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Earlier on you heard UDP elder statesman Michael Finnegan say that he wanted to pursue reconciliation between the party and mayor Zenaida Moya. But, it seems that at City Hall she’s being treated as fair game, an open target for political battering. A release that looks very much like it came out of City Hall – though not directly traceable to those offices –accuses the mayor of paying two well connected friends when she went into work on Friday.

Now the debts are real – but a release attached to them – which is curiously typed in the same font as that scandal sheet release on Phillip Willoughby a week ago states that, “BML has not been paid for over ten weeks. However, the mayor insists on paying her family and cronies first.” It continues, “On October second after being out for a few weeks, the mayor sat down in her office and instructed the finance department to prepare two checks totaling over eight thousand dollars.”

The release claims that, “one was for her brother’s friend....Godwin Haylock and the other is for Anthony Garbutt who the council rents a dump truck from.” The release goes onto argue that this demonstrates that the mayor places no priority on the plight of the unpaid sanitation workers.

Now the release has no letter head and is attributed to no one – which would normally force us to ignore it except this one is backed up by proof, invoices, checks and payment vouchers which prove that yes, payments were made on Friday and signed under the Mayor’s hand. But while they may have been ill-advised, they are not fraudulent in any demonstrable way. Ill-advised, probably, and mis-prioritized, paying off an ally like Godwin Haylock when the council is in a state of ruin.

But still, compared to the kind of widespread malfeasance that we’ve seen from City Hall, $8,000 for two payments with invoices is not all that remarkable. Of course, it will only fire up BML workers who have been protesting for 9 days now and will continue tomorrow – meaning that the political hemorrhaging continues.

Cabinet Appoints Subcommittee for Garbage Woes

And that’s why a powerful Cabinet subcommittee has been appointed to resolve the council’s garbage collection problem. The members are Wilfred Elrington, John Saldivar, Patrick Faber, Anthony “Boots” Martinez, and Melvin Hulse. They are expected to meet with Belize Maintenance Limited and Belize Waste Control next week with a view to finding a solution to the problem. As we’ve reported, it’s not rocket science, the problem is money, the council has none and these contractors are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But speaking with one of the committee members Boots Martinez today – who has been cleaning the north side, he said there has to be a reduction in terms of the cost of the contracts because the weekly figure is too much for the City Council and the companies have not been living up to the scope of works in their contracts. Martinez says, his crew of 146 workers that’s currently working on the north side can clean the city for $30,000 a week. BML is currently paid $70,000. That’s a big chasm – and we’ll see how those meetings go next week.