7 News Belize

City’s Finances Far From Flooding In
posted (May 6, 2020)
And, a major part of any debt re-configuration would depend on the city council's finances which slowed to a trickle after the emergence of the COVID-19 threat.

Now that some measure of normalcy is returning to national life, the mayor said a little more money is coming in:

Bernard Wagner, Mayor, Belize City
"Last week was our first full week that we came back. We see minor little trickling coming in, little more improvement than where we were before. We remain cautiously optimistic. We know that all businesses are still suffering, people are not back on the job, even the government is feeling the pinch as we speak and so we don't see any significant turnaround."

And another element of a turnaround at city hall would be staffers returning to work under a full salary.

They took a 50% cut to their pay cheque weeks ago - and the mayor says he hopes that pretty soon he can bring them all back on full salary. But, the council has to take precautions, one of its employees, economic advisor Hubert Pipersburgh died of the croon virus. The Mayor said this is also a consideration:

Bernard Wagner, Mayor, Belize City
"Not all our staff are back as yet. We want to be very cautious in our approach and we want to do it in a phased approach, so we still following the health guidelines, we still putting in place the necessary procedures. If you notice when you came in you will see the different decals on the floor. We want to put in place shield between different work stations as well. We had a death right here in this city hall, one of our employees passed away and so we take this matter very seriously. We don't play with safety for our staff. We want to ensure that whenever we bring back our staff they are in a safe environment. We had the entire city hall sanitized from ceiling to the floor, so it's a safe environment as you can see and in respect to the staff we are looking at how our cash flow is and certainly if our cash flow is at a point where could go back to full salary for this 15th May, we want to do that. Our staff has made great sacrifice. Foregoing half of your pay you know it's no joke. For me I haven't received a salary from the last pay day in March. That was it and the entire April I have not received any kind of stipend, but I can live with it. I worry more and I believe our council worries more about ensuring that our staff alleviate some of their financial obligations as well, but certainly May 15th we are looking at it on a day to day basis to see cash flow coming in and if we can make the full payment we will make the full payment."

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