Mayor unhappy with low property tax compliance

Christopher Thomas, Gleaner Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

MAYOR OF Montego Bay, Charles Sinclair, says only 45 per cent of landowners in St James are compliant with their property tax payments.

"St James' compliance rate in respect to property tax is 45 per cent; that situation doesn't match up. We have to look on committing ourselves as a parish," he said during the Rotary Club of Montego Bay East's weekly meeting, at the Sunset Beach Resort in the Second City, last Thursday evening.

The mayor said property taxes are used by the parish council to go towards the maintenance of the city's streetlights; collection of residential waste, and road repairs.

"The property tax goes first to central government. What happens to it there? The Jamaica Public Service and the National Solid Waste Management Authority are paid from the Department of Local Government," he explained.

"There is also an amount that is kept, which goes to a fund called the Equalisation Fund. Ten per cent, and that is what can be used if there is road rehabilitation that any council throughout Jamaica is seeking to do, and make an application to the Equalisation Fund for a significant sum of money to do road rehabilitation. Then it is from that fund that the amount can come."

Governance

He singled out several residential communities. Sinclair said Porto Bello has a compliance rate of 14 per cent, noting that only 106 lots out of the 750 are being paid for. He listed the percentage compliance rates for Westgate Hills at 32; Ironshore, 28; Coral Gardens, 42; Spring Farm Estate, 43; and Torado Heights, 34.

Meanwhile, Sinclair praised the parish council's work in bringing governance closer to the citizens.

"I take a very simple view that the local authority is the government of the parish. Some persons don't like to hear me say that ... but it is, in fact, the unit of government within a parish, and it is that arm of government which brings governance closest to the people," remarked the mayor.

"We have set about changing that nonchalant culture and seeking to rebuild the image of the local authority. What I would urge persons in our society is that they don't divorce themselves from the process, but they should try and get themselves engaged, because civil society groups like yourselves are what will be the watchdogs of ourselves as politicians, and as administrators of the local authority, seeking to serve you as citizens and to serve society in which we live," he told the Rotarians.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com