85 year-old Elmira Vasquez-Phillips, a resident of Sun Dry Street has been living in her home at that address for decades, and for all that time, it has been a dead-end street.
Well, Belize Estate Company Limited, which is located on a vast property right next door to her single-lot house, wants to open up the street so that its customers have another entrance.
Phillips is strongly against it, and she has voiced her concern to her area representative, but apparently it's gone unnoticed.
Elmira Vasquez-Phillips - Resident, Sun Dry Street
"At least we had expected that they would come and tell us what they were going to do but they just went ahead and did what they wanted to do. My neighbors are like my family, we worked hard to build our own homes and the five people that live on this little street all own their own homes and we live like family."
Mark Phillips - Resident, Sun Dry Street
"What it appears is that the company next door - the Belize Estate company wants another outlet because they have two other outlets, one by the stationary house and one by the Riverside Tavern. They just unilaterally and arbitrarily went ahead and started constructing this road without consulting the residents in the area who would be impacted."
Elmira Vasquez-Phillips
"They wanted to make a street so that people can come up and down and we didn't expect that because it is not wide enough."
Mark Phillips
"We got in touch with our area rep who is the Honorable Sedi Elrington and then he got in touch with the City Council and his daughter is a counselor and an attorney and also the counselor in charge of traffic - she came here and she met with us and she got one of the managers from that side to come this side and we got her assurance that no road will be built there. I even told the guy who came that he was a former counselor so being a former counselor and politician, he should have known how important it was to liaise with the residents to get their view before just going ahead with their proposed project."
We contacted the Belize City Council, where a spokesperson told us that indeed, permission was granted to the company to open their gate to provide for another access to their property.
The reason, we were told, was that the company gave the council certain assurances that it would only be used for small vehicles because the street is too small to accommodate any trucks.
The Council says it did consult with some of the residents, and that the increase in traffic through the area wasn't seen as big nuisance to the.
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