Dear Sir,
Regarding “Noise Complaints Stack Up” (Guadalajara Reporter, May 4): Has anyone noticed the continued failure of the Chapala government to initiate similar crackdowns here on the plague of businesses and faux restaurants that mainly sell booze and loud noise?
The new and tougher laws were supposed to be initiated by all Jalisco municipios as of April and your article confirms it is happening elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the silence from the Chapala government is deafening. Compounding “pay for play” zoning practices here that allow noisy bars in purely residential areas with few or no limits, the Chapala government has been completely AWOL when it comes to dealing with the subsequent sleep-destroying noise. They did nothing under the previous law and they are doing less than nothing now!
The Reporter needs to look into this latest failure to follow state law by Chapala. We need our own crackdown on these bars and we are entitled to it under Jalisco law. If nothing is done we face the likelihood the din will just grow as the perps from other jurisdictions realize they can operate with complete impunity here.
Daniel Houck
Dear Sir,
I would like to bring to the attention of all expat Canadians that there has been a change in the Canadian Election Regulations for Canadians living outside Canada.
On January 11, 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a Canadian elector living abroad who has previously resided in Canada is entitled to vote by special ballot in federal elections, regardless of how long they have been living abroad.
The five-year limit no longer applies.
For information on how to vote, go to elections.ca or contact the Canadian Consulate in Guadalajara.
Sonia Breeze
Dear Sir,
I would like to report on behalf of the Axixic Chimalli organizing committee on the progress that has been made in our efforts to resist unwanted and unnecessary developments in and around Ajijic.
First of all, a hearty thank you must go to everyone who has made contributions that total more than 100,000 pesos so far. After payments to our lawyer in Mexico City, we have in excess of 70,000 pesos in our bank account but will likely need to continue our fund-raising efforts, so stay tuned about that. To that end we have an account set up at Bancomer on the Plaza in Ajijic with the account number 0468878021. We also have a PayPal account set up. Go to PayPal under the name This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or on Facebook to Chimalli Axixic Vigilantes.
You perhaps have seen articles in the Guadalajara Reporter about the stance of our local government officials in Chapala. One victory we can all celebrate is that any development to the Tepalo area has been declared off limits. Of course, that is not the case with other sensitive areas under consideration for development.
Our lawyer has demanded that local authorities send all the relevant documents regarding past zoning decisions, setting the cota limitations on the hillsides and so on. In compliance with the lawyer’s requests, municipal officials sent totally illegible documents. We continue to wait for readable documents so that we can begin to build our own archives regarding decisions rendered in the past.
The goal of this legal work is to determine what changes have been made to environmentally sensitive areas and who authorized them. At the same time, we are pressing forward with holding the current administration to account for any actions that they may take to award developers permits without due process.
Meanwhile, our committee is seeking expert help from others who are committed to the environment around Lake Chapala. One such person is Dr. Raquel Gutierrez Najera, an environmental lawyer in Guadalajara whom we met with recently. Gutierrez is very familiar with our area and is especially concerned with the health of Lake Chapala. She represents IDEA (the Institute of Environmental Law) and informed us about the Ramsar Convention (an international treaty covering wetlands) and the fact that Lake Chapala is a Ramsar designated site. This may turn out to be our best hope for preserving the local environmental balance in the future.
We welcome any input and questions you may have, as the organizing committee continues to meet regularly with a commitment to do all we can to stop these illegal developments.
Tim Boeve, secretary, Axixic Chimalli