Something has been bothering me for some time now, and I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I like progress, and I love driving on the cement streets, which are smooth and have no disgusting, car-breaking potholes.
The traffic jams are also disgusting, and it often seems that they could be avoided, if we were planning the timing of things better. But it doesn’t seem that our Mayor is too concerned about that. We just have to “grin and bear,” because the goal is the important thing, and he assumes that in the end we will all be happy and overjoyed when he has finished implementing the “Master Plan” for Belize City.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Things are happening too fast in Belize City. Major changes are being made. It’s like our old city is being destroyed, and replaced with a new one.
We all want better. But that doesn’t mean we have to rush in blindly with whatever the Mayor says is in the “Master Plan.”
A caller to Krem WUB last week remarked that he was once a member of the building supervisory board at the Belize City Council, and, though he asked, even he has not been given a look at the so-called “Master Plan” for Belize City. He sounded quite annoyed, and I am too.
In fact, I would say I’m getting frustrated, to the point of anger. There is a creeping feeling of helplessness that has been coming over me, as I have watched massive changes taking place in my home town. I don’t like feeling helpless.
I think it is this growing sense of helplessness to the point of frustration that has been bothering me. And there are manifest reasons why this feeling of helplessness is turning into frustration, and anger even.
I don’t like what they did to Memorial Park. To me, it’s not Memorial Park any more. Little was done there to preserve our memories. Rather, it seems like everything possible was done to obliterate it. Even the donated public marble/cement benches are gone. It’s now just a tourist village extension. They might as well change the name.
I don’t know if, when they are finished, I will like the final product at what was once our “Battle Field” or “Central” Park. The old one has been totally demolished.
Things are happening in Belize City. It’s not only about cement streets.
Now they want to change all the traffic flow downtown. The Mayor says it is in order to “pedestrianize” downtown Belize City for tourism purposes, according to “the Master Plan.”
Okay; great!
But who says we the citizens of Belize City want everything that is in the “Master Plan”? One of the few places that don’t have crammed and congested little streets was “downtown” Belize City in the area between Central Park – Belize Bank and Hofius Hardware – Barclays Bank. Not anymore.
Something is not right here.
The caller was absolutely right.
Before building frustration leads to road rage, demonstrations or riots, it would be best for citizens to get a look at this “Master Plan.” In fact, that should have been the first item on the agenda – consultation with City residents, before implementing any “Master Plan.”
We are a post-colonial society, and we know that where there is a “master,” there is usually a “slave.”
The Mayor keeps telling us that everything is according to “the Master Plan,” which was supposedly formulated 3 years ago.
Well, how come we the citizens have not seen it?! Aren’t we supposed to be the ones to say “yea” or “nay” to any proposed reconstruction of OUR City? After all, our tax dollars will pay for everything. Driver’s licenses have already gone up; way up.
It looks like we the citizens are just to pay our taxes and keep quiet, like modern day slaves.
Where is this “Master Plan,” and who is the “Master” here?!