Now that Mr Smith is fully awake

UNKIND FOLKS and cynics might be tempted to cast Duane Smith as a Rip Van Winkle of sorts: jumping awake to notice that the world has changed around him. And much of what he awakes to, he does not think is good. Except that Mr Smith was not asleep. It is inexplicable that he missed so much.

But perhaps it is more important to celebrate the fact that Mr Smith is now cognisant of what has happened and wants to do something about it, rather than attempting to understand how he was bypassed by events: the over-construction of multifamily homes and high-rise buildings in Kingston and St Andrew, without compensatory infrastructure such as water and sewerage systems.

Mr Smith is a Jamaica Labour Party member of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) for the Chancery Hall division. He is also a member of the KSAMC’s building committee.

Municipal corporations are the regulatory authorities for development in their parishes, thus final arbiters, and overseers, of building plans and development control permits, once the specialised agencies have ruled on the technical variability of the projects. The corporations exercise their powers primarily through their building committees, like the one of which Mr Smith is a member.

At a recent meeting of the KSAMC’s building committee, Duane Smith said he was alarmed at the overbuilding of multifamily units in Kingston and St Andrew, with potentially negative consequences to the twin parish’s already overstretched infrastructure. “Almost every lot … is a multifamily development,” he said of several areas in the city. “It’s an absolute disgrace.”

So Mr Smith proposed, and the committee accepted, that the members seek an urgent meeting with the local government minister, Desmond McKenzie, to discuss the concern, with the intention of having the various planning agencies (these agencies don’t fall under Mr McKenzie) “bring order” to the situation. “Policy is needed,” Mr Smith said.

At the meeting at which Mr Smith aired his frustrations, the committee approved a multifamily project on West Kings House Road. A decision on one at 12 St Michael’s Terrace was deferred after Smith raised concerns about density.

TWO SIGNIFICANT THINGS

Two things are significant about the outcome of that October session. One is that, in their deferment of a decision on the St Michael’s Terrace development, the committee members demonstrated that they, and their parent corporations, are not without power with respect to the management and oversight of developments. Should they choose to exercise it, they have much under Jamaica’s Building Act. Secondly, Mr Smith’s intervention, and the support he received from the committee’s chairman, Mr Lee Clarke, suggests that concerns that have festered for a long time may now get the requisite attention in quarters that can influence change.

Indeed, as Mr Smith implied, a spate of high-rise and multifamily developments, spurred in part by changes to development orders in many regions of Jamaica, have been approved without due regard for the carrying capacity of existing infrastructure, and without specific plans for their expansion.

Moreover, this newspaper has in recent times reported the many cases of developers being granted approval for projects whose construction they begin, often in old and established neighbourhoods, ahead of application to the courts for changes to existing restrictive covenants. Developers assume, not without reason, that residents (often retired people) who lose their privacy, and the character of their communities, are mostly without the financial wherewithal to challenge developers’ breaches in the courts.

Further, as Julian Robinson, the opposition member of parliament (MP) who represents South Eastern Andrew, a hotbed for such developments, complained in Parliament recently, state agencies are usually “slow to respond” to citizens’ concerns, even when the complaints are about breaches of regulatory requirements. “...residents have to resort to expensive litigation at their personal cost to seek redress,” he said.

Mr Robinson disclosed, too, that several citizens’ groups, apparently in his constituency, have written to the chairman of Parliament’s Infrastructure and Physical Development Committee requesting to appear before the committee to air their concerns. That, in other circumstances, we would say would be a good thing, if discussion led to informed policy action.

NO CONFIDENCE

Unfortunately, we have no confidence in the competence of that committee’s chairman, Heroy Clarke, to pilot it to anything other than a political hatchet job, as he, and several of his colleagues, demonstrated earlier this year in their assault against the auditor general at meetings of the Public Accounts Committee. Indeed, Mr Clarke would likely interpret these citizens’ legitimate complaints as an attack on the Government and a wish to undermine economic development. These observations are a reminder of Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ error, which weakened parliamentary oversight of the executive, in overturning the practice of having most parliamentary committees, including the one on infrastructure and physical development, chaired by opposition MPs.

Perhaps there is another relevant committee that might take up the issue of the multifamily developments that breach the rules.

In the meantime, Messrs Robinson and Smith, political differences notwithstanding, should make common cause of this matter. It is an issue on which no one should go to sleep.