Er­line An­drews

Port-of-Spain May­or Ray­mond Tim Kee isn't used to not be­ing in con­trol.He comes from what he calls a "proud black fam­i­ly" on his moth­er's side, who de­scend­ed from free Africans, not slaves.His pa­ter­nal grand­fa­ther helped found the Chi­nese As­so­ci­a­tion and one of the first pub­lic trans­porta­tion ser­vices in T&T.The old­est of eight chil­dren, he left a cushy job with a ma­jor in­sur­ance com­pa­ny to start his own busi­ness in his late 20s be­cause, he said: "I was a very own way kind of per­son."So it's no won­der that Tim Kee chafes at the many bu­reau­crat­ic and po­lit­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions to his may­oral au­thor­i­ty.

Tim Kee, who's on­ly been on the job since No­vem­ber, said he doesn't plan on go­ing for a sec­ond term.But be­fore he goes he wants to make part of his lega­cy a push for au­ton­o­my for the cap­i­tal city, which is cel­e­brat­ing its 100th an­niver­sary in June with long slate of ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Miss City of Port-of-Spain pageant on June 1 at the Hy­att, the May­or's Ball on June 14 at the same venue, and an in­ter­faith ser­vice at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral on June 22."Just to­day at a coun­cil meet­ing I was ask­ing the CEO: 'Is there any place that we could go to make our own laws with­in the con­fines of the city of Port-of-Spain?'" he said in an in­ter­view at his of­fice on Mon­day.One of his tar­gets would be the young men who wear their pants droop­ing, ex­pos­ing most of their un­der­wear."In many states in the Unit­ed States they lock you up if you are like that," he said."I al­so asked (the CEO) what it takes to have a court in the city to deal with those com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle things," he added.

"If I have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er a city to look a cer­tain way and be­have a cer­tain way, I can't on­ly have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and no au­thor­i­ty," he said. "I see (Port-of-Spain) as a ma­jor city not on­ly in the coun­try but in the Caribbean. I must be able to en­sure that its in­tegri­ty is main­tained. We must be in a po­si­tion to not on­ly make laws for the city and but to en­force those laws."

Be­sides law-mak­ing in­de­pen­dence, Tim Kee wants fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my for the city."I should be able to raise my own mon­ey," he said be­fore ac­knowl­edg­ing: "That is not on the cards."Tim Kee is speak­ing with­in the con­text of glob­al trend for ma­jor cities to seek au­ton­o­my. Just this March, the may­ors of Que­bec City and Mon­tre­al in Cana­da asked for spe­cial sta­tus recog­ni­tion that would give them more con­trol over their bud­gets and al­low them to make de­ci­sions with­out hav­ing to send for­mal re­quests to the provin­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion in Que­bec.

The pre­vi­ous Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing spoke about au­ton­o­my as well. At a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment hear­ing last year, he and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive mem­bers of the cor­po­ra­tion com­plained of staff and ve­hi­cle short­ages, the need for more pow­er­ful weapons and bet­ter com­pen­sa­tion for the City Po­lice, the in­fes­ta­tion of ro­dents in the city and oth­er prob­lems."I think one of the re­al chal­lenges of the ef­fec­tive­ness of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions must be the lack of au­ton­o­my in key ar­eas of its ac­tiv­i­ty...there are sim­ply too many re­straints, too many bar­ri­ers, to the ef­fec­tive­ness of the cor­po­ra­tion in the con­duct of its day-to-day af­fairs," he told the com­mit­tee.The Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion is run by the op­po­si­tion PNM.In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Lee Sing talked about the dif­fi­cul­ty of work­ing with a Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, who holds the purse strings for re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, from a dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

"You can't ask some­body to run a city and you're do­ing so at the whims and fan­cy of oth­ers whose agen­da might not be in sync with yours," he said. "In oth­er words, there are peo­ple who re­al­ly don't want to see you do well."

The cur­rent Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment has promised lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, but the PNM has made per­haps the strongest state­ment yet re­gard­ing the is­sue, with PNM po­lit­i­cal Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley pledg­ing to abol­ish the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment if the par­ty were re­turned to pow­er."There will be no mid­dle man which al­lows the min­is­ter to in­ter­fere. We will re­move that," Row­ley said ear­li­er this year.Tim Kee spent the first 13 years of his life in first Princes Town then Fyz­abad.He re­mem­bers that be­fore the fam­i­ly moved to St James they would oc­ca­sion­al­ly vis­it Port-of-Spain. "It was big oc­ca­sion to come in town and walk on this street with my moth­er and do win­dow shop­ping," he said, point­ing to­wards Fred­er­ick St."The place was clean and peo­ple used to dress well. Lit­tle boys wore ties and girls had rib­bon in their hair. It was a nice en­vi­ron­ment. Even now I wish I could see it."

