Redrawing Municipal Boundaries Should be Done Regularly

According to King, services are being provided to these smaller communities by the municipalities that are nearby.  In the case of San Pedro, it is the only town on the island of Ambergris Caye.  As such, services are also being provided by the San Pedro Town Council to smaller islands that aren’t far off.

 

Clifford King, Director of Local Government

”We recognize that in many instances, in fact all instances, the municipal body, just by the nature of what they have to do or what they’ve been doing, they provide services to these areas and residents in these areas demand these services.  For example, these areas have streets, they have drainage.  In many instances, the municipal government collects garbage and disposes of garbage, there are public spaces that are maintained, street buffers, they have parks and playgrounds that are being maintained in these spaces that are right around what we have known as the established boundaries for these towns.  But these areas are not a legal part of the jurisdiction, if you can put it that way.So in collaboration with the Ministry of Natural Resources and in consultation with the town councils and the village councils that buffer these communities, we sat down and we’ve had numerous meetings to finally end up with what we have as the proposed expansion and re-delineation of boundaries in some areas.  So you’ll find out that in some places like San Pedro, there’s an expansion, there’s a proposed expansion of the boundaries of the town to, essentially include most of the island.  And there’s a rationale behind that, of course, there one town on Ambergris Caye and so everybody on that island basically comes to the town council for services and this even extends to some of the islets around the island.  People come to the town council for services and generally in those instances it’s for the basic infrastructure services and for the basic garbage collection services and disposal, if you could put it that way. What is important to note is that just because of the natural development of municipalities, these kinds of things need to happen almost every ten years.  Unfortunately for us in Belize, we don’t always take that step to do these things as a matter of process and procedure and so when they come to light, they create red flags or they get people anxious.  But really, these are things that should be happening on a more regular basis.”