Dear Editor,

My heart bleeds to see my historic town of Falmouth in a crisis of steady decline.

The parish capital of Trelawny, founded in 1769 and declared by UNESCO as a world heritage site, has seen its social, physical, and economic infrastructures plunged in a mire of problems. These problems have been exacerbated by the Trelawny Municipal Corporation (TMC), the sitting Member of Parliament, sitting municipal councillor for the town, and other stakeholders who seem to have turned a blind eye to the mounting problems the town is facing.

Housing stock on the outskirts of Falmouth have mushroomed exponentially, with the TMC raking in billions in property taxes and building fees but have failed miserably to reinvest those fees in physical infrastructure to make the town more people friendly. The drains are inadequate and outdated; the road networks are the worse, they have been for over 30 years; lawlessness, including illegal parking and vending, as well as traffic congestion, stalk the town.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. We must, as a reference point, note that Falmouth was the envy of Europe, boasting more millionaires than most European cities, including London. With these myriad problems and history, the giant Falmouth Pier sits in the town like a beacon, but social, economic, and infrastructural benefits have not manifested themselves to the common ‘Falmouthians’.

Falmouth and Port Antonio are the only parish capitals with a development order subsumed into a parish development yet not one aspect of the development order has been used to make the town a better place to live, work, and do business.

Two of the three cemeteries in the town, namely the Falmouth and the cholera cemeteries, are in need of urgent mitigation. The TMC continues to allow dumping and building in the Falmouth morass, approve building plans in the town that flaunts facade caveats as per the National Heritage Trust, and the destruction of mangroves continues unabated, all are dangerous precedents as it relates to flooding.

Given that three of the nine sitting councillors have been sitting in the council for over 65 years, with each serving as mayor at various times throughout the period, one can definitely conclude that it is lack of vision which has caused the town to be in decline.

Could it be that the town should elect its mayor directly? I would like most of us to support such a move, because if the town continues on this trajectory, in 20 years it will become the forgotten town.

Fernandez Smith

fgsmith@yahoo.com