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Here's how the Mayor explained the difference between being at the edge and going over it:..

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The council had been stretch because many of the infrastructure works we had expected now to be paying for out of bond proceeds. Whereas we are trying to pay for it out of internal funds that is unsustainable. These are works that we are investing in. It's unbudgeted and of course that causes a problem on our cash flow because we didn't expect to spend them."

Jules Vasquez
"You have put the council through your own doing in an adverse position where recently it was behind on its obligations for example to the sanitation companies."

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"I entirely reject everything that you are saying; I make no apologies for everything that you are saying because at the end of the day the city is meeting its obligations. If we have to be a little bit on the edge I wouldn't characterized it as irresponsible."

Jules Vasquez
"You have a fry chicken budget but a lobster appetite in terms of the council. We can't afford to pave all the streets in the city. We don't have the revenue base to support it."

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"Man Jules, I sit everyday with my city administrator, city engineer and sometimes with councilors and they tell me the same thing you are telling me. They look at me and they say Mayor you can't do this and you can't do that and you know what I look back and I tell them, we are at 31 streets now. You are telling me that I can't do this. We have never defaulted on our salaries; we have honored our obligations with our sanitation contractors."

But is the council really honouring its obligations with sanitation contractors? After our interview aired, reports of mounting arrears flooded in to our newsroom.

And we have confirmed those reports: City Hall owes Belize Waste Control for ten weeks of garbage pick-ups and it owes Belize Maintenance Limited for ten weeks of city cleaning.

And this isn't just pocket change: Belize Waste Control's bill is fifty one thousand dollars a week - so 10 weeks is a cool half a million dollars!

And BML is about eight thousand dollars a week, so the arrears to them is eight hundred thousand dollars. Put them together - and just to those two companies alone - City Hall has standing arrears of 1.3 million dollars - and counting! Both companies have been promised a payment for services this week - but they aren't counting their chickens before they hatch.

The situation was even more acute up until the end of last month - when City Hall owed each company for twelve weeks of services. But, the council arranged bridge financing with the Heritage Bank - with which it reduced the debts form 12 weeks to 10.

For context we should not that arrears for those services have been chronic at this time of year - as the city waits for revenues from Trade Licenses which is due at years' end.