Quote of the week
To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself – Seneca
And if theoretically the council moves out, and in the meantime City Hall deteriorates even faster, what does the Chief Citizen think should be done to save it? Ah yes, a restoration fund apparently, which is the same proposal a previous mayor had put forward when the PPP/C was in office. Apart from displaying a certain lack of imagination, it is impractical and will not save City Hall.
At an early stage in the statutory meeting, as we had reported, the Mayor had told the council that the building was “structurally sound”, but just in need of repairs. So what repairs are these, one wonders, and who had identified them? Do they require expertise at some level, or do the pedestrian skills of the City Engineer’s Department suffice? And if repairs are all that is at issue at the moment, why on earth are the Mayor and Town Clerk talking about moving the council out of City Hall?
Will the powers that be in the municipality please tell the residents of Georgetown exactly what the options are. We have had a number of consultants here who have given advice, so what has been followed, and what has not, and why not? In December last year the M&CC signed a contract for the restoration of City Hall to be funded by the EU, but that will not be ready until the end of the year. In the meantime, what must be done to keep the edifice intact, and can sufficient work be accomplished to make it safe for Mayor and Councillors?
Furthermore, have the city’s officers, more particularly the City Engineer’s Department and the Town Clerk been tardy or negligent in carrying out renovations to portions of the building, which have made it possibly uninhabitable at present? Does it ‒ as mentioned above ‒ need more sophisticated attention than the City Engineer can provide? If so, let us get it. The citizens of Georgetown are tired of all this foolishness. Forget City Week, City Hall must be saved; that is the priority. Even if the Mayor, Town Clerk and a number of Councillors have no sense of the importance of the material heritage and lack a sense of historicism and aestheticism, they could at least imbibe some of the feeling from those who do have it, starting with their own President of the Republic.
If City Hall is reduced to a pile of dust and woodchips on Avenue of the Republic because of the philistinism of the present incumbents, or even if it stands in danger of mouldering away, it would be a cruel irony to even think about celebrating Georgetown’s birthday.