And in our last story from Vallejos for tonight's news, we asked him about that other high profile land case that is in the courts at this time.
We're of course talking about Harmonyville in which BGYEA wants to use the buffer zone. One issue which their attorney, Audrey Matura-Shepherd, keeps hammering home in our interviews with her is that the road reserve, which makes up this buffer zone is substantially larger than other road reserves of well establish communities. She makes the point that Harmonyville is the only housing community with such a huge restriction on the amount of land used to separate the community and the highway.
We asked Vallejos about that, and while he concedes, he notes that in the planning stage, this buffer zone had to have gotten the approval of the BGYEA principals or else the project wouldn't have gone through:
Wilbert Vallejos - Commissioner of Lands & Surveys
"Harmonyville is a very unique situation, it did not follow the criteria or guidelines that any other subdivision would follow. It doesn't make it irregular nor illegal, I am not saying that, just lets be careful. We are just saying that it was different approach and situation to developing that or designing that. That may be unusual, just like the fact that you barely find any other subdivision in this country for one acre residential parcels of land. When you look at area; village, town, and city - the lots are much smaller. As a matter of fact you can fit 8-10 lots within a one acre plot, so everything in Harmonyville seems to be enlarged when you look at it. However the design wasn't done by the government of Belize alone, the design was done like everything else in Harmonyville in consultation and in agreement with Harmonyville and you know them. If something did not meet their expectations or did not have their approval at point in time, it would have been brought to the table and things wouldn't have moved further beyond that particular point. So I am not able to tell you what the discussion were when that happened because I don't think I was part of the whole design, but it was done in connection with the physical planning section. I don't know what the attempt was, what the intention was to leave the buffer zone as wide as it was left and you are right in saying that when you look at other subdivision guidelines and the facts can speak for themselves, the buffer zone is in fact not as wide as it was, but it was design that way in collaboration with Harmonyville representatives, so there must have been some sort of consensus or approval on their behalf."
That case is currently at the case management phase, and it will go back to court some time later this year.
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