WMC to redirect state agencies' attendance to committee-level meetings

WESTERN BUREAU:

In a move designed to ensure there is sufficient time to discuss municipal matters, the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation (WMC) has voted to relegate the attendance of representatives of state agencies to a committee, where the services will have more decisive effects.

Garfield James, the self-declared independent councillor for the Sheffield Division, said sufficient space and time were not available to properly ventilate the reports from these agencies at the general monthly meeting of the WMC and recommended that changes be made to better facilitate them.

“With due respect to the agencies, who have for many years made it their duty to attend the general council meetings and give reports, (but) I am of the view that the representatives of these agencies would do better from a committee standpoint, and that the agencies be directed to attend these committee meetings, vent the situations, and from a committee level, we address those matters,” James said.

Committee level

James, who is among three councillors [Ian Myles, Little London Division, and Lawton McKenzie, Grange Hill Division] who were elected on the ticket of the People’s National Party, but have since cut ties, argued that he does not see the need for the agencies at the corporation’s general monthly meetings.

“I don’t see the need for the agencies to be at a general council meeting where we are unable to peruse all the documents within the time and space that is allotted,” the municipal lawmaker noted.

“I think the agency should be really differed to the committee levels, and not at the general council meeting,” he stated.

The recommendation passed with votes from all four Jamaica Labour Party councillors and two independent councillors who attended the meeting. The chairman and mayor of Savanna-la-Mar, Bertel Moore, along with the four People’s National Party councillors, did not attend.

Ahead of the vote, Ian Myles, the newly elected deputy mayor of Savanna-la-Mar, who chaired the meeting, supported the recommendation, noting that an in-depth report from these committees would be sufficiently prepared for the general meeting.

“It is something that we have looked at [and] once the discussions would have taken place wholesomely at the committee levels, then a fulsome report would have been initiated and sent to the general council meeting, so there would never be a need for them to be here,” he concluded.

This follows a similar decision by the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) to stop sending representatives to the island’s municipal corporations’ monthly general meetings and to concentrate on the planning and infrastructure committees. This decision became operational on June 5.