Mayor Daniel Guerrero and the San Pedro Town Council ….please read this.
One thing is for sure, Covid19 knows how to STOP an entire working society. But what are we learning, if anything? As a business owner, I sit like many others, wondering what can be done today and what tomorrow will look like. If I am correct in my predictions, we are in this for many more long months, and those months seem…wasted. We are not doing enough.
I am used to working 17 hour days. Now, like many other residents and business owners alike, we have ALOT of time on our hands. Yes, we can clean, Rearrange, redecorate and tidy up, but that’s not the purpose of this writing.
Look ahead to when COVID free tourists ARE allowed back to our island.
What will they see?
Mayor Daniel Guerrero In all of your travels to other tourist locations outside of Ambergris Caye, have you ever seen a town square looking so dirty, dismal, and uninviting to even the birds? Even BEFORE our lockdown, we have a homeless person, filthy, sleeping on our streets in front of various businesses in town, in plain view in his underwear, seemingly ignored by everyone yet viewed by tourists who give sideways glances. This is embarrassing.
The first excited guest allowed back will have a very different view of how our island looks with all of our boasting about its beauty, only to be met with disappointment in the dirty streets, filthy buildings, and a complete lack of well organized and properly cared for public beautification projects. I would be very disappointed; I most certainly would.
I understand funding, believe me, I do, especially right now, but it doesn’t cost much to clean street viewed buildings, each of them on each street in San Pedro.
The outsides and framework of these locations are dirty and unkempt. If they have extra paint, now is the time to clean up business fronts, tear down old signs, remove old paper signs from phone poles and do general deep cleaning. Paint those gates, plant some plants, make it all inviting! HAVE PRIDE. There is more dirt and black dust on the roads in town than in any other street on this island it is absolutely filthy, and there is no reason for it. Before the lockdown, businesses could not open their doors due to the black filth that would blow in from the streets. We have a street cleaning truck it should be utilized a few times a week. Instead, people have to use water hoses to wet the street down to stop the filth from blowing in.
I would ask anyone, do you live like this? Is this how you keep your home? Because this is your home. Its where your income comes from.
Golf cart businesses, seriously, no one wants you to park a hundred carts on Front Street blocking every parking space and business opening. Stop being so greedy.
Make room for beautification, not for the constant parking of golf carts we have all had this complaint before.
If COVID-19 has taught us anything it should teach us how to get along together much better than we have been doing. It should teach us that money is needed yes, but it’s not absolutely everything, loving where we live and opening it up to others to come to visit us should be our common goal.
Instead, when you’re walking through town or driving through town it looks like everyone’s out for themselves no pride being taken in the cleanliness at all. It does us no good to beautify the front of one business only to have neighbors on either side letting theirs fall apart. This needs to be a group effort.
Not YOUR responsibility you say? Yes, it is. You live here. Everyone one of us lives here, we all want to enjoy the benefits of what tourism brings, money, jobs, food, security. Standing on the shoreline with your hands out is not going to do it you have to put in the effort and build something that people will want to come to. They’re not going to magically open the borders and allow people to flood in, it does not work like that people, in the United States are just as bad off if not worse than those of us here they’re broke and those that do have enough money to travel want to see something that will make them come back time and time again.
Now, as we all sit and do very little is time to form a group to start cleaning, washing, painting, and beautifying our downtown area and beyond. We need to KEEP it clean.
What does this require? People. Water, buckets, soap, and extra paint from owners. Those who live here and own here, time to clean up and keep it clean. The days of being lazy, fat, and happy, are over.
It is NOT enough for a few men with a few rakes to “ look” busy raking the streets at curbside.
Mr. Mayor, form a PLAN, a committee, as for help, I will be the first person to show up each day to help and I’m sure there are many more who own businesses here that are closed who would do the same, if not then I would ask them WHY NOT.
The core center of San Pedro to be honest looks like a dump and we all know it but many look at it like its not our problem. IT IS, its what the new tourists will see.
IMAGINE what we could make town center look like if we got started now?
Can’t we do better?
Lynda Perdue
Owner
Belizean Breezes Soap Co
