FILE
Mayor of Portmore, George Lee
Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
AFTER THREE years, the Portmore Municipality is finding it difficult to fund itself, administrators there say.
Each year since its birth in 2003, the municipality has suffered huge financial deficits of up to $12 million, its administrative manager, David Parkes, told The Sunday Gleaner.
"The revenues will never match in the short run, but we do deficit financing and find creative ways to offset that deficit," he says.
Mayor George Lee says support from central government has been disappointing. He says while he recognises times are tough for Government, funds promised for start-up in 2003, have not been received.
"I am somewhat disappointed that some of the start-up money that we were promised, that wasn't forthcoming. And then we hoped that we would have gotten some capital to buy things, buy furniture, to buy computers and things like that, so one has to survive by operating, using your monthly budget," he said.
The municipality operates from a budget that includes $1 million dollars in subventions from
central government, monies
collected from property taxes, and the parochial fund. The parochial fund includes revenue from motor vehicle licences, barber and
hairdresser certification and trade.
The municipality gets back 27 per cent of the funds to be used in drain cleaning and general road repair. For the fiscal year ending June 2005, over $100 million was disbursed from the parochial fund for drain cleaning. Portmore received over $7
million from this allocation.
NOT ENOUGH
But it appears this is not enough. Mayor Lee points out that more money needs to be put into cleaning Portmore's earthen drains.
Mr. Parkes agrees that it is not sufficient. He says the drains need to be converted to concrete so they can be better managed, but the cost to convert them is close to $50 million.
The municipality only gets between $3-$4 million a month from the parochial revenue funds.
The dependence on property tax has also been a major problem for the municipality, because the compliance rate is low. Mayor Lee notes that compliance is below 40 per cent. Property taxes are used to fund solid waste management, but funds have had to come from other parts of the budget to offset the costs.
To combat the problem, the municipality says it has requested the construction of a property tax office in Portmore, but the Minister of Finance has turned down the request.
"We feel if we had a tax office in Portmore it would have greatly assisted in mobilising people to pay their taxes," said Mayor Lee. He says people often refuse to pay their taxes, because they are unwilling to go outside of Portmore to do so.
Government subventions too, have only been trickling in. Mr. Lee says the municipality has received only $200,000 of what it is entitled to. These subventions are used to purchase capital for the council and pay staff.
