Cabinet to urge suspension of parking meters contract

Following intense pressure from Georgetown citizens and stakeholders to scrap the controversial parking meter deal, Cabinet yesterday decided to ask City Hall to immediately suspend the project pending a review and modification of the contract.

“Cabinet cannot order City Hall to suspend the contract. The City is separate… what happened is that (Communities) Minister (Ronald) Bulkan will make a recommendation that it be suspended and certain aspects reviewed,” a senior government official told Stabroek News, following Cabinet’s sitting yesterday.

Bulkan yesterday declined to comment on the issue stating that he could neither confirm nor deny that a Cabinet decision was made in relation to the suspension of the controversial contract. He directed this newspaper to contact City Hall today for comment.

The source, however, explained that a formal announcement from government will be made today.

This newspaper understands that government does not expect City Hall to reject its proposal since the two enjoy a mutually respectful understanding with City Hall looking to government for support quite often.

Only last week an application for temporary orders to halt the enforcement of the metered parking in the city, pending the court’s review of the contract between the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) and contractor Smart City Solutions (SCS), was denied by Justice Brassington Reynolds.

This paved the way for SCS to continue with its rollout of the project which saw from yesterday the implementation of tiered parking rates for drivers parking in the Capital.

City Hall and SCS signed the Georgetown Metered Parking Contract on May 13,2016. The contract which allows the foreign-owned company to charge for parking in the city and institute penalties on those drivers who fail to do so has since its announcement in May 2016 been the subject of controversy. Protest at the level of the council by Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan and other councillors led to two reviews of the contract. Both reviews conducted by the Ministry of Finance and the Attorney General’s Office found the contract to not be in the best interest of the residents of Georgetown.

However, the project continued under the aegis of an amended contract signed on September 16, 2016. This amended contract reduced the term of the project from 49 years to 20 years and reduced the fee to be paid from $125 for 15 minutes to $50 for 15 minutes. President David Granger had referred to the original price as “onerous”.

Once implemented on January 23, 2017 the project became the subject of a boycott and weekly protest by the Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM). MAPM has for the last two months been staging weekly protests in front of City Hall calling first for the reduction of the rate and then for the scrapping of the contract.

While City Hall has been stoic in its response to the protests, central government initiated talks with the local government authority which led to a review of the parking rate.

The APNU+AFC government has been accused of not acting decisively on the contract at a number of critical junctures including the Finance Ministry review of it and the approval of the requisite by-laws for the project to operate. Yesterday’s move will be seen as opportunistic in light of the ongoing protests in the city and concerns raised by the business community that sales have slumped sharply where parking meters have been placed.

Government’s recommendation will also pose a severe dilemma for Mayor Patricia Chase-Green who is one of the key proponents of the deal. She is also a senior member of the PNCR – the key component in APNU.