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But Perez can't be so blase about are the invasive developments currently choking his island. From as early as 3:00 in the morning the sand trucks and heavy equipment can be heard rumbling through the town - and by midday, it's bumper to bumper gridlock, with golf carts, taxi vans, and, still more heavy equipment crawling along the cramped cobblestone streets.
Right now San Pedro seems to be an island growing too fast for its own sanity and Perez conceded that it is a challenge balancing development and social wellbeing. He likened it to a trapeze act:
Andre Perez, Belize Rural South Rep
"It's a legitimate concern. We as leaders have to dance that same balance like a trapeze. You know, you're dancing on a trapeze where that's what we are doing in finding that as this town is growing, we cannot be a government that is going to stall any kind of development. But then the other side of the coin is that we have to be very mindful as it relates to the charm, as it relates to what is the reason why people come to San Pedro or Caye Caulker."
"Now we're talking about the municipality of San Pedro with the traffic. Indeed, the traffic is a problem right now. So we have to come up with a definitive agreement, not the agreement. We have to come up with something definitive that is going to happen. Certainly, we are looking at we always talk about moratoriums, But I think that we have to go beyond that and we are discussing that."
"As a matter of fact, I'm the mayor and I met today that we have to meet more to deal with the traffic problem as it relates to the wetlands. Many most of this land, even its wetlands, mangroves when we came in the government in 2020, on November 20, I quickly discovered that all of those lands are long gone."
"They are private lands. So any development that is happening right now is lands legitimate that people have title to it. So how do you stop and say you cannot do development. Now, to say that we are stopping people to do the the mangroves and everything, these people have their their rights to, to develop the lands that they have gotten, mangroves, literally places that mangroves are given off to. People shouldn't have. But I can tell you right now, there are many places where we are very much concerned about the mangroves. What I think that is lacking here is enforcement. So what information and very soon of the Department of the environment and Forestry it will be able to cater for attention for Ambergis Caye and Caye Caulker. And so that's a big plus for us here."
