Editorial | Municipal agendas

This newspaper welcomes Desmond McKenzie’s promise to instruct local government councillors on their obligations to their constituents and to inform citizens of the services that are the responsibility of municipal corporations.

But while we approve of this proposal by the local government minister, the undertaking ought not to be an excuse for the councils to stutter and delay in getting on with their jobs. In fact, with all the councillors, except for a few members, having been sworn in since the February 26 elections, their leaders should by now have outlined their priorities for the first 100 days in office - and how they intend to get them done.

Establishing these agendas should not be particularly difficult. The councillors and their parties were engaged in noisy campaigns, in which they made sweeping promises, especially with regard to fixing roads and providing water to communities in their jurisdictions.

We can only assume that these were appropriately thought through, including in cases where the councils will have to rely on the central government for funding for projects. In that regard, citizens should, in short order, be able to inspect, and comment on, proposals that are to be submitted to the relevant central government agencies.

While some of these initiatives may, in the short term, be aspirational and beyond the direct, or immediate, control of the municipal councils, there are many low-hanging fruits within their grasp, if they are clear-sighted and ambitious.

Take the chaos and ramshackle of most of the island’s cities, towns and other urban centres, which have existed for decades. Or the decrepit state and unhygienic mess of what pretend to be the public markets of rural and urban towns.

Public officials, including the leaders of the municipal corporations, under whom the areas and facilities fall, like to blame their gritty circumstances on lack of money. The greater problem, really, is an absence of will and stamina required to pursue good public policy. So, the white flag is unfurled at the first hurdle.

KSA A PRIME EXAMPLE

The twinned region of Kingston and St Andrew, home of Jamaica’s capital, which the former mayor, Delroy Williams, pledged to turn into a smart city and the cultural hub of the Caribbean, is a prime example.

During Mr Williams’ nearly eight years in office, he periodically awoke to announce clean-up efforts in the capital’s downtown market district, where crude vendors’ stalls block sidewalks and encroach onto roadways, and raw sewage regularly bubbles from manholes onto streets.

Stalls are removed one day, but return the next. Municipal officials and city leaders quickly return to their default narcoleptic state.

In the meantime, evergreen trees planted on sidewalks, with the expectations that they will be regularly pruned, have largely been left to grow unmanaged, and dangerously, into overhead cables. Sidewalks resemble dangerous obstacle courses.

Neither does anyone seems to notice, or care, about the pile-up of garbage at markets, including the one at Papine, where, on the eve of the municipal elections, seemingly shamed by Carolyn Cooper’s articles in this newspaper, the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) removed the rubbish from the market’s skip. Which again quickly became overfilled.

And there is the rankness and eyesore of the Half-Way-Tree centre. Branded kiosks donated several years ago by the telecoms company Digicel are festooned with tattered tarpaulin, while rude protuberances limit walking space for pedestrians.

Over five years ago, it was the police’s Public Safety and Traffic Enforcement Branch (PSTEB) that led an initiative to wash down the roads around the Half-Way-Tree square to rid them of stench. The rankness returned. And has remained.

FOLLOW THE LAW

Kingston and St Andrew, of course, serves only as metaphor for the grime and disorder present across Jamaica. Making a dent in the problem, by ensuring that drains are cleaned and verges are trimmed, will help citizens feel better about communities and give a sense of worth, while lifting confidence in the worth of local government.

There are also other inexpensive things that municipal councils can do to enhance their value. Among their more significant responsibilities is to rule on building applications and provide oversight of the implementation of development projects. They should do that. Applicants should be able to track the status of their applications on a municipal corporation’s website. Citizens, too, should be able to know what applications are being considered, the environmental and other reports that support them, and basic information from inspections.

Additionally, councils, as they are required to do by law, should urgently engage citizens and community organisations about their budgets and strategic plans, as well as ensure that non-council members, as is possible, are appointed to their committees, including chairing those that the law says they should.

Mr McKenzie suggests that his aim is a new era of transparency. That can start and go a long way by the councils just following the law.

Next, the councillors and their leaders have to escape the stifling yoke of their parties that hitherto demanded that they be general dogsbody to the members of parliament within whose constituencies their divisions fall.

Councillors and their parties will likely find that they are rewarded by their constituents if they, beyond narrow partisanship, display independent advocacy on behalf of the communities they are supposed to serve.