‘Father Reid’ determined to return to StJMC
Published:Wednesday | November 22, 2023 | 12:06 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
THREE YEARS after being booted from the St James Municipal Corporation (StJMC) for missing three consecutive meetings without giving prior notice, Sylvan 'Father Reid' Reid, the People's National Party's (PNP) candidate-caretaker for St James Central's Salt Spring division, is determined to re-establish himself as the division's representative.
Speaking with The Gleaner concerning his plans for the division, Reid – who was presented as the PNP's representative for the Salt Spring division during a party meeting in Montego Bay on October 29 – pointedly expressed that he is fulfilling the wishes of the people in readying himself to retake his former place in the municipal corporation.
“I will be rolling out my brochure in a short while to remind the people, which I do not really need to remind them because they are calling for me. I was heading into private life, and they said 'no, Father Reid, you can't leave us', and I felt it because I know exactly what I was doing for people who cannot help themselves,” said Reid.
“The people know who cares about them, 'Father Reid', hence that is the reason they are calling for me. The people trust us, and we will execute when the time comes, and I will be back at the parish council [municipal corporation] through God's grace and the people's work,” Reid added.
Reid, who first joined the StJMC as a councillor in 2011, reclaimed his position as the Salt Spring division's representative in 2017 following a magisterial recount of votes tallied from the November 28, 2016 local government elections.
As a result of the recount, Reid amassed 1,049 votes, defeating the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) Gregory Harris who had 1,047 votes.
However, just three years later, Reid and his fellow PNP Councillor Gladstone Bent, formerly of the Catadupa division, were ousted from the StJMC after a motion was moved for their removal at the municipal corporation's June 11, 2020, sitting.
At that time the corporation, led by the then-Mayor of Montego Bay Homer Davis, cited the councillors' absence from the March, April and May sittings that year as the reason for their removal.
The expulsion was done pursuant to Section 30 (1B) of the Local Governance Act, which states that if an elected mayor or councillor is absent from three consecutive ordinary municipal corporation meetings of the council without the leave of the corporation, that individual will immediately be disqualified from holding office.
However, in a failed bid to prevent his fellow councillors' expulsion at that time, the StJMC's PNP minority leader Michael Troupe stated that Reid and Bent both had underlying medical conditions and were staying home in accordance with COVID-19 guidelines.
Asked whether he anticipates tension from the StJMC's councillors if he should return to the corporation following the upcoming local government elections, Reid said he is not concerned about any lingering hard feelings.
“There should be no tension, and if they [councillors] have problems with me, I will not have problems with them. I will just go and do what the people asked me to do best, and that is to work for them [constituents],” said Reid.
“I was vindictively pushed out, that is what it was. My record speaks for itself, because I have gone into Salt Spring, and for the two terms [as a councillor] I was able to provide poor people with at least 17 brand new houses, I was also able to build 18 new roads that were not built for up to 70 years, and we put in piping infrastructure there to ensure that when we built roads, the work was not eroded by old pipes,” Reid added.
For Reid, one major concern he wants to see addressed in the Salt Spring division is the issue of crime, which freshly came to the fore in the division following a gun attack along the Flower Hill main road in Salt Spring on November 6.
In that attack, which sent shock waves across Jamaica, seven-year-old Justin Perry and nine-year-old Nacholive Smith, both students of the Chetwood Primary School, and 26-year-old Tevin Hayle were killed when the taxi they were travelling in was shot up by a gunman.
A state of public emergency [SOE] was subsequently issued for the parish by the Government on November 8.
“If we are going to wait until two kids are murdered before we can put something serious in place to either control the crime or eliminate or minimise the crime, it is a sad day in Jamaica. It goes beyond an SOE; for instance, at Salt Spring, there is so much social intervention that is needed,” said Reid.
“Find ways to employ these young people, these same young people who have the guns each day, and find opportunities for them so as to give them another option.”