According to a new report by the Cayman Islands Auditor General, that’s the reality underlying a net loss of $7.5 million over the last financial year at the Cayman Turtle Farm; the previous year’s loss was $8.1 million.
Roughly one month after the publication of a consultants’ report apparently aimed at vindicating the Turtle Farm’s annual multimillion-dollar government subsidy, the Auditor General’s report brings with it a cold splash of reality – describing a debt-ridden facility that continues to hemorrhage public dollars.
Turtle Farm management, meanwhile, points to minimal increases in revenue and applauds the success of a water slide installed in 2011. Talk about a slippery slope!
For this newspaper, the issue has never been about raising turtles or even eating turtle meat. It’s always been about money.
Every cent the government allocates to the Turtle Farm (1 billion of them per year) is a copper that could have been spent elsewhere, on cops, for example. Or education, transportation, waste management, or patching up potholes.
Case in point: While the Turtle Farm and its even more spendthrift cousin Cayman Airways continue to require some $30 million per year in subsidies, the country’s police cars are in “dilapidated” condition, according to internal auditors who also highlighted the sorry state of Department of Environmental Health and Health Services Authority vehicles.
Information provided by the police in response to questions from a Compass reporter indicate that two-thirds of the 126 vehicles in the police fleet “have reached their service life” – meaning they should have been retired, scrapped or sold.
As anyone burdened with a junker-clunker knows, it can cost far more in the long run to keep an old car roadworthy than to invest regularly in newer vehicles. That’s especially true given the demands placed on emergency response vehicles.
Successive governments have left the entire public sector in a financial condition similar to the Turtle Farm – loaded with obligations to pay off debts incurred for underperforming assets.
As a direct result of the mentality that has brought about the Turtle Farm, the unaffordable Clifton Hunter High School and innumerable other government misadventures, the U.K. stepped in with its Framework for Fiscal Responsibility in an attempt to save Cayman from further self-inflicted financial wounds.
Anyone hoping British oversight would fade away if Cayman succeeds in getting its house in order had those expectations dashed by recent remarks from U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Overseas Territories Director Peter Hayes, who said during his visit to Cayman that the guidelines are in the law, and they’re here to stay.
So much for any hope of borrowing to pay for a solution to the dump, or to address any of the country’s needs in the foreseeable future and beyond.
A government that has no cash, cannot borrow and must depend entirely on public-private partnerships to build infrastructure is in a perilous position of selling its future to outside interests.
Any money for new projects must come from new tax revenue (which means growth and development) or savings from cuts (which means reducing the size and cost of government).
Let’s start with the least painful cut. Let’s start with the Turtle Farm.
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