Kingston mayor must think big

THE EDITOR, Sir:

YOUR EDITORIAL in Tuesday’s Gleaner (‘Cataleptic Delroy Williams’, November 12, 2018) on the lack of performance of Delroy Williams as mayor of Kingston was a honest and truthful assessment of his work. The fact is that this mayor has not shown any vision or even a slight inclination of thinking outside the box.

Let us revisit the Half-Way Tree situation which l wrote about in a recently published letter. Half-Way Tree has been allowed to develop into a cramped and untidy space.

A mayor with a plan would be seeking the permission from Central Government to build a new Mandela Park in a more suitable location. You cannot have a park in the middle of a busy intersection. This would allow for expansion to ease the pressure and create more orderly movement of pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

A mayor with a vision would secure the old Ministry of Health site on the right of the traffic sign at Hagley Park Road and seek funding to develop a comprehensive shopping park and relocate the throng of vendors from York Pharmacy to the traffic lights into this new space, with beautiful landscaping. This could be the new Mandela Park.

This new space could be linked to the HWT Transportation Centre by a pedestrian skybridge that floats over the Public Broadcasting Corporation building into the space, ensuring a steady shopping support for the new location, while reducing the pedestrian traffic at the intersection.

WINSTON BARRETT Manor Park, St Andrew