Monrovia –The City of Paynesville has been officially admitted in a group of hundred resilient cities around the world under the Rockefeller Foundation.

Report by Henry Karmo – henrykarmo@frontpageafricaonline.com

The Rockefeller program is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are growing part of the 21^st century.

Hundred resilient cities supports the adoption and incorporation of a view of resilience that includes not just the shocks such as earthquakes, floods, disease outbreaks but also the stresses that weaken the fabric of a city on a day-to-day or cyclical basis.

At the official admittance the Mayor of Paynesville City Cyvette Gibson, she was excited to be part of the program and said it is a huge opportunity for the City of Paynesville.

“We are here to sit with outsider of government the community leaders so that we can sit and discuss to come up with a road map for the city development.

“These are not something we are doing for today, these are long term goals we are setting and we are also coming up with a ten year master plan for the municipalities as well,” Mayor Gibson said.

For his part, deputy internal Affairs Minister for Urban Affairs Steve Nuefville said, Liberia is fortunate to be among the few countries around the world to make the City of Paynesville City safe and ready for disaster.

“This program will make our city safer and prepare for any future disaster. Liberia is ahead of lots of countries in dealing with collecting data that is getting us ready to compliance to the new urban agenda which says cities should be smart and ready for disaster.

“Flooding is one of our shock we spoke about so if we know that this specific community us likely to flood we go into these communities before the flood to address the issues so the purpose is that we build resilience in the cities to be able to deal with issues before they arrive,” he said.

Cities in the hundred resilient cities categories under the Rockefeller foundation are provided with resources along four pathways including financial and logistical guidance for establishing innovative new position in city government, where a chief resilient officer will be appointed to lead the city resilient efforts.

The Rockefeller foundation as part of support will support chief resilience officer to lead stakeholders in the development of a resilient strategy. This strategy, developed over the course of six to nine months, will serve as the city’s roadmap resilience.

It will also provide access tools, service providers, and partners from the private, public and non-profit sectors who can help cities develop and implement their resilience strategies. It will also enable cities share best practices, solve problems collectively, and learn from other resilience experts.

Though these offerings, hundred resilient cities aim to not only help individual cities become more resilient, but to facilitate the creation of a global practice of resilience building.

The program began working with their first cohort of 32 cities in December 2013 and announced their second class of 35 cities in December 2014.

The program is financially supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and managed as a sponsored project by Rockefeller philanthropy Advisor an independent 501 nonprofit organization that provides governance and operational infrastructure to its sponsored projects.

Monrovia – Paynesville, City one of the most populated and commercial cities in Liberia is facing numerous complex problems including congestion, garbage disposal, street vending, amongst others but the City Council has been working over the last few years to ensure that Paynesville is counted amongst some of the best cities in Africa and other parts of the world.

The City has already been able to make its way into the competitive and rigorous process of getting selected as one of 100 Resilient Cities in the world to form part of a US$170 million effort launched by the Rockefeller Foundation, a process meant to help cities around the world build resilience to social, economic, physical and other challenges.

Paynesville City qualification into the 100 Resilient Cities program places the city in a program that already has some of the best cities in Africa such as Cape Town (South Africa), Dakar (Senegal), Nairobi (Kenya), Kigali (Rwanda), Enugu and Lagos (Nigeria), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), amongst others.

To ensure that Paynesville is best suited to get full benefit from the 100 Resilient Cities Program, an expert in Health Policy and Planning currently visiting Liberia as Guest of the Paynesville City Council says Paynesville has done a great job to qualify in forming part of the program.

Liz Agbor-Tabi, Associate Director, City and Practice Management says cities are faced with numerous challenges and as such the Resilient City program is intended to help cities address these challenges.

Making a presentation at the Paynesville City Hall Thursday on the importance of Paynesville becoming a member of the 100 Resilient City program and the associated benefits, Madam Agbor-Tabi disclosed that there are several benefits associated with forming part of such network of cities. 

She listed some of the challenges to be tackled as urbanization, unemployment, globalization, lack of basic social services including water and others and said these issues put stress on cities to grow and meet the needs of their fast growing population which the 100 Resilient Cities program seeks to assist cities devise a strategy to tackle these issues. 

“Cities are interconnected and system failure in one city affects the others. Urban population is growing rapidly and so these are many challenges that need to be addressed by cities”, Madam Agbor-Tabi said.

With experience in working with vulnerable population, Agbor-Tabi said she is in Liberia to help the City of Paynesville develop a strategy to assist and address the challenges facing the city.

“You have a hardworking Mayor and team, so we are here to also assist them in getting Paynesville to another level. They have been able to get the city through a very competitive process which included interviews, site visitations and a long process, so that shows their willingness to move this city forward”, added Agbor-Tabi.

Strategy formulation

To achieve the goal of ensuring that a city is able to tackle the emerging challenges of climate change and others, the visiting Public Health expert noted that proper strategy has to be formulated by the Chief Resilient Officer to be hired with the support of the 100 Resilient Cities program who will serve as Advisor to the Mayor and a person who is aware of the internal workings of Paynesville.

The strategy, she expressed, will highlight the key areas looking at broad and holistic approaches to tackling the problems confronting Paynesville.

“The Resilient City program will provide financial support in the form of salaries for the Chief Resilient Officer to retain the services of such person to work closely with the Paynesville City Corporation to draw a strategy to help transform the city”, Agbor-Tabi explained.

She continued “this person will be the senior advisor to the Mayor, a spokesperson and the person responsible for coordination”.

