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Joined: Oct 1999
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Marty Offline OP
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Mayor Bradley also confirmed that no part of negotiations with Belize Waste Control involved an extension or amendment of that company's contract with the Belize City Council. So with garbage matters out the way, the issue is city infrastructure - specifically the seemingly unending street works which have resulted in the loss of revenue to businesses, frustration, inconvenience and traffic congestion. News Five's Mike Rudon got an update from Mayor Darrell Bradley.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

If you're a glass half full kind of person, then there is good news coming out of City Hall today. Mayor Darrell Bradley says that it'll only be another three months or so before the street insanity ends and things start looking up as far as traffic is concerned.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

Darrell Bradley

"We will see substantial alleviation in the traffic woes going into October and November of this year and that is when we will substantially move away from the downtown areas. A major headache has been the substantial delays and I will concede that there has been substantial delay with respect to the North Front Street Project. That's a major artery going into the downtown community. We are working on that simultaneously with our efforts on New Road. And that is one street going in and one street coming out-major arteries. And when you close down those roads, it is going to cause a problem. B.W.S. had to go back on North Front Street and that's the difficultly in terms of the delay. We are trying to have them accelerate their works and as soon as they move out of the ending portion of that, then our contractors will go back. It is only from the area of Victoria Street to the Swing Bridge. About sixty percent of the work has already been completed, but that area again is causing substantial delay."

A lot of that delay and inconvenience seems unnecessary to observers. Case in point a large portion of Baymen Avenue, which was broken up by B.W.S. months ago and still hasn't been touched by the City Council's contractors.

Darrell Bradley

"People may not appreciate that there is a legal process that is involved here�that they will indicate to us when they have signed off on a street. Just because a street appears to be dormant; that there is no work crew on that street presently, does not mean that the work has been completed on that street and it does not mean that B.W.S. has signed off on the street. When they sign off on the street and they have passed the street over to us; that means that we go there and we concrete the road. And when we concrete the road, any further problem that occurs on the road is then the responsibility of B.W.S. because we have allowed them the full time. If we move before they have given us that sign off, then there is that difficulty because they will say that we have interrupted the finishing of their work and we don't want to do that. We are spending public funds and when we spend public funds, we want to ensure that we allow maximum time to the utility companies to do what needs to be done so that when the streets are completely, they don't have to in a week later or months later, go into the road."

With some semblance of an end in sight, even if still months away, the Mayor says that they are moving as fast as they possibly can.

Darrell Bradley

"We had done the BelChina approaches; we have done the BelCan approaches; all of that is complete. We are waiting to do the roundabout. We are on several streets in the downtown area. We are going to do East Canal. So like our works on the downtown: we are going to do Douglas Jones Street. As soon as these works are completed, you will have substantial alleviation because when these works are done, then we will no longer be in very critical, traffic intensive areas of this city and people will have less concerns."

Currently the City Council is working on eighteen streets in addition to large projects like the B.T.L. Park and the Battlefield Park. Mike Rudon for News Five.

Channel 5


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Marty Offline OP
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Chap's Complains About City Hall's Street Works

Belize City is undergoing transformation at an unprecedented pace - as the city council drives towards 100 paved streets in one and a half years.

And during this process, the tired old clich�, has probably never been more applicable: Progress does bring problems. All over the city, merchants have to contend with streets that are closed for extended periods - and during that time they see their sales plummet.

One restaurant owner is grappling with that - and he says he may not be able to survive the downswing. We found out more at Chap's Restaurant and Bar, in the Pickwick Club compound:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
Christian Riveroll is standing at the entrance to his Restaurant 'Chap's' because he has no customers inside to attend to. And if you want to know why you can see the dust clouds wafting past him.

He says the those clouds are about to put him out of business:








Christian Riveroll - Proprietor, Chaps
"We are in a position now where things have gotten ciritcal for us."

Critical because of this, the street, Newtown Barracks which used to be one of Belize's best and a popular night-time strip, but it was demolished 3 weeks ago, and now, it looks like a village road and is kicking up dust accordingly.




Add the sea breeze to that and all the dust blows right into Riveroll's open air Restaurant. It was designed to capture the sea breeze, but now it's just accumulating dust, same for the adjoining Pickwick Pool:

Christian Riveroll
"Our sales have dropped down to half or less than half in some cases from where they were just a couple months ago. We have very loyal customers who patronize us and even them have come and have said 'we want to come to your establishment but the dust is just so incredibly bad that we can't come' - it's uncomfortable, it's unhygienic and we can't continue like this. If the sales are so low and our customers are uncomfortable when they're here because of the dust - we are slowly going out of business."

