City Hall owes Social Security contributions?
The current state of the financials at City Hall continues to beg questions about fiscal discipline at the nation’s largest municipal body. And as we reported last week, the Council missed the revenue target by twenty percent in 2007-2008, collecting only thirteen point seven million of the projected seventeen point four million dollars in recurrent revenue and it plans to increase revenue by thirty-four percent in 2009. As for expenditure of an estimated eighteen point four million dollars, there were cutbacks in essential services because of the failure to reach the revenue target.
Tonight there is another issue to report and it has to do with social security contributions which, according to law, must be paid by employers after deductions on behalf of employees. According to one report, City Hall is falling way behind in payments to the tune of three hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars plus for the period September 2007 to December 2008. A report made available to News Five shows that City Hall is in arrears in this manner: September to November 2007, nineteen thousand, six hundred and fifty-two dollars; December 2007, twenty-six thousand, thirty-five dollars; February to April 2008, seventy-four thousand five hundred and one dollar; May to June, sixty-three thousand, one hundred and thirty-two dollars; July thirty-one thousand seven hundred and twenty-one dollars; August, twenty-two thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars; September to October, fifty-two thousand five hundred and nineteen; November, twenty-one thousand and fourteen dollars; and in December 2008 twenty-six thousand seven hundred and twelve dollars.
A check of the Council’s estimates for the period 2006-2007 shows that eighty-eight thousand six hundred and seventy-four dollars were paid. In contrast, the council estimated to pay to S.S.B. three hundred and sixty thousand six hundred and sixty-five dollars in contributions in 2007-2008, but in fact only paid about fifty percent, which is forty-six thousand, three hundred and twenty-five dollars. What this all means, if true, is that social security benefits to City Hall employees are in jeopardy even while they have met their part of contributions. When we called Social Security Chief Merlene Bailey today, News Five was told she was unavailable for comment. And when we checked with Belize City Manager, we were referred to Belmopan, which we did but were told to check back with Belize City. We are days away from the 2009 municipal elections and still no audit of the 2008 accounts despite requests from within the council itself.
