Hanover Municipal Corporation aims at increasing revenue collections

WESTERN BUREAU:

THE HANOVER Municipal Corporation (HMC) has announced that it will be making a number of moves to increase its intake of revenue over the coming months.

In July 2020, the HMC made a similar announcement that it would be stepping up efforts to collect outstanding revenues. At that point, a revenue/commercial services manager was hired and introduced as its newest member of staff.

“The position really has a lot of emphasis on revenue generation, developing revenue sources, enhancing them and maximising collection from them, inclusive of all commercial entities,” Chief Executive Officer David Gardner told The Gleaner then.

Mayor of Lucea and Chairman of the HMC, Sheridan Samuels, announced the latest revenue-collection drive at the corporation’s monthly meeting for February.

Outlining some of the areas which will experience concentrated efforts from the HMC, Samuels named building fees, trade licences, vendor’s permits, HMC space rental, property taxes and parking fees, along with the use of transportation centres across the parish.

CURRENT SITUATION

“The situation coming out of COVID now, there were a lot of areas that we eased up on. Persons have been out there building like mad; they have been building some structures, and we are very nervous here (at the HMC),” he emphasised.

“We are going to get all our departments involved, they will be going out there on a drive,” Samuels argued, adding that before the COVID-19 pandemic, the HMC had offered an amnesty, but persons need to come in and have dialogue with the corporation now.

He said that trade licences will be demanded before the HMC gets engaged in any business with traders; also, vending licences will be demanded from all vendors.

With regard to property taxes, Samuels outlined that while the parish of Hanover has been doing well in the collection of its targeted amounts annually, there are still individuals at large who have amassed arrears totalling millions of dollars, and they will be targeted for the collection of the outstanding fees.

“We gave you all the breaks during COVID and things are opening up now, and so you need to pay up,” he exclaimed.