Baguio Insider

I know a lot of them are graduates of Baguio schools, and they probably think they’re doing Baguio a favor, but let me tell you how the City Council is destroying Baguio via their badly thought of plans.

The city bounced back pretty fast after the 1990 earthquake, but the damage caused by the local government in the 17 years since is like water torture, drop after drop (or should I say, building after ugly building, policy after useless policy) and yet in the end, devastating to the environment that fuels our economy. And it continues to this day.

What is their job description?

Oh, Nene Pimentel’s stupid Local Government Code grants them vast powers! Why do you think they spend so much on their campaigns and even have heart seizures when they are not in the magic 12? But essentially, they are guardians of our city, tasked to:

• Maintain peace and order by enacting measures to prevent and suppress lawlessness, disorder, riot, violence, rebellion or sedition and impose penalties for the violation of said ordinances;
• Adopt measures to protect the inhabitants of the city from the harmful effects of man-made or natural disasters and calamities
• Enact ordinances intended to prevent, suppress and impose appropriate penalties for habitual drunkenness in public places …
• Protect the environment and impose appropriate penalties for acts which endanger the environment,
• Adopt a comprehensive land use plan for the city;
• Enact integrated zoning ordinances in consonance with the approved comprehensive land use plan;
• Regulate the display of and fix the license fees for signs, signboards, or billboards at the place or places where the profession or business advertised thereby is, in whole or in part, conducted;
• Provide for the establishment, maintenance, protection, and conservation of communal forests and water sheds, tree parks, greenbelts, mangroves, and other similar forest development projects;
• Establish markets, slaughterhouses or animal corrals and authorize the operation thereof by the city government; and regulate the construction and operation of private markets, talipapas or other similar buildings and structures;
• Regulate the use of streets, avenues, alleys, sidewalks, bridges, parks and other public places and approve the construction, improvement, repair and maintenance of the same; establish bus and vehicle stops and terminals or regulate the use of the same by privately-owned vehicles which serve the public; regulate garages and the operation of conveyances for hire; designate stands to be occupied by public vehicles when not in use; regulate the putting up of signs, signposts, awnings and awning posts on the streets; and provide for the lighting, cleaning and sprinkling of streets and public places;
• Regulate traffic on all streets and bridges; prohibit encroachments or obstacles thereon and, when necessary in the interest of public welfare, authorize the removal of encroachments and illegal constructions in public places;
• Approve measures and adopt quarantine regulations to prevent the introduction and spread of diseases;
• Provide for an efficient and effective system of solid waste and garbage collection and disposal; prohibit littering and the placing or throwing of garbage, refuse and other filth and wastes;
• Establish a City council whose purpose is the promotion of culture and the arts

So you see, the city council can build a market on Burnham Park, no matter how awful that will make the city look. But just because they can doesn’t mean they should.

What is happening to Baguio is, instead of making it conducive to businesses or investments that will pay taxes, from which the government can derive funds, the Baguio city council has chosen, without a comprehensive land use plan, to go into business for itself by filling up valuable open spaces that give us a good quality of life and fresh air with pollutant such as slaughterhouses or wet markets, decaying vegetable waste, dusty souvenirs, jeepneys that emit black smoke.

Instead of decongesting the city center by building thriving markets in the boundaries of Baguio and rerouting all those empty jeepneys that squat in the middle of the city all day, they have decided instead to put everything right smack in the center of town once again.

Pinky Rondez, my friend, I know you have done the math and believe that P1.5m revenues monthly will be a quick Return on Investment for the ugly 12M market that you plan to erect. But at what cost to Baguio and its businesses in general? Such short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness is unbecoming the members of the City Council. Is Baguio all about the market? Don’t people come up to breathe?

What type of tourists are you guys trying to attract anyway? Those who come up in private passenger jeepneys and sleep in Burnham Park? Or those who spend at least P3,000/person on the businesses here per day? The ones who buy furniture, loads of pasalubong items, are willing to spend money on lodging, dining and shopping, and who use up the city’s dwindling resources only for a few days at a time.

And how can you allege that this recent plan of yours will address current traffic problems?

The city wants to raise Php1.5M monthly without spending 12M? Tax the businesses here higher!

• Set a higher rate for business taxes, but make sure these are implemented uniformly without interference from those who happen to be ‘malakas’ with the City Treasurer
• Actually tax the vendors for doing business in the city instead of looking to collect rent from them.
• Look into the income of the private schools, especially the ones with open admission policies, who pack their tiny campuses properties with tens of thousands of students — they have money to spare since they maintain such small areas anyway. Do the math as far as they are concerned. For example 20,000 students x 50,000.00/year = 1 billion. 1 billion pesos x even just 1% = 10,000,000 for the city. A school with one billion in annual gross receipts that is devoid of trees has its students lounging at Burnham Park anyway.
• Stop taxing only big business and not the little man. Because the little man does not create jobs and and yet lives off Baguio virtually for free. And you will school his children and collect his garbage, again virtually for free.
• Invite investors and tell the city treasurer not to give outsiders such a difficult time, because, believe it or not, there are many classy people who want to invest in Baguio but find it hard to work with city hall.
• Can you not spend the 12 Million and help the arts and handicrafts thrive so that we have better quality of goods and then tax them on their income?
• Fine everybody! The Local Government Code allows for amounts up to Php5,000! Let’s see if the parents allow their kids, or those unemployed gin-drinkers, to continue ‘drunkenness in public places,’ or those men relieving themselves in on t he sidewalks. I would prefer using thatP12 million to build a bigger jail, and earning from the fines! That might be a faster ROI than, and infinitely preferable to, another building on Burnham Park.

I know this is the longer and harder route to take, but it allows Baguio and its residents to thrive! Instead of attracting more residents because the city is actually enticing them by opening up puestos for them to trash Baguio all year round, can the city not pay GSIS the 35 million, rebuild a convention center that can fit 10,000 instead of just 2,000 so we can have that many guests per weekend who will go right back down after 3 days, leaving the citizens of this city richer?

Councilor Rondez mentions that the area is being used as an unregulated bus terminal. Simple, issue an ordinance freeing up Burnham Park from buses! These will cause further traffic and make the city ugly. Metro Manila is now moving to disallow terminals in Cubao and moving them to fringes like Kalookan or Pasay and here you are wanting them to come right into the center of town? What gives? The city treasurer can still collect terminal fees if the city were to expropriate a tax declaration lot in Marcos Highway for a city-owned terminal.

Basically, I feel that Baguio should be in the business of granting licenses for private persons to do business from which it is to collect taxes but Baguio itself should not, through the city council, invest in ugly structures to ruin Baguio’s landscape for a measly P1.5 million a month!

Can you get your acts together? Farinas wants to decongest the market by building talipapas. Peds want to congest the center of town, a few steps away from the market by building flea markets and providing parking for 200 cars. Pinky wants to congest Baguio further by providing additional income opportunities at low costs to all those who want to come up and live here. Let me tell you, no matter how much rent they pay you, these market people will cost Baguio more in the long run because you will be providing free education for the children that they are breeding faster than you can say boo! Plus they will invite their poor relatives to come up and squeeze into their squatter houses on the hillsides because ‘libre naman ang airconditioning.’

How can the members of the City Council sleep at night and not worry that they are ruining Baguio through their ill-conceived plans, not thinking that their children will not have the benefit of a wonderful childhood like they had — the way they are providing all the infrastructure for the degradation of Baguio?

Lastly, where is our comprehensive land use plan? Shouldn’t Baguio start with that?

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