The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

A KEY Cabinet minister yesterday told The Tribune the government followed every protocol in leasing the Town Centre Mall from a sitting Cabinet minister to relocate the General Post Office.

Public Service Minister Brensil Rolle said he presented Transport Minister Renward Wells with a copy of the former administration’s study on the mall after it was discovered use of the Phil’s Food Services building was untenable given the postal service crisis.

Mr Rolle did not provide an exact date for his conversation with Mr Wells, and subsequent presentation of the study on the mall, nor did he provide any evidence to clarify discrepancies that have emerged with respect to the mall resolution passed in Parliament last year.

Former Immigration Minister Brent Symonette, who has a 50 percent stake in the mall, yesterday said the lease with the government was signed last Friday; however, Mr Rolle told The Tribune the deal hasn’t been finalised.

Mr Rolle sought to provide a timeline for the post office’s relocation as new concerns emerge over whether the government misled Parliament with respect to the deal.

“We didn’t look at Brent initially,” Mr Rolle said, “we looked at Phil’s. Once we made the judgement that we could not go into Phil’s then I provided the minister of transport with a comprehensive study done by the PLP. And so when we determined Phil’s had mechanical, electrical, and plumbing issues that was gonna take too long to address the issues that we were facing, and you put in context that the employees at the post office building were in crisis, and they were in chaos.”

Mr Rolle continued: “[Mr Wells] didn’t get a look at other sites available until the decision was taken that the [Phil’s building] was not a suitable place. When we took the position to go into the building initially we thought the cost to get everything in shape was going to be $2m, afterwards, after the reports were all laid out then we got the impression the cost was around $4m.

“I said to Wells ‘listen, this building is not going to be ready, it’s going to take too long. Let’s look at some other buildings -the PLP did a study, let’s look at them.’”

He added: “The basic point is I did not make the study available to him until we made the determination that we just couldn’t go to Phil’s. It was going to take too long, it was gonna be expensive.”

The Garden Hills MP said Mr Symonette, then a sitting minister, was asked to step out of Cabinet discussions at that stage.

Mr Rolle said he also told Mr Wells to be mindful of the timeframe because “just down the road was the Independence [Drive] Shopping Centre, a building that was also identified by the PLP”.

The owner of the Independence Drive Shopping Plaza is now in a legal dispute with the government over a public-private partnership (PPP) it struck with the former Christie administration to construct the new main post office (see Tribune Business).

“When the minister of transport determined he had an interest in renting the post office and putting the post office in Town Centre Mall,” Mr Rolle continued, “we all knew that Brent Symonette was engaged so we said to Brent Symonette ‘listen you can’t be a part of these discussions. We’re talking about renting your building, we don’t want you to be in those meetings.’

“Cabinet then has to take a vote on whether or not we are going to go forward with this arrangement,” he added.

In an independent assessment of Phil’s building, engineer Basil McIntosh said the “entire structure” of the building was “in very good condition” and “could be safely utilised for approximately another 20 to 25 years without any major maintenance work.”

“It is our opinion,” his report said, “that should our recommended minor remedial measures be carried out, the structural integrity of the captioned building will be enhanced.”

Mr McIntosh told The Tribune last week he was surprised by the government’s claim otherwise.

Although his report was dated September 6, 2018, about two weeks before the government announced its plan to abandon Phil’s building, Mr Rolle yesterday insisted “there was a space between when the study was done and when we actually tried to get into the building”.

“It cannot be disputed that all the electrical wiring was removed, condensers from air conditions were down, the plumbing in the building was problematic,” Mr Rolle said yesterday.

Mr Rolle continued: “There is also the issue of whether the second floor had the capacity to hold the kind of work pressures that was going to be on it. The roof is leaking, the sheetrock all moist.”

He said the situation at the General Post Office had forced 100 employees to work only three hours a day in conditions that some claimed impacted their health, adding the timeline and costs to fix Phil’s building were untenable as the process to issue and review public tenders would take months.

The Town Centre Mall relocation was scheduled to be completed by Christmas 2018 but construction overruns, shipping delays of new postal boxes and other unforeseen circumstances stalled the move until May.

