The era of the Belize City Council at the Pound Yard is over. This afternoon the city opened its new works, sanitation, and planning complex located at mile 4.5 on the Western Highway. The two storey - 4,000 square foot building was built at a cost of just over $375,000. The new building was opened at a short ceremony this afternoon. But the move 4 and a half miles west was far from voluntary for the council.
As we've reported, the former PUP City Council sold the Pound Yard Compound to the Novelo brothers for an undervalued price and never even got fully paid that amount. The Novelo's in turn used the land as collateral for a loan from the Belize Bank which they defaulted on. The bank in turn sold the land to the Mirage Group of Companies which helped the City Council secure the new location. And that brings us to today's opening. Mayor Zenaida Moya called it significant.
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
"The opening of this building is significant because the council will continue to ensure that it provides the best service it can to the residents and to its customers. Clearly we will be offering services of course in a building whereby persons if they need to wait, they will have a very nice building to sit down and wait in, if they need to wait. But it will also provide a better building of course to our staff."
Keith Swift,
So what services will people now have to come up here to get? All the services that were available at Pound Yard?
Zenaida Moya,
"Yes, as it pertains to all services. The Traffic Department, well as you know we did move the Traffic operations over to the building next to the Bel-China Bridge. All other services as it pertains to housing documents, any works, sanitation - anything that has to do with that, yes they will need to come up here."
Keith Swift,
What do you say to those who say that you left a historic location for this new site 4.5 miles up the road?
Zenaida Moya,
"Well first of all there is something called the law and because that building was sold by the previous PUP Belize City Council, unfortunately we could nothing else but to move off."
The $375,000 was funded with assistance from NAPA Auto Parts and the Mirage Group of Companies.
