sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning yes­ter­day de­tailed the prop­er­ty tax for­mu­la—based on an­nu­al rental val­ue.

He gave an ex­am­ple, say­ing if a home at­tract­ed a $2,000 month­ly rental, its prop­er­ty tax would be $720 an­nu­al­ly. He said the tax would be chan­nelled ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in­to ar­eas.

“All we got in PP’s (Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s) time was a slew of box drain mil­lion­aires and (UNC MP Kadi­jah Ameen) ca­vort­ing with her Life­s­port friends from Cara­po,” he said.

He said Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has to be fund­ed by the prop­er­ty tax dri­ve and that’s why the UNC was try­ing to ob­struct this. Man­ning said it would be vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to fund Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies and grant them au­ton­o­my with­out prop­er­ty tax.

Man­ning thanked one-time Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning, his moth­er, for the chal­leng­ing and hard work she did on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form dur­ing her tenure.

Man­ning did so at the start and end of his con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment on a com­mit­tee re­port on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form.

Man­ning slammed UNC MP Khadi­jah Ameen’s query about us­ing the Es­tate Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) fa­cil­i­ty to im­prove schools. He cit­ed a Guardian re­port on al­leged cor­rup­tion at EF­CL.

“She had the au­dac­i­ty and bold­faced­ness to ask about EF­CL,” he said.

UNC MP Dave Tan­coo de­nied the UNC was against Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form, say­ing the par­ty had walked the talk on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in its tenure.

He said re­form pro­posed by the PNM didn’t serve the pub­lic’s needs but the UNC sup­port­ed in­creas­es for coun­cil­lors.

Tan­coo start­ed speak­ing on ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion and held his ground but had to move on af­ter be­ing told by the House Speak­er it had been cov­ered.

MPs al­so paid trib­ute to and ob­served a minute’s si­lence for one-time PoS North East MP Alphon­so De Li­ma Jr, who died re­cent­ly.

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