The legal battle between Belize Waste Control and Mayor Darrell Bradley's City Council has come to an end. That's the outcome of a hearing today before Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin.
As we told you, this case against Mayor Bradley has been in court for several months, starting back in February of last year. At one point, Waste Control was pressing for contempt proceedings against Bradley when he owed them more than 3 months in arrears for their sanitation services. Well, he's managed to catch up to the point where he now only owes the company 2 weeks in arrears.
The ideal situation would be a zero balance, but Mayor Bradley told us outside of court today that the Council will keep current in their bill with the company for the next few months:
Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The litigation is finish. The court had on the last occasion granted an adjournment to today's date for the claimants, in this case Waste Control to file what is called a statement of facts and issues for the court to satisfy itself what friable issues there still are. The claimants did not file that document and they had indicted to the court this morning that we were going to press settlement of the matter and we have entered into a consent order which the City Council agree to and which they likewise agree to. Essentially what it is is that they claim for arrears. They are satisfied that that has been satisfied. There was a matter that they were pressing us for a deduction that we made when they took strike action. We deducted $10,000 from their weekly amount because we felt that they were not providing the services to time because of industrial action. They had indicated to us that because they were not being paid they will not provide the service and so we withheld a portion of their amount. What we've agreed to do is we have agreed to give them that which is $10,000 and the entire claim has been discontinued and we are no longer in litigation."
"I had maintained from the beginning though that there are serious and substantial issues as between the parties which will continue not in court. We are still hoping to work out issues in relation to exclusivity and other directions that the council may wish to take; recycling and other areas which they have raised to us is of concern to them, but at this present moment we are two weeks behind our payments. We feel that we could maintain this position since it is our tax season and we could maintain this position going into August this year and we anticipate that beyond August the gap will again widen."
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