Notice
Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter
COME NEXT month, residents of the Portmore municipality in South St. Catherine will be able to access the services of the Portmore Council office, which will be replacing the St. Catherine Parish Council as official managers of the community.
Mayor of Portmore, George Lee, told The Sunday Gleaner in an interview last week the shift was expected to take place by mid-November. He said Portmore residents will be able to seek approval for building plans, entertainment permits and access other services at the Portmore Council office located at the Portmore Pines Plaza, which they used to do at the St. Catherine Parish Council.
"There is a Memorandum of Understanding between the St. Catherine Parish Council and the Portmore Municipality Council," said Mayor Lee. We should have been taking over the functions of the Parish Council on November 3 but we are working on a much larger office space in the Portmore Pines Plaza which will not be ready by then but we will definitely be taking over in November."
Just last month a brouhaha erupted between the St. Catherine Parish and the Portmore Municipal councils over the allocation of tax revenues. The row threatens to derail the plans of the Portmore Council to exercise greater control over the community's affairs.
REPRESENTATION
Following a stormy meeting between the councils over the matter, Dr. Raymoth Notice, Mayor of Spanish Town, had criticised what he dubbed a 'poor presentation made to the Spanish Town Council by the Portmore representative.'
"The gentleman making the presentation left us in the dark as it pertains to the figures. He told us that Portmore is responsible for 15 per cent of barber/hairdresser fees, but he gave us no figures. It was a totally ambiguous report, and in my opinion, incomplete," Dr. Notice had said. He charged that the Portmore Council was piggybacking on the human resources and work of the St. Catherine Parish Council, while siphoning off, the limited resources of the parish.
Mr. Lee had, however, dismissed Dr. Notice's comments as indicative of his ignorance.
"In the area of revenue collected from buildings, the St. Catherine Council is collecting on our behalf and, for the months September to October, the recommendation was that Portmore be given 18 per cent while Spanish Town be given 82 per cent. I thought that figure was extremely low, but given the fact that it was their staff, I said OK, because I wanted to move things forward," he explained.
