7 News Belize

Mayor Bradley Says He’ll Pay Waste Control
posted (October 20, 2014)
On Friday, we told you about the default judgment from the Supreme Court that was handed down committing the Belize City Council to pay 525 thousand dollars to Belize Waste Control.

It's a quite well-known dispute between the sanitation company and Mayor Darrell Bradley's council. City Hall has historically accumulated arrears for garbage collection, which they claim to catch up when trade license fees start to come in late in the year.

But after years of slippage - and an inability to dialogue earnestly with the mayor, Waste Control decided that they could no longer wait for the council to pay on its own schedule, and the company filed a claim before the Supreme Court. Because City Hall offered no defence, they were awarded a default judgment of over half a million dollars.

Today, we did reach Mayor Darrell Bradley for comment. He told us that the council didn't offer any defence because they have none: they owe and they must pay - his words. With that, Bradley told us that there was no point in mounting a defence or paying for an attorney. He claims that steps have already been taken to try to work out a payment schedule to deal with the debt.

Viewers may remember that Bradley's council had to settle a 2.3 million dollar debt with this company, most of which was interest which accrued over a 10 year period. When we asked about the concerns of the interest on this debt growing daily, he says that it is not a major issue because whenever the council has paid sums towards clearing arrears in the past, these sums have also included interest arrears, even though they were not something formally enforced by a court.

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