KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter op­er­at­ing for al­most a year with less fund­ing than re­quest­ed, the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion is con­sid­er­ing changes to its garbage col­lec­tion sys­tem as it tries to bal­ance ser­vice de­liv­ery with its avail­able re­sources.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the launch of the cor­po­ra­tion’s City Stars Va­ca­tion Camp yes­ter­day, May­or Robert Par­ris said the cor­po­ra­tion has man­aged to main­tain op­er­a­tions, but the im­pact of the fund­ing short­fall is be­ing felt in ar­eas out­side em­ploy­ee costs.

He ac­knowl­edged Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment’s as­sis­tance in meet­ing salary-re­lat­ed oblig­a­tions, in­clud­ing wages, over­time pay­ments and the sick leave bonus.

“I am not an un­grate­ful per­son. First and fore­most, the Gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­tat­ed us by pay­ing wages, salary, over­time and sick leave bonus. So those are salaries, most im­por­tant­ly, but noth­ing else was giv­en to us,” Par­ris said.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion’s chal­lenge now lies with its goods and ser­vices vote, which sup­ports the day-to-day re­quire­ments need­ed to keep mu­nic­i­pal ser­vices run­ning.

Par­ris said this in­cludes ma­te­ri­als for road re­pairs, fu­el for work­ers and the up­keep of the cor­po­ra­tion’s ve­hi­cle fleet, which has been af­fect­ed by the fi­nan­cial con­straints.

The pres­sure has led the cor­po­ra­tion’s ad­min­is­tra­tion to pro­pose changes to garbage col­lec­tion that could save ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion.

The pro­pos­al would see one day of res­i­den­tial garbage col­lec­tion re­moved in ar­eas on the out­skirts of San Fer­nan­do, while the in­ner city would not be af­fect­ed.

Those ar­eas would in­stead re­ceive two days of res­i­den­tial garbage col­lec­tion and two days of bulk waste col­lec­tion.

Par­ris said the sav­ings could al­low the cor­po­ra­tion to bring in a con­trac­tor to sup­ple­ment its cur­rent re­sources.

He said ad­di­tion­al equip­ment would al­low the cor­po­ra­tion to im­prove its bulk waste col­lec­tion ef­forts.

“We would have back­hoe and a truck, and we would get more for our mon­ey. So we are look­ing at maybe a six- or sev­en-hour shift with these peo­ple out there con­cen­trat­ing on ar­eas and pick­ing up bulk waste at least two times a week,” Par­ris said.

How­ev­er, the May­or said any changes to garbage col­lec­tion would re­quire res­i­dents to be prop­er­ly in­formed be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Par­ris said while the cor­po­ra­tion has high­light­ed the im­pact of the fund­ing gap, it must al­so find ways to man­age its re­sources.

He said his ap­proach has been to fo­cus on find­ing so­lu­tions rather than al­low­ing po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ments to af­fect ser­vice de­liv­ery.

“Cer­tain­ly, there is a time for pol­i­tics, but in terms of de­liv­er­ing ser­vices to the peo­ple of the City of San Fer­nan­do, I play no pol­i­tics. I tell the truth.”

The May­or ad­mit­ted that op­er­at­ing with the re­duced fund­ing has been chal­leng­ing, but said lo­cal gov­ern­ment must con­tin­ue to iden­ti­fy ways to meet res­i­dents’ needs.

Par­ris al­so called for a wider dis­cus­sion on how lo­cal gov­ern­ment is fi­nanced, point­ing to prop­er­ty tax­es as one is­sue that has af­fect­ed mu­nic­i­pal fund­ing. He said rev­enue from prop­er­ty tax­es had pre­vi­ous­ly as­sist­ed cor­po­ra­tions in man­ag­ing their op­er­a­tions. He added that Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment could con­sid­er dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms to as­sist lo­cal gov­ern­ment in ad­dress­ing fund­ing chal­lenges.