Belmopan celebrates anniversary
It may have passed without much fanfare, but Wednesday was observed as Belmopan Day. Never one to pass up a hot story, News 5’s Jacqueline Woods spent the day in the nation’s capital and came home with the following report.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
In 1961, Hurricane Hattie devastated the colony’s capital Belize City. As a result of that destruction a new capital city, Belmopan was constructed, fifty-one miles inland. The land was owned by the Melhado family, who generously donated the prime real estate to government
Anthony Chanona, Mayor, Belmopan
“It took awhile to get off the ground. I can certainly recall the earlier days in the ’70s, Belmopan was pretty much an abandoned city. There was a migrant population they would come up to work in the civil service; Government officially relocated its offices here.”
From its earliest days was managed by a politically appointed entity called the Re-construction and Development Corporation. Then in March of 2000, that governance was transferred from Recondev to an elected local municipal authority, the Belmopan City Council. Mayor Anthony Chanona, a farmer by profession, says his first year in office has been a wonderful challenge.
Anthony Chanona
“You have to manage risk in any enterprise and certainly farming has a unique risk. You are never sure what you are going to get back. So I bring that, I wouldn’t say cavalier approach to business, but I bring that calculated risk management to the office. Because as a young council we have to take risks, and as a farmer I would hope that we would be planting the seeds of change of good governance that other municipalities and other governance that will come to this office will be able to build, and as I say in farming reap, what we have sown providing it is a good seed.”
In the past, there was little social or business activity in Belmopan and many workers commuted from Belize City. Today Belmopan has not only become a place where government conducts its business, but it has developed a life of its own. The area has expanded from two thousand, four hundred and seventy-one acres in 1971 to eight thousand, one hundred and ten acres. The population has also increased and the last census reports that there are approximately eight thousand, five hundred residents. The challenge says Mayor Chanona is to try to make Belmopan an attractive place for its youth who make up half of the population.
Anthony Chanona
“You talk to most of the young constituents in Belmopan and they will tell you that Belmopan is boring, so we need to find a way to bridge the two generations. The older or not so young generation of Belmopan pioneer like the peace and quiet. The young people feel that that is not good enough. So we are challenged as a young city council to try and find the happy medium.”
Likewise, the City Council has been working to attract business to the area to sustain Belmopan’s development and create employment.
Anthony Chanona
“You cannot sustain development by pumping money, as what we would try to do in certain capital projects. So what the young council tried to do, and I think successfully has secured, is the identification of a two hundred acre parcel of land within the city limits. We have written to the I.D.B. for technical assistance on how to design an industrial park where portion of it becomes an EPZ, an Export Processing Zone, and the other component becomes an industrial zone, to be able to give residents in Belmopan the opportunity to go to and from employment.”
There are also plans to mortgage passive assets including some open land. The money will be used for income generating projects like the construction of a shopping mall, central market, city hall, and bus terminal. Chanona says they have not been able to capture the tourism industry in the “garden city” despite the fact that there are many attractions.
Anthony Chanona
“The largest concentration of Mayan artefacts from Knich Ahua and all those wonderful pieces are vaulted here in Belmopan. But because its not presented or not being able to be showcased to lets say a cruise ship tour bus line, its kept away. So we need to find a way to expose what we have that part of Belmopan the green nice ambience we have to the tourism sector and to introduce other employment opportunities for Belizeans.
We see a botanical garden in Belmopan as part of a tourist attraction. Now from I have been in Belmopan, I have heard about a botanical garden, but somehow that act was never able to get off the ground or into the ground. We have scaled down the botanical garden that had an ambitious one thousand acres into a twenty-five acre project, but we see that as the peg of the garden city lingo. But at the same time most of our medians will be with flowers and you will see that as early as next year.”
With the seeds planted three decades ago and the fertiliser generously applied by farmer Chanona, it should not be long before Belmopan blooms. Reporting for News 5, Jacqueline Woods.
A more elaborate celebration of Belmopan day will take place on Saturday. And in an additional note on geographic etiquette, viewers are reminded that the name of the nation’s capital is “Belmopan” and not “Belmopan City.” The name of Belize City, like New York City, uses the word “city” to distinguish it from the country called Belize or the state called New York. There is no such confusion with Belmopan, so let’s just keep it simple.
