And while the Dangriga Mayor is fighting against the ever advancing Caribbean Sea in an environment gone haywire, Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley is trying to keep pace with an unprecedented rate of street paving.
The City has paved 56 streets, but like mother always said, haste makes waste, and more than a few contractors have been forced to do re-do's. Evergreen Street behind BWSL and Southern Foreshore are monuments to rough-shod patch up jobs, but Freetown Road has been under the most scrutiny. That's among the most heavily trafficked streets of the lot that's been paved and today we saw a team taking core samples from a patch of concrete that had already been re-done.
We asked the Mayor about it:
Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City Council
"We had required the consultant - the contractor on Freetown Road to remove 3 sections of the road. That has been done, and we're doing testing currently to make sure it meets the minimum requirement for the PSI. Of course when we did the design, that street had to be 6 inch thick and it had to be a minimum 5000 PSI. The 3 sections that we've tested, did not meet the minimum PSI requirements, so we're hoping that when we do this test again it will pass the 5000 PSI, if not then we will require them to change it again."
Jules Vasquez
"In the interim, you all still have retention percentage for them."
Darrell Bradley
"Yes, all of our contracts we keep a retention and the last payment is only paid over, when the city engineer signs off that the work has been completed to our satisfaction. Freetown road is not completed to our satisfaction and until that's the case, we will keep that retention."
According to the contractor M and M Engineering, the specifications the mayor speaks about were developed after he signed the contract to pave Freetown under, agreed-upon different specifications. He says he will have the core samples independently tested and certified.
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