And while he had the presence of the press today, Mayor Bradley - who will soon remit office - had one last political plum to offer. He said that the city council has signed a contract for nine more streets. But the council no longer has the municipal bond - which bankrolled about 100 streets - so how did they get the money? Mayor Bradley explained and told us the names of the streets that will be paved.
Darrell Bradley, Mayor - Belize City
"We don't have a municipal bond at this present moment to the point where we are saying we can do 20 million dollars' worth of streets but the city council is continuing to do street improvements and we signed a contract to 9 streets in Belize City."
"These streets include finishing West Canal and East Canal. Completing Eerie Street and Chancellor Avenue, Raccoon Street, Ebony Street, Gibnut Street, Third Street, and Allan Pitts crescent. One of the ways we were able to source the funding for doing this was we are actually getting a suppliers credit so that the person who will be doing these streets. We are doing them through RJB construction. They are actually going to upfront the money and we are going to pay them off over a three year period so we have to be creative. The bond project was an area of creativity where the municipality was able to source 20 million dollars to do a significant amount of streets. The budget and operation of the municipality make it so that we are unable to pay for capital projects through our current expenses."
"We have to raise money in a creative way and the supplier's credit are using this avenue will give us an opportunity to do an additional amount of additional streets."
The total cost of the street work is 2.6 million dollars and it will take about 6 months to complete.
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