Gail Alexan­der

A re­duc­tion in the num­ber of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies from the cur­rent 14 to 12 has been pro­posed in Gov­ern­ment's draft White Pa­per on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning laid the draft doc­u­ment in the Low­er House yes­ter­day along with re­lat­ed doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the Bound­ary Re­view Re­port in an om­nibus pack­age.

De­bate on the re­form as­pect will take place in the House on Mon­day. How­ev­er Gov­ern­ment sources yes­ter­day hint­ed that Mon­day's de­bate may al­so in­clude an or­der to ex­tend the life of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions for a fur­ther year - and post­pone Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls for a fourth time in or­der to com­plete the re­form process ful­ly and im­ple­ment a re­formed sys­tem af­ter an elec­tion.

Man­ning said the doc­u­ments col­lec­tive­ly rep­re­sent a "rad­i­cal de­par­ture" from the usu­al way of do­ing busi­ness in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to a mod­el that is "lo­cal­ly bred, but of in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard."

She out­lined the plan­ning process from 2004 to date, in­clud­ing work by Ja­maican con­sul­tants - Trevor Hamil­ton and As­so­ciates - and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions in­volv­ing 14,000 per­sons. Out­lin­ing some of the main pro­pos­als for bound­ary re­view, she said the re­form plan sug­gest­ed sev­en re­gions, four cities and one bor­ough. It al­so pro­posed ex­pan­sion of the bound­aries of Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma and Point Fortin. The "new" Port-of-Spain will now in­clude Laven­tille and parts of West­moor­ings while San Fer­nan­do will take in Pointe-a-Pierre. It is al­so pro­posed that the Bor­ough of Ari­ma will be ex­pand­ed to in­clude Waller­field, while La Brea will now form part of Point Fortin. Fur­ther pro­pos­als deals with the el­e­va­tion of the bor­oughs of Ari­ma and Ch­agua­nas to city sta­tus.

The plan al­so in­cludes pro­vid­ing com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and ex­pand­ing the ju­ris­dic­tion of city po­lice and dis­as­ter man­age­ment. Pro­vi­sion and main­te­nance of roads and drains how­ev­er, will be trans­ferred to the Road/Drainage Au­thor­i­ty and prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tion will al­so be un­der­tak­en by the pro­posed Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty. An­oth­er doc­u­ment laid by Man­ning on the Bound­ary Re­view Ex­er­cise de­tailed pro­posed bound­ary changes based on three op­tions: city and re­gion, ex­pan­sion of ur­ban cor­po­ra­tions and ex­pan­sion of ur­ban cor­po­ra­tions. Op­tion One (City and Re­gion) for ex­am­ple pro­pos­es:

n Cre­ation of a new re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion - Na­pari­ma/Pointe a Pierre - form­ing the hin­ter­land of San Fer­nan­do Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

�2 Dis­ap­pear­ance of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion due to the loss of com­mu­ni­ties to Na­pari­ma/Pointe a Pierre and trans­fer of oth­er com­mu­ni­ties with stronger link­ages to Siparia (Ce­dros) and Princes Town.

�2 Amal­ga­ma­tion of Diego Mar­tin with San Juan/Laven­tille to cre­ate a hin­ter­land cor­po­ra­tion around POS with ex­ist­ing north coast com­mu­ni­ties trans­ferred to the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, while Be­ju­cal will be trans­ferred to the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion.

�2 Trans­fer of Be­ju­cal to Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro to ra­tio­nalise hin­ter­land around Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

�2 Brazil/San Rafael trans­ferred to Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

�2 St He­le­na Vil­lage, Kel­ly Vil­lage, Cunu­pia, War­ren Vil­lage, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, Ca­roni Vil­lage, La Paille added to Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion.