St James Parish Council gets lawnmower

Claudia Gardner, Assignment Coordinator

The St James Parish Council has acquired an industrial lawnmower for use in the beautification of districts across the parish under its Community Development Programme.

According to mayor of Montego Bay and chairman of the St James Parish Council, Glendon Harris, the machine was purchased at a cost of $360,000 with funds from the parish's property tax revenues, and would be used to service parks, playfields, community centres and other green areas in St James.

"We are responsible for most of the community facilities. They are entrusted in the St James Parish Council and we recognise that these facilities need to be maintained in a sustainable way," Harris said during a commissioning ceremony in front of the municipal building last Thursday.

"Each year, a community, or the council, or the councillor might have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring the community facility to a level that it is usable. If it is not sustained, therefore, you get animals being tied on them; you get all type of things happening on the community facilities. So, we as a council have taken the decision to ensure that we play our part in ensuring that the community facilities are at the stage that they are usable and inviting," Harris added.

Harris said acquiring the lawnmower was a way of ensuring that property tax payments become beneficial to all communities. He also implored property owners to ensure they paid these taxes so that the council could implement more projects of this nature. He also said the sustainability of the project would rely on the input and participation of community members.

MOU TO BE SIGNED

"The communities will sign a MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the St James Parish Council, because it has to be a partnership. We can't go in and cut these community facilities and it is just left like that. They have to play their part and if they aren't a part of it, then they won't appreciate it. So the MOU will be signed with communities that are interested in getting on this programme and we will move from there," the mayor said.

"Somebody will be paid to operate the machine. That cost will be stood by the council. There are some proposals on the table of which the councillors will subscribe to have funding to keep the programme going. That programme will encompass the gas and maintenance of the machine," he added.