Asha Javeed
Lead Editor Investigations
asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt
In the next fiscal year, two major changes in local government will affect citizens around the country—the long-delayed implementation of property tax and access to a staffed municipal police force as first responders.
That’s because the country’s 14 corporations are getting more power. They will be collecting and managing money and with a staffed municipal police force, they will provide a security complement to the T&T Police Service (TTPS).
From a financial perspective, they will get money from property tax to help fund operations in communities. But that’s not solely where money will come from, as it will still receive its annual allocation from the Government.
What earnings from the property tax will do, according to Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi, is bridge a gap in what the Government can provide to get more work done. For instance, corporations are now in charge of schools and seeing that their needs are efficiently met in a timely manner.
Al-Rawi said the property tax will be implemented in the next fiscal year for residential properties with commercial properties to follow.
He explained that what reform does is reduce a series of steps from requesting that an issue be addressed from central government to it actually being addressed and implemented in a short time frame by the corporation.
At his “conversations” last Thursday night, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley described it as a devolution of government.
Local government reform has been in the works for about 33 years but in 2016 the Rowley-led Cabinet approved a draft policy on Local Government Reform and the process has dragged through the years. The People’s National Movement (PNM) has hedged their campaign for the local government elections on reform. Rowley said a well-rounded corporation could take on the responsibility of maintenance of schools, repairing sporting facilities, maintenance of health centres and even the management of community centres once they have the resources.
Al-Rawi noted that coming out of COVID-19, there was an increase in spend by the corporations. In the span of three years, Government’s spending on local government has increased by more than 200 per cent.
In 2021, Government spent $138,805,850 on local government services through the country’s 14 corporations. In 2022, it’s spend increased by 125 per cent to $216,626,182. For fiscal 2023, the estimate was $389,284,000.
In his mid-year budget review, Finance Minister Colm Imbert increased the sum to the corporations by $112,294,500 for the fiscal 2023 allocation to move from $389,284,000 to $501,578,500, an increase of 29 per cent and an overall increase in spending of 129 per cent from 2022 to 2023.
Al-Rawi explained that in the gap analysis done by his Ministry, they were able to effectively determine that the shortfall could be curtailed by a property tax and environmental funds from other entities.
Imbert, at the PM’s conversations last week, explained that for almost 65 per cent of all residential properties, the property tax will not exceed $1,050 a year, or about $90 to $95 per month.
He said there is another subcategory within that group, “about 30 or 25 per cent of the population” whose tax is going to be $40 a month, or $480 a year.
Imbert explained that the corporations will have a dedicated and reliable stream of income, in which the average corporation will receive somewhere between $30 million to $40 million.
For example, Imbert explained that Diego Martin will get about $40 million a year from property tax to pay for things like garbage collection, water-trucking services, repair of roads, cleaning of drains, upgrading of recreation grounds and maintenance of community facilities such as community centres and schools.
Municipal Police
Al-Rawi said in his walkabouts for the Local Government Elections, the two issues raised by people were jobs and crime and security.
He noted that Section 14 of the Local Government Reform Act brings the Municipal Police to life, with the powers of regular police.
“They’re just called municipal police and they’re located in the municipalities. There is no limitation on their powers but they have a special slant—they have backhoes and they have equipment. They have sanitation. So, if there’s a protest about roads, for instance, and debris is brought out, traffic can’t move or there is incendiary behaviour happening, our municipal police can arrive with backhoes and trucks and equipment and arms and treatment and we don’t have to wait for the Defence Force to come. We have those services. The key is using your resources together,” he said.
And to support the municipal police, Al-Rawi said his ministry will unveil a series of digital tools in the coming months to lodge and track reports and their status.
For Al-Rawi, the digitisation of the process will be the most tactile for citizens as they can follow their reports onto convictions on the apps which are now in testing phase.
He’s convinced the municipal police, with access to corporation resources, will be an effective first measure.
“The distance between a policeman getting the message and arriving there is now done by the app. What we will get is open-source reporting,” he said.
“What does that mean? Cameras everywhere, your personal cameras and the use of CCTV cameras as evidence,” he said.
He said the goal is to make the municipal police 24 hours but for now, they have capacity constraints.
“They had some recalibration in gender balance because we had a predominance of female municipal police. The last batch was all male, interestingly enough, so we have to make sure that the gender equality is working for the manpower efficiencies,” he said.
He said people with university degrees have signed up to be municipal police officers.
“We have so many people lining up to join in this because that feeds into people wanting jobs,” he said.
Al-Rawi denounced Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s campaign call to “empty the clip” as it does not benefit the country.
“I’m in support of lawful and proportionate self-defence. I was taught very carefully about that, obviously, as a lawyer, on what is proportionate or not. But to make that sort of equation and position, I just think has no place in our society, particularly if you won’t support Bill amendments for possession of firearms.
“You won’t support gang activity being suppressed by law that has teeth because we might have a Pyrrhic law. It was gutted, it had to be gutted because they wouldn’t support it, the measures were required. So, this comes right back into local government. Because when we are servicing the communities and local government, we are trying to better the odds and communities,” he said.