Sometimes – quite often actually – we just
have to shake our heads and wonder about the way decisions are made in Cayman.
Take for instance, the Central Planning
Authority’s decision to allow a company to erect three concrete signs 18 feet
wide by eight feet high. Within each of these signs will be digital screens
that are a little over 33 square feet in size.
What is inexplicable about this decision is
that both the National Roads Authority and the Planning Department – both
government entities – expressed concern about the signs. In addition, a nearby
resident also filed an objection to the signs. Still, the Planning Authority
granted the erection of the signs, even though it refused a similar application
for a nine-foot by five-foot mobile digital sign last year.
The new signs are part of the roundabout
sponsorship programme whereby businesses pay to landscape and maintain Cayman’s
roundabouts. We wholeheartedly support the programme and applaud all of the
companies that have committed to help beautify Cayman’s roadways. The
sponsoring companies get to erect small, tasteful and undistracting signs on
the roundabouts, and so they should. However, 144-square-foot signs with digital
displays are not small, aren’t tasteful, and are definitely distracting.
Given the difficulties Cayman residents
have negotiating roundabouts, particularly the dual carriage kind, and the high
number of accidents that occur on them, it seems incredible that the Planning
Authority would ignore the advice of the Roads Authority in granting permission
for the signs. Seeing as how the National Roads Authority look at road safety
issues for a living, it is astounding that the appointed members of the Planning
Authority – who all work in other professions – apparently believe they know
more on this issue.
Of course, since decisions about the
roundabouts are ultimately made by Cabinet and the Ministry of District
Administration, Works, Lands and Agriculture, perhaps the Planning Authority
had instructions from on high on this matter; efforts to clarify that point
have so far been met with silence.
Regardless, the decision-making process
here is more dizzying than circling our many roundabouts.
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