Municipal bond project close to an end; says Mayor Bradley

Darrell Bradley

Following a prolonged period of intensive road-works in the city which resulted in equal parts appreciation and frustration, there has been a noticeable slowing down of infrastructural works. It’s probably more noticeable because many of the streets in the city are in deplorable condition, rutted and gutted by no maintenance made worse by the recent heavy rains. Those streets continue to be a major source of discontent, and the news is that the municipal bond project is close to an end. Today, Mayor Bradley confirmed that with the exception of some house-cleaning, the project is done, and now the Council is waiting on money promised by Central Government to repair streets in the city.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“It’s slowed down because it’s a project. We had only twenty million dollars and the target is to do one hundred streets so that we are at the hundred marker so that project expires. It’s not like we have an infinite amount of money. Right now we are working I think on Wilson Street, we are working in several areas, Collet, we are still finishing up Pike Crescent, so we have about six or seven projects that are going to be finished and tidied up. What we want to do then is to work with the Ministry of Finance. The Prime Minister had committed that he would invest monies with the city in terms of assisting us to do additional streets and with the money tentatively that he has pledged, we believe that we could get to one hundred and forty streets by June of this year. And we are continuing to work with the utility companies to prepare certain streets, for example Vernon Street…we want to continue all the way to Central American Boulevard. We are working on the area in front of St. John’s College and Marion Jones Stadium. The water company is still there. We are working on several other areas, Buttonwood Bay Boulevard, so that we are trying to prepare these streets for the period when the Prime Minister chooses to move forward in respect to these additional infrastructures and then we will be able to do forty more streets with that.”

While the Council waits for that money to be released, the Mayor says that there is work ongoing to bring streets up to at least pre-pave status. On a related note, Prime Minister Dean Barrow confirmed in the House of Representatives last week that the complete paving of Central American Boulevard from end to end would commence this week.