And while we had a chance to speak to Mayor Bradley, we asked him about the Municipal Bond.
It's been 3 weeks since the bill for the bond was passed by the senate, but the prospectus has still not been launched. So what's the delay?
Bradley said that although he can't give a timeline when the bond will be released, it is still very much a viable project with one strategic investor already in negotiations.
Mayor Darrell Bradley
"It's difficulty to give timeline particularly because at this present moment we are negotiating with one particular institution/investor and that institution/investor has given their requirements as to their own due diligence process and we are trying to satisfy that. If that works successfully that would be a neat process because it means that we would be dealing with one entity - they residents of Belize City get their money - we can forward with the works in terms of our infrastructure project and then they will deal with whatever they have to do in terms of any kind of further resale of the bond to other potential investors. That's one faucet that we are looking into, of course again that itself has a certain timeline in term of that process, but the production of our prospectus which is all we really need to release the bond is in its final stages - we are just looking at the forecasting and we are looking at how the projected timeline in relation to how we receive the money because how we receive the money is to a large extent as it relates as how we can spend the money. We don't want to get 20 million dollars and put it in a bank and have to pay interest on that money and not be able to work the streets because BWS, BTL and BEL can't fix the street in time. We've been having delays on Freetown Road; I expected those works to be much further along than they are now. All of these things go together in terms of saying when we can release. In relations to the City capacity to release a bond - we can release the bond right now because our prospectus is all but finalized."
Bradley told us that his council is very much aware of the areas of the city which need attention, and he is asking the citizens to hold on a while longer while the process takes its course.
