San Pedro mayor addresses controversial land sale…
The polls for Municipal Elections 2009 a little more than twenty-four hours away and in municipalities around the country, the barometer is reaching boiling point. The U.D.P. controls all municipalities and the opposition Peoples’ United Party is desperate for some wins. In San Pedro the temperature today reached more than ninety-six degrees in the Lion’s Den. And months after residents were asking for a financial report from the San Pedro Town Council, Mayor Elsa Paz, flanked by the Tourism Minister and Belize Rural South’s Area Representative, Manuel Heredia, released the Auditor General’s official audit. The audit, however, only covered the period 2003 to 2006. And while the event did not draw a huge crowd, it looked like a political match when P.U.P. City Council candidate, Andre Perez brought up the issue of land owned by the council. And while Paz responded by saying that they were selling the land to invest in community projects, she also afforded the media a copy of the council’s unaudited estimates of revenue and expenditure for 2008/2009. We start off with clips from the morning’s events, followed by an interview later with Mayor Paz.
Andre Perez, P.U.P. City Council Candidate, San Pedro
“There is a financial report for 2000 to 2003 by the People’s United Party that left. In that report—there’s a copy in my hands—in that report it states here that there was left behind twelve parcels for Town Council on behalf of the people of San Pedro. Caribbean Coves five hundred and ninety acres on North Ambergris. Our question is does that land still exist or has it sold. Does it still exist? There’s a parcel purchased by Sandra Lisbey, forty acres, a parcel in San Marcus. Many of these reports that we have here—something that we have not received in the last six years from your administration. Now, where are those lands?”
Elsa Paz, San Pedro Mayor
“Let me begin by saying that it was you P.U.P. administration during 2000-2003 that started to sell this land. It was during that administration that that land was being sold. And today I can say yes, my administration has sold that land but ladies and gentlemen the monies are right here in front of your face.”
“The reason I wanted to sell these lands is because that was the only assets that I see that the council had for us to continue this big project because, as I mentioned before, these projects of the cobblestones especially the ones on Pescador, it was one point three million dollars and there was no way that the council could have found revenues to continue that project. So I decided to go ahead and sell this land. At the beginning we started to sell because it’s swamp land; it’s not beach front. It’s swamp land on the west coast of San Pedro going north across the bridge. it’s on the west side, it’s called Caribbean Coves. It’s all swamp land, low land. But because of being swamp land we decided to sell it for five thousand an acre and it was open to the public; anybody could have purchased a piece of—an acre or whatever amount of acres they want as long as they have the money. So that’s how it started. It started with five thousand and the following year we started to sell it for ten and then it went up all the way to fifteen, twenty thousand per acre. And every year as we were selling and as we were selling we were investing in the same cobblestone project. That’s how we ended up to have three major cobblestone projects. We completed the whole town cull, which is Barrier Reef Drive, Pescador Dive and Angel Coral and also all the other streets, the cross streets.”
Paz says the Council still has a sub-division of two hundred and fifty acres which it is selling out by parcels in order to cover for monies still owed to the contractor who did the cobblestone project.
