One other question which the media took the opportunity to ask Bradley about was the arrears to Belize Waste Control.
As we've told you, the garbage company and its employees are at a tipping point, because the Council owes them more than half a million dollars.
Today, when we asked Bradley for an update, he told us that by their information, they are 10 weeks behind, and there is absolutely nothing they can do to catch up at this point.
More than that, according to Bradley, City Halls intends to wait out the contract with the other company, Belize Maintenance Limited, which they will not renew in 2015. According to Bradley, that's the only foreseeable relief for BWC:
Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The point is that we are about maybe 10 weeks behind with them and in relation to this current period we are not anywhere more behind with them that we were last year. The difficulty is that I maintain these sanitation contracts represents 45% of the City' s outlays. It is too costly on the City and what we are doing is unsustainable. If you recall last year at this present moment there were Waste Control personnel right in front of my office picketing. I know that under Zanaida's terms in office there were protests as well. This is a situation which goes on for years and years and it only going to be solved if we take a very realistic look at the sanitation contractors."
"One of the things that we had try to put in place is the residential garbage fee, so that the cost for city could at least be absorbed in part by residents taking up that responsibility. A thing which will help us in relation to that is the BML contract which costs us $78,000 per week that will expire January of 2015. What we had envisioned there is that we were not going to renew that contract and we are going to put in place what it called "sway" laws to require members of the public to maintain 2 feet in front of their property line. That's going to help us tremendously in terms of ensuring that there is alleviation and that that tax burden and the expense that sanitation costs the City goes down substantially."
"If the BML contract is discharge by time - that's going be a savings of $4 million from the City's revenue that we could put in streets, drains, public spaces and we could ensure that we don't have that much of a problem with the Waste Control contract. I have maintain that the collection of garbage is a necessity for the city."
As we've reported, and as Bradley has said repeatedly, they can only catch up with arrears at the beginning of the year, when their tax revenues start to be paid in.
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