The Editor, Sir:

The headlines in your Sunday, February 4 edition screamed 'Parish councils say bureaucracy stifling development'. As an advocate of comprehensive local government reform in Jamaica, I have repeatedly argued that the present local government emphasis on a parish council system of local community development oversight and grass-roots planning should be strategically strengthened via (parish council run) county councils in order to reduce spatially wasteful and counterproductive use of expensive/scarce resources within open regional structures that foster transparency and accountability in grass-roots leadership.

In its current form, Jamaica's parish council system (one which is excessively dependent on a 'distant' central government bureaucracy for resources) tends to foster an approach to spatial development that can become radically fragmented/ weak, uneven, inequitable, untimely and thus costly towards effective local development thrusts; realities that will increase as rapidly growing parishes and their respective administrative councils struggle to access scarce technical and fiscal resources in ways that could become spatially selfish and counterproductive.

Radically varying quality levels

Thus, in its essence, Jamaica's parish council system (unlike England's where similar-sized counties coordinate the operations of composite parish councils)could stand to find that the client communities served across the island all end up receiving radically varying quality levels of delivered local government services.

The following are benefits to be derived from a well-designed system of regional county councils:

1) An enhanced capacity for intra- and inter-parish oversight in terms of fostering bottom-up transparency in the management of grass-roots/community development thrusts towards greater grass-roots accountability.

2) Greater ease for effective central government oversight as ministries would seek to monitor only three in a set of fiscally responsible county-based local government units (as opposed to the current unwieldy, costly number of 14 parish/municipal units, a cumbersome number which could be further increased if a number of municipalities are successful in their drive for fiscal autonomy).

3) An enhanced capacity for the smaller, weaker and more economically fragmented parishes to garner more taxes from a relatively stronger/larger regional county tax base (at much lower rates/levels of spatial-based per capita taxation to the benefit of our already tax burdened grass-roots constituencies and communities).

4) An enhanced capacity for resource weak parishes to mutually gain cost-cutting administrative economies of (operational) scale via the appropriate/strategic spatial consolidation of scarce and expensive administrative resources at the grass-roots level.

5) The proactive use of regional county administrative boundaries to speed up in a spatially focused way, the generation and distribution of scarce development (re: tax/fee-based) funds in ways that provide grass-roots constituencies with a chance for greater proactive/ meaningful levels of bottom-up participation in community development planning and management via spatially optimum administrative structures; ones designed to precipitate savings via enhanced opportunities for the timely delivery of the more expensive services (e.g., community road repair and garbage collection)not currently realised by 'distant' central government.

6) An enhanced capacity for spatially coordinated bottom-up forms of inter-community development thrusts via parish sensitive county-based general (development) plans. This regionally coordinated approach is vital, given the reality that effective environmental planning does entail regional accountability (a reality seen in the fact that more tourism and housing development in Hanover or Trelawny will place more traffic, infrastructure strain and attendant pollution on the regional urban economy of, say, Montego Bay, with its critical air and seaport resources etc.).

7) An enhanced capacity for the effective spatial articulation and coordination of central government's many ministry-based administrative/ development plans in ways that cost-effectively empower grass-roots planning authorities at the parish and community levels, the opportunity to become dynamic and proactive participants.

I am, etc.,

GARFIELD WHITTAKER

garfield.whittaker@csun.edu

Lecturer, Department of Urban

Studies and Planning

California State University,

Northridge

Via Go-Jamaica