City Council to tackle property tax reform
Stabroek News
October 6, 2002
The Mayor and City Council (M&CC) with assistance from the Urban Development Programme has embarked upon a project to introduce Property Tax Reform in Georgetown.
Mayor Hamilton Green said in his weekly mayoral broadcast scheduled for today that the present system of valuation of properties in Georgetown posed a fundamental problem since it was “obsolete and inadequate to deal with the realities of the development of a modern city.”
However, the property tax reform project was expected to “provide a system of valuation which is fair, accurate, reliable and easily understood by citizens,” Mayor Green told citizens.
A public education programme, he said, had been initiated to assist citizens to appreciate the benefits of the new system.
Another major problem facing the M&CC was its financial performance, which during the January to July 2002 period showed that the council owed its contractors $190 million. However, ratepayers had an outstanding amount of about $800 million for the M&CC.
“We need every cent of that money to get on with the business of managing the city,” the mayor said.
Noting that the M&CC had been putting more of its scarce resources into the security aspect of its work, Mayor Green announced that a small team had been detailed to travel overseas this weekend to settle details for acquiring urgently needed equipment to enhance the capacity of various sections, including the constabulary.
Meanwhile, some 500 street lamps were to be installed in different areas of the city, based on an arrangement with Guyana Power and Light, the Police and the M&CC, Green disclosed.