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In mid-January, the Belize City Council took over 158 workers from BML – and instantly their bi-weekly wage bill went up from by eighty thousand dollars to three hundred and ten thousand dollars. Of course, the city is saving seventy eight thousand dollars weekly by no longer having to pay BML. So, just doing a rough calculation, you might be tempted to say that with one hundred and fifty six thousand dollars in savings, minus the eighty thousand for wages, and add to that another thirty thousand dollars for operational costs – the council would still be ahead by over forty thousand dollars every two weeks. But, the mayor says he doesn't think so:…

Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City

"My assessment would be that it will not yield a savings. I suspect that perhaps maybe, I see Ms. Ordonez saying no. But we have a running debate going on and I will tell you this, the staff of the city council and myself, we have ideological differences. Whenever government does anything it becomes more expensive. You're talking about acquiring 150 staff - you have a problem. Okay then, maybe somebody else, 150, bring on a 10 more people. It becomes a hole that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But I am saying that as a political person, I see a difficulty in making that work because I think it was the wrong course."

And if you missed his answer to the retrenchment questions, he said – in an under breath – that the council isn't dealing with that.

And so while the mayor doesn't like big government, what he also fears is that in the so-called "mawga season" for revenue, which comes in July and August - the council won't be able to pay its wage bill. Now, in the past it couldn't pay the sanitation companies during those months – but he had no problem with that:..

Darrell Bradley

"The problem with the wages I think would a problem which would be with us for some time because - it's easy when you owe a 3rd party. I shouldn't say that it's easy. When you deal with a 3rd party. When I owe a 3rd party, BML and waste control, if I can't pay them September, I can forestall that until the month of December. They don't like it but we have been doing that since the last 10 years and the city council has survived. When now you take that issue onboard, you cannot not pay your salary every single week, so that every single week the city council has to find a substantial amount of money because our 2 weeks we have to find 310,000 dollars to pay staff. What that means is that the money you were forestall until tax time you have to find it immediately as payment cycles arises. That becomes a challenge and that continues to be a very pressing and realistic problem with the city. "