Lord’s Bank and Ladyville Village Council’s Discuss Becoming a Town

Today, members of the Ladyville and Lord’s Bank village councils met with Belize Rural Central Area Representative, Dolores Balderamos Garcia, to discuss the possibility of combining both communities into one town. This meeting follows concerns raised last week by Ladyville’s Citizen Advisory Committee, which suggested that the community move towards autonomy to address them. Although the idea of combining the villages has existed for decades, no steps to do so have ever occurred. Today’s meeting with the Area Representative gave both councils the opportunity to weigh the pros and cons, considering changes to Belize’s municipalities and the cost of land tax. We heard from Balderamos-Garcia following the meeting.

 

Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Area Representative, Belize Rural Central

“Very very pleased that they joined us for what we are calling a preliminary consultation on the issue if township for Ladyville and Lord’s Bank. Please, we are not promoting anything we are not trying to push anything on anybody I just requested that the minister and his technical people come for a preliminary consultation, and I have to tell you it went very well. We had about thirty people present and I’m very pleased. There seems to be a very positive feeling Britney. but I want to assure the people of Ladyville and Lord’s Bank that this is just the beginning. Again, we will not be pushing anything on anybody, and we intend to have wider consultations going into Lord’s Bank maybe Los Lagos, that kind of thing because we do believe that we need to listen to our people. I do want to make the point point though that in our consultation today, and the minister was very grateful so listening to all our positive comments, I do want to point out the size of Ladyville. From Haulover all the way up to mile thirteen. We have Vista Del Mar, we have New Site, Michelle estate, Michelle estate extension, Japan, Marage Road, and Milpa, Lake Garden, Spanish Town, Northern Highway, all the way up to Los Lagos and Mile thirteen. I think Mr. Clifford King as One of the senior officers at local government, he was able to explain what were some of the advantages and what a scheme of very modest property tax may look like. but if we want to provide services for our community, we need to have some revenue, some resources. So I think it went very very well. And I repeat it was just a preliminary consultation and we intend to do much wider consultations and to reach out to as many people as we possibly come. but everything was totally positive about it.”