City Hall set to read "riot act," Georgetown businesses owing millions of $$ in rates and taxes
Delinquent hotels, guests houses, restaurants, barber shops will be denied public health licences
Stabroek News
May 4, 2007
Stabroek Business has learnt that City Hall is in the process of implementing a series of "uncompromising measures" aimed at stepping up the pressure on defaulters to remit their rates and taxes to the city treasury.
But city treasurer Roderick Edinboro has told this newspaper that the council's ambivalence is partly to blame for the fact that more pressure has not been applied to delinquent rate and tax payers to meet their obligations to the city up to this time.
More than $500m in outstanding rates and taxes are owing to the council and Edinboro told Stabroek Business that a decision had been taken that the city public Health Department would now be denying public health licences to business places including hotels, restaurants, barber shops and guest houses that continue to be in default. Edinboro told Stabroek Business that no exemptions will be granted to premises that are being rented for business, a decision that places the onus on the tenant to ensure that rates and taxes are paid.
The cash-strapped City Council will also be intensifying its efforts through the courts to secure judgment against defaulters. Edinboro explained that the council will be pursuing the various options open to it under the legal system including levying on movable property owned by the defaulters and selling immovable property to recover rates and taxes.
Even as the Council is moving to get tough with defaulters, however, measures are being put in place in an effort to arrive at an amicable settlement of outstanding rates and taxes. Edinboro told Stabroek Business that City Hall has engaged the various commercial banks, credit unions and other institutions in order to ascertain their willingness to make loans available to delinquent rate and tax payers to enable them to settle their debts. "The truth of the matter is that there are several cases in which these debts have become so sizeable that the debtors simply do not have the liquidity to pay them off. We sought to put the idea of funding to the financing institutions, in principle, and of course it is for them to determine which of the defaulting institutions they are prepared to engage. Stabroek Business understands that Scotia Bank has responded positively to the idea of working with defaulters.
Edinboro explained that most of the outstanding rates and taxes go back to around 1997 with others going back even further. Some business places owe the City Council as much as $30m in outstanding rates and taxes.
The surfeit of private schools in the city has also witnessed a number of requests from these institutions for rates and taxes waivers. However Edinboro said that private schools were, in effect, businesses and that the municipality would not be inclined to grant them waivers.
Meanwhile Edinboro told Stabroek Business that the council has commenced a city-wide "phased campaign" aimed at targeting large defaulters in the business community. The first phase of the campaign will focus on Kingston, Charles-town, Bourda, Stabroek, Queens-town, Alberttown and Lacytown. Most of the city's major business houses are located in these areas and according to Edinboro several Regent street wholesale and retail establishments are among the businesses that the council will be engaging.
however, even as City Hall continues to express frustration over the failure of some citizens to pay their rates and taxes, Edinboro told Stabroek Business that the Council appears to have no clear policy on moving to the courts against defaulters. "Sometimes one gets the impression that the council is ambivalent about enforcing the law including remedies that are available to it to recover rates and taxes," Edinboro said.
Up to early last week City Hall workers were still to receive their salaries for April and Edinboro disclosed that the council will shortly be facing a $30m bill for vacation allowances for City Hall staff as well as electricity tariffs and contractors' fees for drainage and refuse collection among others.
More than 80 per cent of City Hall's revenue accrues from rates and taxes.