Mr Wells explained last week the lease agreement had not yet been signed because the government was still deliberating over the square footage, particularly the lease of additional storage space.

Officials at the post office have asked for an additional 1,600 sq ft, according to Mr Wells, who said the lease will be signed once that is finalised.

Combined with the 56,000 sq ft currently occupied by the General Post Office, the total sq footage of the lease is expected to be 57,600. The cost of the lease would be $691,200 per year, and $3,456,000 over the five-year agreement.

Yesterday, Mr Rolle noted the government still owned the Phil’s building as he maintained his support of the government’s decision as a cost-effective.

Controversy over the lease of the Town Centre Mall returned to the spotlight when Mr Symonette revealed earlier this month that Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis called him personally to negotiate the deal last year.

The St Anne’s MP has not confirmed the date of that phone call, but has suggested it took place sometime between October 4 and 5 when he was in Mexico on a government trip.

Mr Symonette resigned from Cabinet days before making the disclosure on a local radio show, and said he discussed “the whole question of conflict of interest” during that call. Mr Symonette also disclosed that he was informed of the decision to table a resolution in Parliament.

In an Op-Ed piece to local dailies, former Attorney General Alfred Sears said the resolution to lease the mall could warrant a legal challenge.

He said the resolution passed in the House of Assembly on October 24, 2018 to lease the mall, which pointed to “latent structural defects and technical issues (of the Phil’s building)”, was not supported by the technical report.

The resolution’s statement that Mr Symonette “did not take part in the discussions leading up to the decision” also appears to contradict Mr Symonette’s admission he discussed the matter with the prime minister, Mr Sears noted.

“Therefore, there is an issue whether the Cabinet made misrepresentations to the House of Assembly seeking the approval of the House of Assembly for the lease of the Town centre Mall,” he wrote.

“The Powers and Privileges (Senate and House of Assembly) Act, makes it clear that the presentation of a false or misleading submission to the House of Assembly is a contempt against the House liable to the disciplined by Parliament.”

Mr Sears said the disclosures by Mr Symonette and Mr McIntosh presented several constitutional, legal and ethical issues: “Whether Mr Symonette’s disclosures breached his ministerial oath and the prudential rules contained in the Cabinet manual; whether Mr Symonette was required to disclose the leasehold contract himself to the House of Assembly before the presentation of the resolution for exemption; whether the House of Assembly was misled by the certain representations, amongst other things, contained in the resolution and, if so, the effect of any alleged misrepresentations; and whether the speaker of the House of Assembly, a senator or any member of the House has the legal standing to make a constitutional claim, under Article 39, for the Supreme Court to declare the aforesaid resolution null and void and order Mr Symonette to vacate his seat as a member of the House of Assembly.”

When asked about this, Mr Rolle said: “As the minister of public service who has the responsibility for leases I’m telling you what I know, now that private conversation that they had or may not have had that’s another issue. I’m talking about what come to me.

“I don’t know about those private conversations, I’m saying to you as a sitting member of Cabinet, when the determination was made that we had some interest in this building, we told him you can’t be here, this is not for you.

“Once the decision was taken that that was something we were interested in doing, we then followed every step. We made sure the resolution went to Parliament to exempt him in accordance with the constitution.”

Mr Rolle called Opposition demands for the resignation of Dr Minnis and Mr Symonette over the deal hypocritical, and pointed to the FNM’s support of the decision to rent from former parliamentarian Leslie Miller. Mr Miller was not a sitting Cabinet minister at the time; however, Mr Rolle said this fact was not material to his argument.

A Cabinet sub-committee, formed by the former Christie-led administration to scout a suitable building to relocate the post office, identified the Town Centre Mall as the front runner. At the time, the former administration negotiated a rate of $24 a sq foot - double the cost of the rate offered to the present administration.

Mr Rolle said that deal would also have seen the government absorb the cost of renovations.

The subcommittee was comprised of former ministers Philip Davis; Glenys Hanna-Martin; Shane Gibson; and Michael Halkitis.

When asked whether the decision by the owners to slash the rental rate in half was due to political favour, Mr Rolle insisted it was Mr Wells who negotiated the unprecedented low rate.

Mr Wells did not return calls from The Tribune yesterday as he was reportedly out of the country.