The Chief Resilient Officer, she added, will also work with government and resilient officers from other cities around Africa and the world to transform the city. 

Amongst the factors to be considered to make a City successful in the program, Madam Agbor-Tabi named a committed leadership that is willing to experiment and implement, embrace new ideas and proper strategy formulation looking at the needs of the city.

Madam Agbor-Tabi, a graduate with Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in health policy and finance from the Johns Hopkins University-Bloomberg School of Public Health has an extensive background in public health, policy planning, and international development.

According to her profile, she has long years of experience working with vulnerable populations in New York City and has also helped to implement health programs with national governments in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mayor applauded

Several individuals including government officials who attended the presentation by Madam Agbor-Tabi applauded Paynesville City Mayor Cyvette M. Gibson for the level of improvement she has brought to the city since her appointment as Acting Mayor in 2012.

Paynesville has seen massive improvement in recent years with the erecting of signs illustrating various locations for easy access for travelers, establishment of sisterly relationship with several cities around the world including Minnesota in the United States of America and some Turkish cities.

Mayor Gibson has also embarked on beautification projects including the ELWA junction project, Du Port Road Junction and garbage disposal projects including “Buy Your Dirt program”, all intended to give the City of Paynesville a new look.

She also completed the A. B. Tolbert Motorcycle Hub, the first Motorcycle (Pehn Pehn) Hub which was completed in November 2015. The hub located at A.B. Tolbert Road relocated commercial motorcycle riders from the ELWA Junction, thereby promoting the free flow of traffic and creating a safe and clean environment.

Paynesville City has seen major improvements under the leadership of Mayor Gibson.

Monrovia – Disagreement is said to be growing between business owners and the Paynesville City Council over the imposition of high municipal taxes against businesses in the commercial city by the city council.

Report by: Kennedy L. Yangian – kennedylyangian @frontpageafricaonline.com

The over 500 hundred business owners in a meeting held in Paynesville over the weekend at the  residence of one of the affected, told FrontPageAfrica  that the yearly municipal taxes charged by the City Council in Paynesville is higher than the one  charged by central government.

A Spokesperson of the business owner who spoke on the basis of anonymity said the central government charged was LD$2,000.00 yearly contrary to that of the Paynesville City Council.

“Central government is charging us LD$2,000 as municipal tax knowing the economic problems facing businesses in the country while the Paynesville City Council is charging far more, this is un-acceptable”, they asserted.

Documents in the possession of FrontPageAfrica, issued to a Gas Station in the area by the Paynesville City Corporation indicate that entity was charged an amount of US$80.00 as well as US$ 30.00 as garbage fees, totaling US$110.00.

The documents signed by the data entry clerk, commercial head and comptroller, bears no name, demanding that the payment for 2016 must be paid within 30 days at the Paynesville City Corporation (PCC).

The business owner’s spokesperson says that in the wake of the financial difficulties facing their businesses as the result of the high exchange rates in the country, they cannot afford to pay such high fees in the US dollar currency.

“We know that we have to pay garbage fees to clean our business centers but why has the PCC decided to make the fee high, we will not accept it” said the spokesperson.

When the FrontPageAfrica contacted the Spokesperson of the Paynesville City Council Jani Jallah recently claimed that the taxes were mandated by the Legislature and is intended to beef up the city council financial strength in cleaning the city of Paynesville.

Though, the PCC Spokesperson did not say how much was the city council budget, it indicated that the budget allotted by the National Legislature to the PCC was small to cater to its work force.

“We don’t have the needed logistics, those garbage trucks you see out there are all donations from goodwill countries while we also have to cater to those out there by cleaning the streets” said the PCC spokesperson.

Monrovia – The City of Paynesville has joined the 100 Resilient Cities network which will help the municipality to tackle challenges of infrastructure, poor health, flooding, and water etc.

As a member of the 100RC, Paynesville will gain access to tools, funding, technical expertise, and other resources to build resilience to the challenges of the 21st century.

 Mayor Cyvette Gibson said the city entrance into the 100RC network will help Paynesville fight the challenges of infrastructure failure, rainfall, flooding, water management issues, and poor health infrastructure and disease control.

As the number of people living in urban areas grow from 50 percent today to an estimated 70 percent in 2050, cities around the world face huge deficits in preparedness for rapid growth and natural and manmade disasters. 100RC’s new member cities are joining an elite international group proactively preparing to face any challenge that lies ahead.  

Mayor Gibson said, Paynesville selection to join the 100 Resilient Networks is not only a significant honor adding that it will give residents of Paynesville the tools to have a better city.

“Our application recognized Paynesville’s commitment to better health infrastructure, poor water management, prevention of rainfall flooding and disease control,” Mayor Gibson said.

“As a new member of 100 Resilient Cities, we can work with the best in the private, government and non-profit sectors in developing and sharing tools plan and respond to resilience challenges ahead”, the Paynesville Mayor said.

Selected cities are now part of a global community of cities working together to build urban resilience. In the months ahead, as part of the 100RC network, Paynesville will be eligible to receive funding.

Paynesville will also receive technical support to develop a resilience strategy that reflects the city’s distinct needs and the support and services they need as they work towards implementing that strategy.

Each new network member will gain access to a variety of 100RC platform partners in the private, public, academic, government, and nonprofit sectors. Partners offer tools and services valued at over 180 million USD at no direct cost to 100RC members, in areas such as innovative finance, technology, infrastructure, land use, community and social resilience.

The cities will be linked together in a global network so they can learn from each other’s challenges and successes.