Response to Mr. Gillett from Mike Campbell:



Dear Mr. Gillett,

With the encouragement of various other townsfolk I have delved a bit deeper into this critical issue. I have found out that for the most part Master Plan of 1988 Revised 1992 has been used by the Authority and is currently being used by the Authority to establish setbacks and densities and general zoning in San Pedro. Many other provisions of the plan have been made into law including our present traffic plan of one way streets. The Plan was respected and used to judge the merits of permit applicants. This continued until various large projects requested permits contrary to the Master Plan. In all cases these projects were in environmentally sensitive areas and were objected to strongly by the people of San Pedro. The projects in consideration are Reef Village, Sugar Caye Development and South Beach. Blue Reef was built in a designated Conservation Zone (4) requiring Low Low Density. Sugar Caye is built on seabed with mangrove described as Non Development Land. South Beach is to be built upon the 500' designated Hol Chan Buffer Zone as well as Non Development Land.

Please understand that all of San Pedro is very pro-development but most of us realize there are very real environmental issues to deal with in order to not foul our own nest so to speak. As to why the Authority chose to ignore the Master Plan for some and treat is as law for others is the subject of much speculation in the community. Your draft master plan refers repeatedly to ecological issues and the needed to deal with them. It also rightfully declares San Pedro as over crowded. However in the same breath you issue maps that would indicted the intention to convert all conservation areas as well as the entire coast to R-3 and R-4 zoning. Your text and your maps present diametrically opposed positions.

There is no calculation as to what increase in population those zoning changes represent nor guidance as to public services required or recommendations as to how to meet those needs.
Of further interest is that new zoning maps change the zoning of the above mentioned properties so that these developments will now be permissible where before they were prohibited by the Master Plan. Given the over all lack of detail, errors of fact, and other inadequacies which I will address in a separate letter, it would seem that the primary purpose of this new document is to legalize the decisions that were made concerning Reef Village, Sugar Caye and South Beach projects.

Although the A.C.C.S.D. and the S.P.B.A. are listed as participants none of the members seem to be aware of these proposed zoning changes. They have all been told that we do not have a master plan and we must act on this one.

San Pedro is at a crossroads. We must decide whether we are going to develop in an environmentally sensitive fashion doing our utmost to conserve the reef and natural environment that supports us all or develop as Cancun and Play Del Carmen did promoting high density and accepting environmental degradation.The old Master Plan represents the environmental development proponents and your proposed plan represents the Cancun type development programme. The existing plan projected only to 2005 and needs to be updated but not in a way that leads to environmental degradation.

In order to avoid some of the problems of the past a master plan must be mandatory under the law. The past problems ALL arise from the Authority not following the Master Plan. San Pedranos know what is best for San Pedro. Any meaningful master plan committee will be made up primarily of San Pedranos with technical assistance from the various Ministries.

Sincerely, Mike Campbell