BLACK RIVER, St Elizabeth — Sixteen years after he first raised the issue as a brand new councillor, Cetany Holness (Jamaica Labour Party, Junction Division) says he is changing tack in his determined campaign to have a tax office established in fast-growing Junction, southern St Elizabeth.

Now he says he will no longer rely on St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation as a base from which to lobby.

Instead, Cetany Holness told the September monthly meeting of the municipality he will be seeking direct support from Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

That, he said, was based on encouraging comments from the latter during the campaign build-up to the local government elections earlier this year.

“I have been talking to the prime minister about it and the prime minister announced it at a meeting in Junction [early this year] that he and his Administration saw the need to grant us this tax collection centre,” the councillor told colleagues, municipal staff, guests and journalists at the monthly meeting.

“Between myself and our Member of Parliament [Franklyn Witter, MP St Elizabeth South Eastern] we will take it further,” Holness said.

It wasn’t mentioned at the meeting but the Junction councillor and the prime minister are cousins. The latter is the son of farmer Morris Holness, a native of Myersville, southern St Elizabeth.

“I am not going to continue to come here at the municipal corporation each month to make pretty statement and pretty statement is going nowhere…,” the clearly frustrated councillor said.

Recalling that he had served under four chairmen for the municipality since he was first elected in 2008, Councillor Holness said he would not “judge” incumbent Richard Solomon (JLP, New Market Division) since he was only installed this year.

However, he could “safely say that nothing happened under three mayors and … when you come each month and you deliberate on this matter and the media [publishes] it [an it] make us look good at the municipal corporation … [but] nothing meaningful is being done…”

A sympathetic Donald Simpson (JLP, Malvern Division), who chaired the meeting in the absence of Solomon, confidently predicted — by way of reassurance to Holness — that “now that you’ve gotten the ear of the prime minister, then something will happen…”

Back in 2008 when Holness moved his first resolution calling for the tax office in Junction, he argued that having to travel long distances to pay taxes in places like Mandeville, Santa Cruz, and Black River was a turn-off for property owners and others in Junction and its environs, often leading to non-compliance.

“We must make it easy for them,” Holness insisted then — and he has not changed his tune since.

His position on the proposed tax office for Junction, which is a predominantly farming community, has always enjoyed unanimous support from councillors on both sides of the political divide.

In 2008 Donovan Pagon (People’s National Party, Braes River Division) joined his JLP colleagues in robustly supporting Holness.

At that time Pagon argued that if the authorities genuinely want people to pay their taxes, “we have to help them with centres near to where they live and operate”.

In early 2021 Mugabe Kilimanjaro, former PNP councillor for the Ipswich Division, argued much as Pagon did in 2008.

“If we are trying to get the parish to become financially stable, we need to improve tax collection…,” said Kilimanjaro as he called for “some energy matching the urgency of the situation”.

At that time Holness rejected the oft-repeated suggestion that with online bill payments a growing trend, there was less need for physical tax offices in places like Junction.

Said the councillor back then: “It can’t be because you can now pay your bill online… If the online payment of fees is something that [most] Jamaicans are using, how come the line at the tax offices so long? How come lines at JPS [Jamaica Public Service Company] so long? How come lines at banks so long?”

During the 2024/25 Budget Debate in March, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke was reported as saying that $11 billion is to be spent on modernising existing tax facilities as well as building new ones across Jamaica, over the next three years.

However, there was apparently no mention of Junction.