By Erica James-King, Staff Reporter
The Montego Bay Civic Centre. - Patrick Campbell/Freelance Photographer
WESTERN BUREAU:
THE CASH-STRAPPED St. James Parish Council is sitting on a gold mine. The problem: there is no mining going on, no gold flowing to the coffers of the Council, and no time-frame has been set for putting the mining exercise in motion.
WHERE IS THE GOLD MINE?
Thirty acres of prime real estate owed by the Council adjoining the parish's infirmary, which has been over-run by squatters.
Over a decade ago there were mostly shacks precariously perched on the captured hillside communities of Peace View and Cassava Piece, lands owned by the Council, and they were lacking in sanitary facilities and major infrastructure.
Today, impressive concrete structures have replaced many of the board shacks on the captured lands, and electricity, telephone service as well as piped water are now available to some of the informal settlers.
If the tenure of the people on the property was regularised, the sale of the lots could yield millions of dollars in funds for the Parish Council - money badly needed for new and existing social projects in the parish. A conservative estimate of earnings from the property from the sale of lots to the over 1,000 residents on the two sites could total $30 million.
When The Gleaner visited the Peace View property, several residents showed an interest in purchasing the lands they are occupying. "We are willing to buy the land, but the Parish Council not showing any interest in speeding up that process," contended Opal Ottey who has been living at Peace View for nine years. "Some two to three years ago, they came around and said they would give us a chance to purchase the land and we should pay down some money for surveying. I personally paid $2,000 to a Jamaica National account, but we don't hear anything since then."
Another resident, Sean Randall said: "I would want to see proper roads and other infrastructure put in Peace View but until we purchase the land, I don't think the authorities will put in the infrastructure."
FOOT-DRAGGING
The Parish Council says it wants to put an end to its foot-dragging on "regularising tenure on the property", with the aim of using the money to start a revolving fund to finance the setting up of new parish and community projects.
"We are soon going to be putting efforts in place to sell the lands as this will enable us to lessen our dependence on central government," said Christopher Powell, Secretary/Manager of the St. James Parish Council. "The plan is that if we regularise the two communities, the funds received from the sale of those lots to the people, would be put into a capital fund which we can then pull on to repair public facilities in the parish."
Then there is another gold mine of sorts, just waiting on its potential to be maximised: ten properties owned by the Parish Council, which have been either leased or rented. Yet the projected earnings from the rental of these properties for the 2002/2003 financial year was a mere $880,185.
And why is the Parish Council not generating substantial profits from these entities?
According to Mr. Powell, the rents for the properties are in many cases below market rates. But that situation is set to change soon as Council tries to become more self-reliant. He added, "We have not been collecting a lot of rental, in terms of the amount of money we have leased these properties for... We are now in the process of revising these leases to make them more realistic so that we will be able to generate some revenue from them."
The St. James Parish Council, like other Councils, is financed by a combination of funds drawn from grants from central government, money from commercial services operated by the Council; user fees (licensing fees for butchers and other traders) as the Parochial Revenue Fund (i.e. two-thirds of the proceeds of motor vehicle licence fees and property taxes).
The Council estimates that it will earn $128 million from the Parochial Revenue Fund this year. But that is no comfort for its 17-member strong Council which point to gaping infrastructural needs in the resort city.
Councillors have voiced serious concerns over the disbursement of money under the Parochial Revenue Fund. "I don't like for example the fact that a lot in motor vehicle licences are paid here and then it goes to Kingston to the Parochial Revenue Fund pool, before coming back to the parish," complained JLP Councillor for the Rose Hall Division Harold 'Big Daddy' Henry.
"Sometimes the Council has to wait months to get back the money which the parish has earned and our communities are suffering as a result of that problem. When it does get to us, it's just a slight portion of what the parish contributed to in the first place."
Simply put, the bulk of parochial revenue fund goes to parishes with more parochial roads, even though those parishes might collect less revenue from motor vehicle licences.
The Secretary/Manager is all too familiar with the discontent by the members of the Council over allocations under the Parochial Revenue Fund. "The St. James Parish Council feels it could better serve the infrastructural needs of the parish, if it was getting back most of the funds it had contributed to central government," said Mr. Powell. He explained the concerns of the Council: "Although we (St. James) might collect more motor vehicle licences than St. Elizabeth, St. Elizabeth gets more money from the Parochial Fund than we do because it is a bigger parish."
