Mayor Bradley on City Streets…Structured Madness!

The ongoing work on Belize City streets is absolutely wonderful, and absolutely frustrating…in equal measures. Take Central American Boulevard, for example. Works on that pothole ridden, rutted stretch started months ago, and it can’t seem to get finished. To the observer, it seems that the contractors do one short stretch, then move down the line to another section, then move to another street completely…with the result that you end up with five uncompleted stretches of road, instead of one finished, then another starting. We figured there must be a method to the madness…and today Mayor Darrell Bradley told us there is.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“I would like and much prefer a City Council that does streets on an ongoing basis, which is our responsibility. I would hope that the works are finished when all five hundred and twenty streets in Belize City are finished. Notwithstanding that I do appreciate the public sentiment that it is a headache to try to navigate Belize City streets. We have gotten a little bit better in terms of sending out texts and communicating to people, putting up signs, working with the contractors in relation to shutting down certain avenues when substantial works are being done…for example the intersection by Central American Boulevard and Mahogany Street, that’s a main intersection and whenever there is any interruption in relation to those works it will of course cause frustration. We do try as best as possible, and that work is being done by the Central Government, to coordinate with the contractors to ensure that the work is done as quickly as possible on the Central American Boulevard Project.”

Mike Rudon

Darrell Bradley

“On Central American Boulevard you have one piece cemented and then nothing…another piece cemented and then nothing…and then you start Mahogany Street even before you finish Central American Boulevard. It seems haphazard.”

Darrell Bradley

“It’s not haphazard. It’s that we want to get a lot of work done. I can tell you right now the City Council under our auspices has about eleven projects going on in the city.  The Central Government has about three major projects including Central American Boulevard and the Lake Independence Boulevard project so it’s not haphazard. I only have three years in office, and we want to get a lot of work done in those three years. If you can see in terms of our coordination we did a lot of the streets including Freetown, Orange, Craig Street, Barrack Road, North Front Street, Hyde’s Lane, and we focused on all of those streets in maybe a six month period…now we’re out of that area of the city. We’re on Princess Margaret Drive and some of the periphery streets. We’re gonna Start Blue Marlin Drive very shortly, so that we are in sections of the city but the reality is that there’s a lot of work going on, and with a lot of work going on you cannot escape the inconvenience.”

Mayor Bradley says that the Central American Boulevard Project is actually ahead of schedule, and will be completed in early 2015.