Discord deepens in StCMC
JLP councillors vote with their feet, abandoning committee meeting
Published:Tuesday | February 18, 2025 | 12:11 AMRuddy Mathison/Gleaner Writer
The ongoing discord between government and opposition councillors in the St Catherine Municipal Corporation (StCMC) deepened on Monday when the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) councillors walked out of the Disaster Preparedness Committee meeting. They argued that their protest was not a retaliatory act, but a justified response to the failure of the municipal corporation to ratify committee meetings.
The walkout follows last Thursday’s abrupt adjournment of the general council meeting, where People’s National Party (PNP) councillors, leveraging their majority, ended proceedings just 10 minutes after it began. Their protest was in reaction to the Government’s decision to use its parliamentary supermajority to pass a bill in the Lower House making Portmore the island’s 15th parish.
Minority Leader Theresa Turner Flynn defended the councillors’ stance, emphasising that the corporation had not fulfilled its obligation to approve committee meetings.
“General council must ratify all committees. The general council meeting was abruptly adjourned on Thursday. It was 10 minutes’ worth of meeting, and it was abruptly adjourned so that PNP councillors could move on to Gordon House to state their disgust as it relates to Portmore parish that is being established,” Turner Flynn told The Gleaner.
She further stressed, “The general council meeting must ratify all committees, so this Disaster Committee meeting was null and void because no ratification was done on Thursday.”
Turner Flynn said that the other committee meetings scheduled for this week were also not ratified. She said the the JLP caucus would be meeting to determine its approach to those meetings.
“The business of the people of St Catherine is put aside just for the PNP councillors to stage a protest at Gordon House,” she charged. “The people deserve more from their local elected representatives.”
However, Spanish Town Mayor Norman Scott, who chairs the St Catherine Municipal Corporation, dismissed Monday’s protest as baseless.
“These committee meetings are scheduled meetings. What ratification are they talking about? Even if the general council meeting ended abruptly, all the agenda items are carried over to the next general council,” Scott asserted.
“There is no issue of ratification as it relates to the meeting. There is a section on the agenda which speaks to committees – all that has been brought forward and will carry forward at the next meeting,” he added.
Scott lamented that the JLP’s walkout disrupted discussions on critical issues, including recent accidents at Flat Bridge. He also raised concerns about the National Works Agency (NWA) boycotting municipal meetings across various municipalities, leaving councillors unable to voice concerns about road safety.
“I am, therefore, calling on the minister [in charge of works] – the Hon Nesta Morgan – to reverse the ministerial order, if there is one, that bars members of the NWA from attending meetings,” Scott said, echoing previous calls from other mayors about the non-attendance of NWA personnel at general meetings.
“In the [Bog Walk] gorge, there are several breakaways, and we are asking that the NWA erect signs to warn motorists traversing that roadway of the dangers existing in that general area,” Scott urged.
He concluded that proper signage could help reduce accidents along the thoroughfare.
The next general council meeting is expected to address the ratification concerns and other pressing municipal issues.