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As Mayor Darrell Bradley starts to wind down his two term tenure as mayor - he is in a reflective mood.  And one of the things he reflected on was those manhole covers - a failed project that was supposed to replace thousands of manhole and drain covers but only completed a small percentage of that.

Yesterday the mayor said it is because of his managerial shortcomings:..

Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City
"One of the things that I can assess in terms of a weakness of my leadership is that I'm not that managerial type of person and I notice that there are some weaknesses with relation with that so that I've also shared this concerned with some of my councilor colleagues and also councilor Leslie that I think that there is certain advantages and gains we have built over the last 5 and a half years but we have to admit that there are weaknesses. One of the things again in terms our level of engagement and consultation with people, dealing with bread and butter issues, drains; you have asked me repeatedly in relation to the manhole cover project. It surprises me that over the last 5 and a half years we've been able to float a municipal bond which is 20 million dollars, we've been able to do so much infrastructure, we at the precipice of building a new commercial center, we have done the trade license reform but we can't repair manhole covers. So that I think in terms of management, that needs to be strengthened.â€￾

THE PROJECT had a budget of 300 thousand dollars but the disbursement was not complete, because the contractor could not finish it.