And what's more worrying is that work has stopped

Christian Riveroll
"And my understanding is that we're looking somewhere to the end of October or into November before they complete this street and I'm telling you if that continues - there will be no Chap's by November - it's that bad right now."

Jules Vasquez
"It's particularly bad today - because?"

Christian Riveroll
"Well we had rains over the weekend and that helped and then that created potholes and then that helped because vehicles were now forced to go very slow along the street because of the potholes and now this morning the City Council decides to grade the street. So the street is nice and smooth now (with dust) and so vehicles that were going 10 or 15 miles per hour are now going 50 miles an hour up and down this street."

So, for the time being, all Riveroll can do is keep up a strict regimen of wiping and mopping in the restaurant, with a power washer on the street:

Christian Riveroll
"We're at a point now where it's at least every half an hour - we have to go through and wipe each table down, the floor is mopped four of five times a day now to just keep things at some semblance of cleanliness and even so we clean it and it is just five minutes later you can already see the dust just coming back - it's hard to even keep up, it's really bad.

I had to hire someone who stands out in front of Chap's all day and just sprays water to try and keep the dust down - and even that doesn't help. As the sun is so hot, you spray one area - within a few minutes it is dry and then the dust picks up again."

Jules Vasquez
"When the street is finished - I understand they will do just an extension of the park - it will be stamp concrete and it should be quite lovely."

Christian Riveroll
"But in the meantime people cannot be suffering this bad for months on end. Business cannot survive without sales months on end - I was prepared to take two or three weeks 'lick' - I don't mind 2 or 3 weeks, I think it's great what they're doing but if we're going months on end then we can't survive it."

And now he's making a please to City Hall:

Christian Riveroll
"Start working on the street, start getting it fixed. What's the delay? Why is there no work going on the street for the last three weeks? We need something to be done if we are to survive this."

Jules Vasquez
"Today is Payday- do you have a tough time making payroll?"

Christian Riveroll
"It's very tough and I was explaining that to my staff earlier that it is getting harder every week to meet salaries because of the lack of business that we've been experiencing for more than a month now."

And while he prays for some intervention, Riveroll also reached out to his customers:

Christian Riveroll
"We're going to clean as much as we need to clean - the service and the food has not dwindled at all - we still maintain a very high standard in food and that is why we found it so necessary to speak to you today - to show the people that we are trying our very best in such a tough situation to keep our doors open."

The City Council says they only graded the street because the carnival road march will use the area as a finishing point next week. They say that indeed work has stopped temporarily but should resume after the Carnival. We note that the same contractor is working on Baymen Avenue and progress on that street has also stopped.

Channel 7


Joined: Oct 1999
Posts: 84,397
Marty Offline OP
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Mayor Says There's A Story Behind Unfinished Streets

To date, the Belize City Council has fully cemented 85 streets. While they've gotten these to completion, there are still streets which are on the last leg, but work has stalled. It's created inconvenience for city residents who want to know what's the hold up? Today, the mayor explained that there are matters happening in the background which the public isn't aware of when it comes to Baymen Avenue, the section of Newtown Barracks near Princess Hotel, and the BTL Park:..

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The flood mitigation project wants to do a drainage aspect from a canal that's located under Douglas Jones Street and they want to route that canal either through Wilson Street or through Calle Al Mar and then they want to take it out to the sea."

"There is a certain part of the street then that we have to leave so that they could be able to access that. There is a delay in relation to the contractor just bringing the process, but we still have to coordinate with other elements so that when the City Council is doing Baymen Avenue, we have to link that with other projects that are going on in the City. It's not that this is causing us a delay but its a issue that we have to deal with. I have toured BTL Park, I have looked at it, they are making substantial progress. That park will be finish by the first week in December. We are beset by rains, we are beset by a lot of other factors for example; parts of the park has to be wired appropriately. A lay person may go and look at the park and say that they see anybody there, so that means nothing is happening. They don't know that work is also happening."

"People may look at a street and they may say that nothing is going on with that street, but you may not know that BWS has not sign off on the street yet. You may not know that a portion of the street has to be left available for another project to go through and all of these things are things that we have to deal with."

"I fully understand that with the recent drainage, people are taking a lick in terms of the condition of streets. This is why we have embarked on the infrastructure project and this is why we've completed 86 streets to date. Completing the remaining amounts and even going further it's a time intensive process. It's not something that we can snap our fingers and we will get it done. I understand that those streets are taking a long time but they are taking a long time because of issues beyond our control."

According to Bradley, City Hall expects to meet the 100 street goal by the end of November, a month early.

Channel 7



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