Back in February, less than a month before Municipal Elections, the PUP's mayoral candidate in the west along with the Minister of Tourism broke ground on a boardwalk and river park that was proposed for San Ignacio and Santa Elena's riverbanks. But the event happened without the knowledge of the mayor, Earl Trapp, who was re-elected in March.
And now, Mayor Trapp has received an invitation to the inauguration of the project, which is set for tomorrow evening. But there's one problem - Trapp says there is no plan as to how the facility will be managed. He said he's been kept out of the loop when it comes to what amenities the boardwalk and river park will have. Additionally, he told us that the area rep., Orlando Habet, went against the agreements they made.
Here's how he explained it.
Earl Trapp, Mayor, SISE
"I called Minister Habet expressing my concerns about this boardwalk being inaugurated and I know nothing about, I don't know how it will function and the reason why I said this is because technically, that is the ownership of the council, it's on the council's property. So how he build something without, I mean, bringing the leader of this municipality to be a part of the decision making and deciding how we will run this facility, how this facility will benefit the community. I am not against development but I'm against the way in which it evolved."
"Some of the residents called in expressing their concern as to why would build a river wall in Santa Elena when we are already used to and appreciate and prefer the it is flowing naturally. We prefer to walk from the ground right into the river and walk out rather than having to step up and we agreed that we wouldn't have built a river wall, we wouldn't have built a deck into the river because of the area being flood prone. So that was what we agreed upon but yet they went against what we had agreed upon."
"If you notice when you look at safety, they are many bolas at the front. The riverbank and the beach itself, the river needs to cleaned out properly because what this will do, it will harbor much more people and visitors so you want to know that when visitors come and want to use the river for a swim that it is safe. So it needs to be properly cleaned and readily useable for anybody that wants to use it."
"Two, we don't have any washbasin there, we don't have any bathrooms there. I don't know what the facility is going to be used for because first of all, I'm not sure if it's a restaurant and bar, I'm not sure if it's just a snack shop, but whatever you do, once it pertains to a business that sells food, you need a proper bathroom facility. There's nothing as such. It's very dark, the area is very dark, and I can tell you from past experience, the police department has always discouraged any kind of activities after 6."
Due to rain - tomorrow's event may be postponed, but we'll let you know if it goes through.
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