Be­cause he lived in Flagstaff and would do most of his shop­ping at the mall, and his get­ting to and from his com­pa­ny's of­fice on Duke St didn't re­quire that he go deep­er down­town, Tim Kee had lit­tle cause to walk through Port-of-Spain again un­til he be­came may­or.He saw a city that had de­gen­er­at­ed."That was a shock to my sys­tem," he said."When you look around and see the ease with which peo­ple vend. They put their trays any­where and they don't care about the pedes­tri­ans, and the pedes­tri­ans just ac­cept it and walk in the street."He'd like to see the city re­turn "to as close as pos­si­ble to where it was."When "the hec­tic 100th an­niver­sary thing" is over, he said, he plans to be­gin meet­ing with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss pre­vent­ing lit­ter­ing, im­prov­ing the look of build­ings, plant­i­ng trees and flow­ers, im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty and deal­ing with the home­less."My vi­sion of the city is one where we can start walk­ing in the streets again with our fam­i­lies, sit in the parks, breathe clean air," he said.

MAK­ING OF THE CITY

1757: The orig­i­nal cap­i­tal, San Jos� de Oruna (St Joseph), had fall­en in­to di­lap­i­da­tion, and the then Gov­er­nor Don Pe­dro de la Mon­e­da moved to the vil­lage of Puer­to d'Es­pa�a, which con­sist­ed of two streets, Calle de In­fante (Dun­can) and Calle Principe (Nel­son), a cou­ple of lit­tle wood­en hous­es and mud-huts, some 400 most­ly Span­ish-Amerindi­an mixed peo­ple and three shops.

1783: Grena­di­an-born Phillipe Rose-Roume de St Lau­rent ob­tained the "Cedu­la of Pop­u­la­tion" from the Span­ish King Car­los III. Puer­to d'Es­pa�a grew quick­ly in­to a prop­er lit­tle town of 3,000 in­hab­i­tants.

1797: The British con­quered the is­land. At that time, the cap­i­tal was very over­crowd­ed with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 in­hab­i­tants. Gov­er­nor Thomas Pic­ton de­cid­ed to have a land recla­ma­tion scheme im­ple­ment­ed, which would turn the tidal mud flats in­to hab­it­able lots. Start­ing in 1803, land fill was cart­ed with mules from the Laven­tille hills, and over the next two decades all the land south of Ma­rine Square (In­de­pen­dence Square) was re­claimed from the Gulf.

1808: A great fire de­stroyed many of the wood-built hous­es of Port-of-Spain. The mer­chants of the town re­built them with stone from the Laven­tille quar­ry.

1812: The prison on Fred­er­ick Street was com­plet­ed, and crim­i­nals were "thrown" in­to it along with debtors, mad peo­ple, and an­i­mals.

1819: Gov­er­nor Sir Ralph Wood­ford pur­chased the aban­doned Par­adise es­tate from the Peschi­er fam­i­ly. He had the area, about 317 acres, cleared "for the recre­ation of the towns­folk and for the pas­turage of cat­tle." It was hence­forth sim­ply called "The Sa­van­nah." In 1845 the name was of­fi­cial­ly changed to "The Queen's Park."

1823: Un­der Wood­ford's aegis and per­son­al at­ten­tion the first pri­ma­ry school for boys was opened in Port-of-Spain in April; an­oth­er one for girls fol­lowed three years lat­er.

1832: The new Ro­man Catholic Cathe­dral, which be­gan con­struc­tion in 1816, was com­plet­ed; the Cathe­dral of the Holy Trin­i­ty was con­se­crat­ed in 1823; Han­nover Methodist fol­lowed in 1826, and Greyfri­ars in 1837. All Saints Church, the old­est build­ing on the Sa­van­nah, was com­plet­ed in 1846.

1844: Gov­er­nor Sir Hen­ry McLeod on Feb­ru­ary 15 laid the foun­da­tion stone for a new gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ings on the west­ern edge of the Wood­ford Square. In 1897, as Trinidad was prepar­ing to cel­e­brate the Di­a­mond Ju­bilee of Queen Vic­to­ria, the build­ing was giv­en a coat of red paint, and the pub­lic re­ferred to it there­after as the Red House. This di­rect an­ces­tor of the present Red House was burnt to the ground on March 23, 1903, by a fire. It was re­built 1907.

1858: The Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal was con­struct­ed.

1914: The Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion was pro­claimed the mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ty of the city of Port-of-Spain by the Gov­er­nor on June 25, by way of Or­di­nance 24 of 1914 and es­tab­lished by the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil on June 26. The pow­ers and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Cor­po­ra­tion has been al­tered over time by var­i­ous Acts of Par­lia­ment, the most re­cent be­ing the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act No 21 of 1990 and its sub­se­quent amend­ments.

Sources: The Caribbean His­to­ry Archives/Ger­ard Besson and ttpar­lia­ment.org