Hartley NeitaTHE HARBOUR View suburb in eastern St. Andrew was created some 40 years ago by the Matalon brothers. Construction of the 2,000 houses was done by West Indies Home Contractors and the houses were painted with Glidden paints, both Matalon companies.
I was told then that the tiles were either made or imported by a Matalon company, and I might be wrong, but I believe a Matalon was chairman of the Caribbean Cement Company which produced the cement for the construction.
Construction took about two years before the houses were completed. Roads and sidewalks were also finished in those two years, but we residents could not understand why what seemed simple things, like the erection of stop signs, could not be done. The reason we got was that the scheme had not yet been taken over by the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation, and so they could not erect signs on what was still private property.
ACCIDENTS TOOK PLACE
EVERY DAY
In the meanwhile, accidents took place every day at the main cross roads on Fort Nugent Drive in the community. Being a four-way crossing, every driver assumed he or she had the right of way. So there were constant crashes and quarrels.
Most of the families living in Harbour View were headed by young and brassy men and women in their early 30s, intolerant at the slow pace of authority. The Citizens Association sent letter after letter to the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation about the need for stop signs, which went unanswered. So the leadership decided to take matters into their own hands.
Friends in the Engineering Department of the Corporation provided drawings of the design of the stop signs and poles, their sizes, and the actual colour of the red in the word STOP.
The signs were made to their specifications, and a small group of members of the executive met at the intersection one afternoon, dug the holes in the appropriate places, and then invited Miss Harbour View, Theresa Allen (one of the most beautiful of our beauty queens, to date), to plant the signs while cement was thrown into the hole to keep them firm. Naturally, the event was photographed and a news release issued to the media.
Radio Jamaica, the JBC-Radio, The Gleaner and The Star broadcast and published the story. A letter came next day from the Town Clerk to the president of the Asso-ciation instructing him to have the signs removed. The signs, he said, were illegal.
A reply was sent to the Town Clerk 24 hours after the order came, pointing out that not one accident had taken place since the signs were erected, in comparison to the many which took place every day previously, and challenged him to move the signs.
We threatened to secede from the authority of the Corporation. That was long before Portmore was a twinkle in the eye of its conceptors. Harbour View residents were mobilised. Everyone was on alert and ready to rush to the crossing to prevent the removal of the signs. Over dead bodies, these "nationalists" felt.
Day one passed, and then day two, and then one week, two, and a month passed.
In the meanwhile enquiries were made, unofficially, to the Corporation, about the cost of manufacturing, transporting and erecting the over 100 signs needed in the community. The association's executive then obtained tenders from residents involved in construction for producing these signs and found that the cost to the Corporation would be 33 1/3 per cent less. An offer was then made to the Town Clerk that if the Corporation paid what it would cost them to the Association, the HVCA would produce these signs under the supervision of his engineering staff.
NO REPLY
To this day, there has been no reply to this offer.
History goes around in circles. Similar action has been taking place in Manchester since January and according to a report in this newspaper this week, stop signs at six crossings have been erected by Council-lor/Caretaker for the Mandeville Division, Miss Sally Porteous.
And according to this newspaper, the Mayor of Mandeville, Councillor Horace Williams, said last January that this action would be "selfish and moreover illegal". Obviously, he must have seen the letter sent to Harbour View by the KSAC's Town Clerk four decades ago.
Anyhow, Councillor Williams can take comfort from history, as the President of the Harbour View Citizens Association subsequently ran for office as a councillor.
And was soundly defeated. Stop signs do not a councillor make.
