THERE IS a segment of Prime Minister Simpson Miller's presentation in the recent Budget Debate which we expected to generate substantial discussion, but apparently failed to capture the imagination of the analysts and wider public.

The Prime Minister touched on a wide range of community development issues, but spoke specially of a project to target 17 inner-city communities for social and infrastructure development. Importantly, a critical plank of this project, according to Mrs. Simpson Miller, will need a community buy-in.

"We are confident that if our citizens feel a sense of commitment to community developments, they will invest a significant portion of the resources to implement these projects," said the PM.

As we understand it, this programme, to start in the Bull Bay area and the Maxfield Avenue corridor of St. Andrew, will involve the refurbishing of community amenities, such as meeting centres as well as the rebuilding of curbs and drains. Broadly, the aim is to soften the gritty image that hangs over too many of the island's decayed and decaying urban communities.

If this is indeed what the Prime Minister has in mind, this newspaper welcomes the initiative, as well as her announcement, that at long last the much-promised transportation centre in downtown Kingston and the rehabilitation of St. William Grant Park at Parade will get off the ground. St. William Grant Park is of special interest to us for it has come to symbolise the worst side of Jamaica and what the former Prime Minister Patterson once dubbed the "uglification of Jamaica".

That park, once a shrine to colonial figures, was renamed for an influential trade union leader who is one of the architects of the modern labour/ nationalist movement in Jamaica. But as we reported earlier this year, it had become a refuge for derelicts, noted for its rank odour of stale urine and excreta.

It will now cost many millions of dollars to refurbish this park, as it is costing to rehabilitate the National Park and National Heroes Circle. The inner-city projects, too, will cost a pretty penny - over $2 billion in the next two years.

This is cash that, inevitably, will have to be spent. It need not have come to this. Hopefully, when the projects are done, it will not be so again. It is on this we wish to engage the Prime Minister.

Mrs. Simpson Miller should be aware by now that it is often the case in Jamaica that we talk up a storm and assume that the words equate action. The authorities, particularly the Government she now leads, confuse intention with reality. And while they do at times build and refurbish things, they tend not to be good at maintaining them.

It seems that they grow bored, or overwhelmed or believe that huge amounts of money are required to do even the smallest things. For instance, simple beautification projects started in preparation for the hosting of Cricket World Cup, end, even if uncompleted. Hopefully, Mrs Simpson Miller will inspire the staying power this time.