IN large part, bumpy, pothole-riddled roads have been patched, areas of bushy overgrowth have been cleared and gullies have been cleaned. But those are but a few entries on the list of promises Portmore Mayor Keith Hinds made to the residents of Portmore before he took office in late 2007.

Among them was an expansive beautification project which he said would transform the Mandela entrance to the city, and the construction of an additional fire station. He also said that work on the much-talked-about hospital would have begun.

Today, a little over a year later, it doesn’t appear that much has been done outside of routine clean-ups. In fact, the mayor himself gives the council a 40 per cent mark for performance over the period, but maintains that year one was for laying the groundwork.

“The proof is in the eating. A lot of persons expect a lot of things, but the fifth of December was one year since the elections and I know I have accomplished quite a bit,” Hinds told the Observer. “It might not be to the liking of some persons, they might figure you should try to do more, and a lot of the time when you hear such things, it’s usually from persons who have personal interests, so to speak, and not all these interests can be accommodated.

“A lot of the things that we want to accomplish are major plans. In terms of what we got accomplished, we probably got about 40 per cent of what we thought we could do within the year, which again I think is a very decent run within a first year in office,” he added.

Still, Hinds said some ground has been covered, and although there is still only a single fire station serving the more than 350,000 people who call Portmore home, at least the land for the project, next door to the ‘Hundred Man’ police station, has already been earmarked.

“The fire station is now in possession of at least two fire trucks, two new fire trucks. When I came to office we had a 1969 fire truck,” he said. “The truth of the matter is that you can’t have close to half-a-million citizens and have one fire station without breaching the rights of these people. If we were in another country I’d get sued already.”

According to Hinds, another significant accomplishment of the council in its first year has been to rescue its finances from the doldrums.

“When I first took office, one of the things that we found ourselves with was a $10-million deficit that we’ve been able to bring down,” he said. “We’ve put the council back in a position where it’s now back in a surplus and we’re very proud of that achievement.”

Last February, shortly after the instalment of the People’s National Party majority council headed by a directly elected mayor from the Jamaica Labour Party, news broke that the council was in the red by between $8 million and $10 million.

Hinds declined to divulge the actual state of the council’s financial affairs today, but said that it is putting more plans in place to generate income, as is suggested by its 10-year development plan published last year.

“One of the things that we wanted to accomplish and we did accomplish was to find ourselves with a 10-year business plan,” he said. “We have presented it to the prime minister; to the minister of state in charge of local government; to (secretary-general of the Caribbean Community) Edwin Carrington and we have been able to get some people quite interested in this plan.

“I’ve been honoured in New York. I’ve had [a] councilman from New York visiting with me to look at the Forum Hotel. I’ve had Una Clarke come to visit with me. We’ve met with Ed Carrington in France. We’ve met with the Global Fund for HIV and these didn’t take place here. So we’re not just looking at the small picture, we’re looking at the bigger picture,” he said.

Hinds also described as another success, the new tax office which, according to the Portmore Municipal Council (PMC), netted over $3 million in its first three days of operation.

But several other promises remain unfulfilled. There is as yet no tourism project, no hospital, no large-scale beautification and no small business incubators. There is unregulated vending and illegal commercial entities which cheat the council out of revenue for trade licences and other operation fees.

“Portmore has its fair share of crime, but it’s really not the frightening area like a lot of other areas around. Since the start of (2008), police have recovered 90 firearms in the community,” the mayor said.

In order to get the promised “serious tourism product” – which involves setting up a cruise ship pier in the harbour closer to Portmore – off the ground, Hinds and his team have made several trips to New York, Switzerland and France and have hosted ambassadors to Jamaica in the municipality.

As for the large-scale beautification, which should have greened public areas and brought some amount of balance to the proliferation of block and steel in the sprawling municipality: “We took a little while to get off with that but we got off the ground and you might notice when you drive around Portmore now, you will see the various areas being cleaned and bushed and our round-abouts being treated as well,” he said. “What we’ve done is put in a roving team so we’ve bought some (weed whackers) and a lawn mower.”

The annual Christmas work programme in December, he pointed out, had formed part of that process. “That is how we intend to maintain a cleaning presence in Portmore.”

And as far as the hospital, a Caymanian investment, is concerned, the ball is in the developer’s court.

“When I came to office I expected, according to what I was told and according to what was published, to go and start to dig ground for the new hospital project… It was one of my disappointments,” said the mayor.

Now, he said, “Government has done everything possible and we’re now waiting on the developer to hold up his end of the bargain.”