Ari­ma may­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian is ap­peal­ing to the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to re­con­sid­er its choice

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Mor­ris-Ju­lian said coun­cil mem­bers had learnt that the in­com­ing act­ing CEO comes from an­oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion. How­ev­er, she said she pre­ferred a se­nior of­fi­cer from with­in her cor­po­ra­tion for the act­ing post.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the cur­rent CEO, Cheryl Sir­ju-Chong, is ex­pect­ed to pro­ceed on two months leave in the com­ing week and a mem­ber of the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion is tipped to re­place her.

In mak­ing an ar­gu­ment against the move, Mor­ris-Ju­lian said the cor­po­ra­tion would have to pay the cost of trav­el­ling for Sir­ju-Chong's re­place­ment and he or she will not be fa­mil­iar with the short term plans that they are about to ex­e­cute.

She jus­ti­fied her rec­om­men­da­tion by say­ing her pick is con­sis­tent and pro­vides a high qual­i­ty of ser­vice to the burgess­es. She said the of­fi­cer al­so has pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence as act­ing CEO and is fa­mil­iar with the cor­po­ra­tion's op­er­a­tions and up­com­ing plans for the bor­ough. The plans in­clude the com­mence­ment of ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al projects such as the re­de­vel­op­ment of the Ari­ma mar­ket, as well as the stag­ing of the an­nu­al Ari­ma Car­ni­val.

"We have peo­ple liv­ing in Ari­ma who have act­ed be­fore in the po­si­tion and know the run­ning of the cor­po­ra­tion. By the time some­one else comes here, it is time to go back again in some weeks.

We have peo­ple who are ac­cus­tomed to the bor­ough and know what Ari­ma needs as we plan this Car­ni­val and the na­tion­al clean-up cam­paign," Mor­ris-Ju­lian said.

To avoid de­lays, she stressed that the in­com­ing CEO needs to be fa­mil­iar with these projects.

"With the full sup­port of her coun­cil­lors, the may­or made the ap­peal for the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion and sup­port the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion in its ef­forts.

The may­or be­lieves that prop­er lead­er­ship is crit­i­cal for the Bor­ough as it changes hands in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment are­na and re­quires in­sti­tu­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty," the re­lease stat­ed.