7 News Belize

Plan To Pave City Streets Getting Back On Track
posted (December 31, 2013)
Today is the final day for 2013, and the deadline that Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley gave to the public when he promised to cement 100 of the city's 500+ streets. But, some of the street works are still unfinished, and today Bradley called a press conference to update residents on their progress.

He says that they've reached that benchmark they set, but there are just a few more finishing touches which need to be put on. Here's how he explained them, and the different projects which will start in 2 weeks:

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"During the Christmas we have been working very hard to finalize some of our existing projects to close off what we have been doing and to start a new wave of infrastructure immediately as the new year started. We had completed the listing of the hundred streets and we are doing some finalization. We are on Park Avenue right now, we are Madam Liz and we are still on Juliet Soberanis Streets. We are finishing up North Front Street. We are on Water Lane all the way to the Vernon Street intersection with Youth For the Future Boulevard. All of those works are supposed to be finished by the second week in January and that's going to finish off our listing of 100 streets."

"We are already in the throes of finalizing additional infrastructure projects. I had mentioned before that the Ministry of Finance are going to be spending 2.5 million dollars on a drainage project. Work has already started along Queen Street. All of those works are being done by Cisco Construction and we've identified 21 streets which have recently been concreted and they will used there labor intensive methods which likely will have a significant impact in job creation and that project will straddle for about 4-5 months."

"BWS is signing off on the section of Princess Margaret Drive in front of St. John's College. We are going to be starting that by the second week in January. We are doing a section in front of the cemetery along the George Price Highway; that's also going to be finished by the second week in January. We are doing major intersections, for example. Mahogany Street intersection with Central American Boulevard. The intersection with the George Price Highway and we have identified about 16 other major intersections which are very inexpensive to do but our engineers have advised us that intersections are really tractions for potholes and different things like that and we are going to cement all of these."

But as we showed you 2 weeks ago, we found potholes in streets which were cemented just months ago. It's a major structural failure, when assurances given were that these streets should last for decades. Today, the Bradley addressed that concern, with assurances that these bad concrete mixes will be dealt with, and that that the concreting program is 95% sound. Here's how he explained it:

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"In relation to some of the holes that have been found in the constructed cement streets, we've identify one along Cemetery Road and we have identify one other along the area in front of Save -U. These are small areas, these are isolated areas. I remember when we had the concern in relation to having to dig up portions of Freetown Road, I made this point clearly to members of the media that if you are doing 100 streets, it is unrealistic to expect that the amount of pores that you are getting in terms of concrete; it is unrealistic to say that you will not get a bad pore. It is unrealistic to say that you will not have incidents which are isolated in relation to structural failures. Whenever there are structural failures we have required like what we have required on Freetown Road to have the contractor (and they have been perfectly willing to do so) dig up the areas that we have not been satisfied with and recast them."

"We had very few problems on Freetown Road. We had problems on Lawrence Avenue. We are having some difficulty on Madam Liz Avenue, but where ever we have these difficulties we are requiring that the contractors make good on their commitments and they have been 100% keen on doing so because it is our reputation, it is public funds and it is also their reputation."

The immediate remedial works will be paid for by the increase in revenue coming in from the property taxes and trade licenses.

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