The Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) is expecting a drastic cut in the subvention it gets from the Ministry of Finance for 2017/2018, and will have to rely on a portion of the collections from property tax and its own source of revenue to cover salaries and other operational costs, Vernon McLeod, chairman of the corporation’s Finance Committee, warned last Thursday.

“Quite likely, Government subvention is not going to be at the level of last year, it will be less. So collections are going to be driven by revenue earned from property tax,” McLeod said.He told the Jamaica Observer that the subvention the KSAMC receives from the Consolidated Fund will be for pension and poor relief expenses.For 2016-2017, the KSAMC received subvention from the finance ministry in excess of $200 million. In its projected budget for this year, the KSAMC had anticipated that it would receive a subvention of approximately $353 million, city treasurer Naudia Crosskill said.McLeod said that this financial year, the corporation was projecting to receive from the Parochial Revenue Fund (PRF), property taxes in excess of the $2 million it received last year. Some of the property taxes the KSAMC receives will also be used for public cleansing and to pay the Jamaica Public Service Company for streetlights.For this financial year, the KSAMC is also projecting to get from the PRF an estimated $580 million, collected as licences for motor vehicles. For the 2016-2017 financial year, the corporation received $560.6 million from motor vehicle licences, Crosskill said.The PRF receives its money from all the property taxes, including penalties and interests paid under the Property Tax Act, and the larger percentage of the monies collected as licence duty on motor vehicles under the Road Traffic Act.On the last day of each month, the PRF pays out to each municipality 90 per cent of the amount of property tax paid in the particular parish, and 25 per cent of the amount paid in each parish for motor vehicle licence duty.

— Claudienne Edwards