Yes­ter­day’s Nom­i­na­tion Day for the Au­gust 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions means the count­down has start­ed for what may be the most con­se­quen­tial and im­por­tant elec­tion of this kind in decades.

The im­por­tance of the up­com­ing poll is due to the fact that af­ter decades, re­al ef­fort is be­ing put in­to re­form­ing the struc­ture of lo­cal gov­ern­ment in a way that will make lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives more re­spon­si­ble to the peo­ple who elect­ed them.

Many pre­vi­ous at­tempts to re­form Trinidad’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem have not been suc­cess­ful.

In this coun­try’s post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry, lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form has been on the agen­da of ad­min­is­tra­tions since 1965, when the Sinanan Com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed the de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of key func­tions to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and the em­pow­er­ment of com­mu­ni­ties to play more mean­ing­ful roles in the man­age­ment of their as­sets.

Since then, ac­cord­ing to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Oc­to­ber 2016 doc­u­ment ti­tled “Tran­si­tion­ing of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment: Draft Pol­i­cy,” there were lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form doc­u­ments in 1974 (the Wood­ing Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion), 1983 (draft pol­i­cy pa­per on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form), 1989 (The De­cen­tral­i­sa­tion Process, Re­gion­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment–Pro­pos­als for Re­form), 2002 to 2009 (when there were two green pa­pers and two draft white pa­pers), 2013 (a draft white pa­per) and the cur­rent 2016 at­tempt at re­form.

Most of these at­tempts to re­form the sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment in­volved lengthy con­sul­ta­tions, the ap­point­ment of con­sul­tants who pro­duced weighty and earnest re­form doc­u­ments, and at least five ma­jor amend­ments to the laws gov­ern­ing the sys­tem.

Yet, de­spite the re­ports, the con­sul­ta­tions, and the amend­ments, the over­ar­ch­ing struc­ture of Trinidad’s sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­mained in­tact over the last 30 years.

With re­gard to the fi­nan­cial arrange­ments, that struc­ture in­volves sub­ven­tions from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies. It al­so in­volves elect­ed of­fi­cials (coun­cil­lors) who are “large­ly un­der­paid, who are part-time do­ing a full-time job and with elec­toral au­thor­i­ty but no ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty ...” ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, speak­ing at the launch of his par­ty’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion cam­paign on Sun­day.

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­pos­es to change both of those arrange­ments: To a cer­tain ex­tent, the sub­ven­tions from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment are to be re­placed with monies raised by the res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax; and the part-time, un­der­paid elect­ed coun­cil­lors are to be re­placed by full-time elect­ed of­fi­cials.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said, “If you have lo­cal man­age­ment through lo­cal gov­ern­ment, you can im­prove the qual­i­ty of life in your com­mu­ni­ties.”

For Dr Row­ley, the sin­gu­lar is­sue in the Au­gust 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions is whether vot­ers sup­port or op­pose his par­ty’s vi­sion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form.

But the Prime Min­is­ter needs to make it clear to vot­ers and po­ten­tial vot­ers that his re­form vi­sion in­volves the pay­ment of a tax on prop­er­ty, at a time when many prop­er­ty own­ers have been be­sieged by high­er in­fla­tion, with the prospect of high­er elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter rates in the fu­ture.

Vot­ers are be­ing asked, there­fore, to pay a tax for the promise of im­proved lo­cal gov­ern­ment ser­vice.

It be­hooves the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to en­sure that vot­ers are aware of this trade­off and to out­line the ways in which the lo­cal gov­ern­ment ser­vices will im­prove in much greater de­tail than has hith­er­to been the case.