Claudia Gardner, Gleaner Writer
CROOKS
LUCEA, Hanover:
MAYOR OF Lucea and chairman of the Hanover Parish Council, Lester Crooks, asserts he will not meet with citizens of Burnt Ground to discuss the cemetery being built in the area, claiming residents there have defamed his character.
Mayor Crooks made the statement during the regular monthly meeting of the Hanover Parish Council recently in Lucea, after chairman of the Environment and Planning Committee, Councillor Audley Gilpin, moved a motion for the council to call a special meeting with the residents to discuss the cemetery's construction.
The citizens had accused the council of playing a role in the approval of the plans for the construction of the Delapenha Funeral Home-owned cemetery, which they claimed would contaminate underground water resources in the area.
NO PERMISSION GRANTED
The mayor said, contrary to claims by the residents, at no time did he grant permission for the construction of the cemetery in the community. He charged that the residents had demonised him when they demonstrated with placards in front of the Hanover Parish Council building two months ago.
"I, Lester Churchill Crooks, am really thinking whether I should really sit down and meet with those people after they have demonised my integrity with those signs downstairs. A man's character is his only possession. Did you read those placards?" he asked Councillor Gilpin.
"Nobody can force me to meet with them, not even P.J. Patterson, not even Portia Simpson, not even Edward Seaga, not even Bruce Golding can demand me to sit with dem! 'What is the Crooks of the matter?' with a dollar sign on it is what they wrote on the posters," he said. "Move the motion to have the meeting but don't expect me to be there. Have the meeting, but with the absence of the mayor."
But Councillor Gilpin argued with the mayor that he should shoulder some of the blame for the events that transpired that day.
"Mr Chairman, you are not dealing with this thing properly. While you were upstairs, I was down there. I took the brunt of the blow for you whether you believe it yes or no. You caused what happened there that day because you should have called up even two or three of them and discussed it. Instead you walked out through the back door. So why you neva walk through the front door? It is a very sad day man," Councillor Gilpin said.
