Port-of-Spain Mayor Raymond Tim Kee isn't used to not being in control.He comes from what he calls a "proud black family" on his mother's side, who descended from free Africans, not slaves.His paternal grandfather helped found the Chinese Association and one of the first public transportation services in T&T.The oldest of eight children, he left a cushy job with a major insurance company to start his own business in his late 20s because, he said: "I was a very own way kind of person."So it's no wonder that Tim Kee chafes at the many bureaucratic and political limitations to his mayoral authority.
Tim Kee, who's only been on the job since November, said he doesn't plan on going for a second term.But before he goes he wants to make part of his legacy a push for autonomy for the capital city, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in June with long slate of activities, including the Miss City of Port-of-Spain pageant on June 1 at the Hyatt, the Mayor's Ball on June 14 at the same venue, and an interfaith service at the Holy Trinity Cathedral on June 22."Just today at a council meeting I was asking the CEO: 'Is there any place that we could go to make our own laws within the confines of the city of Port-of-Spain?'" he said in an interview at his office on Monday.One of his targets would be the young men who wear their pants drooping, exposing most of their underwear."In many states in the United States they lock you up if you are like that," he said."I also asked (the CEO) what it takes to have a court in the city to deal with those comparatively little things," he added.
"If I have the responsibility to deliver a city to look a certain way and behave a certain way, I can't only have responsibility and no authority," he said. "I see (Port-of-Spain) as a major city not only in the country but in the Caribbean. I must be able to ensure that its integrity is maintained. We must be in a position to not only make laws for the city and but to enforce those laws."
Besides law-making independence, Tim Kee wants financial autonomy for the city."I should be able to raise my own money," he said before acknowledging: "That is not on the cards."Tim Kee is speaking within the context of global trend for major cities to seek autonomy. Just this March, the mayors of Quebec City and Montreal in Canada asked for special status recognition that would give them more control over their budgets and allow them to make decisions without having to send formal requests to the provincial administration in Quebec.
The previous Port-of-Spain Mayor Louis Lee Sing spoke about autonomy as well. At a Joint Select Committee of Parliament hearing last year, he and other administrative members of the corporation complained of staff and vehicle shortages, the need for more powerful weapons and better compensation for the City Police, the infestation of rodents in the city and other problems."I think one of the real challenges of the effectiveness of municipal corporations must be the lack of autonomy in key areas of its activity...there are simply too many restraints, too many barriers, to the effectiveness of the corporation in the conduct of its day-to-day affairs," he told the committee.The Port-of-Spain Corporation is run by the opposition PNM.In an interview with the T&T Guardian, Lee Sing talked about the difficulty of working with a Minister of Local Government, who holds the purse strings for regional corporations, from a different political party.
"You can't ask somebody to run a city and you're doing so at the whims and fancy of others whose agenda might not be in sync with yours," he said. "In other words, there are people who really don't want to see you do well."
The current People's Partnership government has promised local government reform, but the PNM has made perhaps the strongest statement yet regarding the issue, with PNM political Leader Dr Keith Rowley pledging to abolish the Ministry of Local Government if the party were returned to power."There will be no middle man which allows the minister to interfere. We will remove that," Rowley said earlier this year.Tim Kee spent the first 13 years of his life in first Princes Town then Fyzabad.He remembers that before the family moved to St James they would occasionally visit Port-of-Spain. "It was big occasion to come in town and walk on this street with my mother and do window shopping," he said, pointing towards Frederick St."The place was clean and people used to dress well. Little boys wore ties and girls had ribbon in their hair. It was a nice environment. Even now I wish I could see it."
Because he lived in Flagstaff and would do most of his shopping at the mall, and his getting to and from his company's office on Duke St didn't require that he go deeper downtown, Tim Kee had little cause to walk through Port-of-Spain again until he became mayor.He saw a city that had degenerated."That was a shock to my system," he said."When you look around and see the ease with which people vend. They put their trays anywhere and they don't care about the pedestrians, and the pedestrians just accept it and walk in the street."He'd like to see the city return "to as close as possible to where it was."When "the hectic 100th anniversary thing" is over, he said, he plans to begin meeting with the relevant stakeholders to discuss preventing littering, improving the look of buildings, planting trees and flowers, improving security and dealing with the homeless."My vision of the city is one where we can start walking in the streets again with our families, sit in the parks, breathe clean air," he said.
MAKING OF THE CITY
1757: The original capital, San Jos� de Oruna (St Joseph), had fallen into dilapidation, and the then Governor Don Pedro de la Moneda moved to the village of Puerto d'Espa�a, which consisted of two streets, Calle de Infante (Duncan) and Calle Principe (Nelson), a couple of little wooden houses and mud-huts, some 400 mostly Spanish-Amerindian mixed people and three shops.
1783: Grenadian-born Phillipe Rose-Roume de St Laurent obtained the "Cedula of Population" from the Spanish King Carlos III. Puerto d'Espa�a grew quickly into a proper little town of 3,000 inhabitants.
1797: The British conquered the island. At that time, the capital was very overcrowded with approximately 10,000 inhabitants. Governor Thomas Picton decided to have a land reclamation scheme implemented, which would turn the tidal mud flats into habitable lots. Starting in 1803, land fill was carted with mules from the Laventille hills, and over the next two decades all the land south of Marine Square (Independence Square) was reclaimed from the Gulf.
1808: A great fire destroyed many of the wood-built houses of Port-of-Spain. The merchants of the town rebuilt them with stone from the Laventille quarry.
1812: The prison on Frederick Street was completed, and criminals were "thrown" into it along with debtors, mad people, and animals.
1819: Governor Sir Ralph Woodford purchased the abandoned Paradise estate from the Peschier family. He had the area, about 317 acres, cleared "for the recreation of the townsfolk and for the pasturage of cattle." It was henceforth simply called "The Savannah." In 1845 the name was officially changed to "The Queen's Park."
1823: Under Woodford's aegis and personal attention the first primary school for boys was opened in Port-of-Spain in April; another one for girls followed three years later.
1832: The new Roman Catholic Cathedral, which began construction in 1816, was completed; the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity was consecrated in 1823; Hannover Methodist followed in 1826, and Greyfriars in 1837. All Saints Church, the oldest building on the Savannah, was completed in 1846.
1844: Governor Sir Henry McLeod on February 15 laid the foundation stone for a new government administration buildings on the western edge of the Woodford Square. In 1897, as Trinidad was preparing to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, the building was given a coat of red paint, and the public referred to it thereafter as the Red House. This direct ancestor of the present Red House was burnt to the ground on March 23, 1903, by a fire. It was rebuilt 1907.
1858: The General Hospital was constructed.
1914: The Port-of-Spain City Corporation was proclaimed the municipal authority of the city of Port-of-Spain by the Governor on June 25, by way of Ordinance 24 of 1914 and established by the Legislative Council on June 26. The powers and responsibilities of the Corporation has been altered over time by various Acts of Parliament, the most recent being the Municipal Corporations Act No 21 of 1990 and its subsequent amendments.
Sources: The Caribbean History Archives/Gerard Besson and ttparliament.org