Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

A day af­ter she se­lect­ed PNM coun­cil­lors to head bor­ough sub­com­mit­tees, Ch­agua­nas May­or Natasha Navas has now trained her guns on delin­quent UNC coun­cil­lors, vow­ing that all those who col­lect­ed salaries with­out serv­ing will be made to re­im­burse the bor­ough. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Navas said she had in­for­ma­tion that UNC coun­cil­lors who served as chair­men of sub­com­mit­tees did not per­form well. "I am con­cerned that some UNC coun­cil­lors have served on sub­com­mit­tees as chair­men but they have nev­er even held meet­ings...Yet they con­tin­ued to re­ceive pay­ments even though they did not do any work," Navas al­leged.

She said there was a process for deal­ing with such in­ef­fi­cien­cy. "The bor­ough will be in­ves­ti­gat­ing this, and if it is found that cer­tain coun­cil­lors were be­ing paid and they have not served, then by all means they will be made to re­im­burse the bor­ough," Navas said.

How­ev­er, Deputy May­or Or­lan­do Na­gas­sar said: "That is not true at all...What would have hap­pened is that some meet­ings had to be can­celled be­cause of a lack of quo­rum to start." He said if the bor­ough was in­ves­ti­gat­ing delin­quent coun­cil­lors, then Navas would have to in­ves­ti­gate her own "Ram­jack" col­leagues.

Nages­sar said every coun­cil­lor who served as a chair­man of a sub­com­mit­tee re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al $700 per month for each sub­com­mit­tee he chaired. He said some PNM coun­cil­lors would re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $2,100 in salary per month be­cause of the ap­point­ments.

But Navas said there must be ded­i­ca­tion, com­mit­ment and ef­fi­cien­cy in all lo­cal gov­ern­ment af­fairs. The may­or ad­vis­es that if coun­cil­lors know that they can­not be com­mit­ted to their du­ties, then they should re­sign. She al­so de­fend­ed her de­ci­sion to ap­point PNM coun­cil­lors–Pa­tri­cia Bap­tiste and Bernard Bai­ley–to head four sub­com­mit­tees at the bor­ough. Bai­ley was put in charge of Fes­ti­vals and Cul­ture as well as Fa­cil­i­ties Man­age­ment, while Bap­tiste was put to head So­cial Ser­vices and Youth De­vel­op­ment.