.”

Marion Ali
“We heard that Mr. Manuel Heredia received \subsistence from the council. Why would the local municipal government, which is a smaller body that any ministry, why would the municipality have to provide subsistence for a government minister or government ministry and for what?”

Elsa Paz
“Subsistence was provided to the area rep because he was doing business for the town.”

Marion Ali
“What kind of business?”

Elsa Paz
“When he used to go to Belmopan for the land titles and the survey and all of that in Belmopan. That was just, at the time he would get the transfers and all of that for the same land issue with Caribbean Coves.”

Marion Ali
“What kind of subsistence are we talking about and for how long was this?”

Elsa Paz
“They’re getting—like if I go to Belmopan they give me a subsistence of seventy-five dollars to go and the subsistence that we give to anybody that that go and do business for the time. So at that time we were giving him seventy-five dollars for every time he had to go to Belmopan and deal with those business because he deals with those business. He used to go and take care of all the land issues that we had for the time.”

Marion Ali
“But why wouldn’t one of your own members or your own councillors work on that? Is it the business of the minister to take care of the Town Council’s business?”

Elsa Paz
“No, what happens is the minister would go to Belmopan because he’s more known there and he’s more familiar to deal with that kind of business when it comes to lands. My councillors, you have to take into consideration here too that our councilors here don’t get a big allowance and most of my councillors, they have their own jobs and they don’t have the time to go to Belmopan. They don’t have the time to deal with all the business here in San Pedro. When it comes to Belmopan, they cannot go all the way to Belmopan and lose their job because I believe that none of the councillors can live out of the kind of allowance that they get here.”

Marion Ali
“This gentleman, Mr. David Mitchel, gave the council a donation of half a million dollars. Can you give us an account of how that was spent?”

Elsa Paz
“He gave us three hundred and fifty thousand Belize dollars and that was used to buy equipment for the council. We have just bought a garbage compactor because we always need that, one of the backhoes.”

Marion Ali
“And these equipments are right here on the island?”

Elsa Paz
“Right here on our barracks. We also bought a dump truck and the other monies that he gave us is seventy-eight thousand dollars that was used…”

Marion Ali
“Separate?”

Elsa Paz
“Well, that went with the five hundred thousand. He gave us five and then he gave us seventy-eight thousand for the fence that you can see today at the cemetery. We built a new fence at the cemetery so that’s the money that was used for that.”

And as we mentioned at the top of the news, the San Pedro Town Council has not been audited since 2006.