How did the city council vote?

There was a time when His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Michael L. Rama, was relentless in clearing the waterways and roads of our city of all impediments. A great majority of the so-called silent majority applauded his moves. That he overcame the opposition to his program of demolishing the structures that stood on the banks of Mahiga River, somewhere near the north reclamation area, showed a kind of political will not many of his peers then were prepared to wield. When he succeeded in re-blocking (a term for defining a street at a predominantly squatters' areas where there is no road or where the road is inaccessible to emergency vehicles) F. Villa Street in Barangay T. Padilla and at Sitio Tariman in Barangay Carreta, he demonstrated that an unpopular forward planning could still be implemented if a leader, like the mayor, listened more to the demands of public welfare.

I raise this point because, yesterday, there was an issue presented before the city council where a plausible public welfare ranged against the perceived interest of a few families. When I started writing this article, I had no news yet on how the sanggunian disposed of the subject.

What was that particular item in the agenda of the city council where there was an apparent clash of interests?

At issue was a proposed resolution of Hon. Alvin Dizon, to request the city's Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor to study the request of the Sta Cruz Homeowners Association that a supposed unused road lot be declared for socialized housing purposes. The councilor must have endorsed a plea of few families who have taken over a part of a road that was once known as the C Mina Extension. Because these families have occupied the entire breadth of that street, this road is no longer visible or used as such. I am glad that Councilor Dizon is taking up their cudgels.

Since we have no empirical economic data on these settlers, let us just assume that they truly belong to the poor sector of our society worthy of our sympathy. They do not own any piece of land on which they can build their homes and worse, they have nowhere else to go. Having seen that C. Mina Extension was then not frequently used by vehicular traffic, they thought that it was up for their taking. And indeed, they came in and settled on that road. That usurpation happened many years ago even if upon closer scrutiny, the concrete road could still be found serving as the ground floor of a home.

I am saddened though that the procedure taken by the councilor is technically incorrect. He cannot have C. Mina Extension declared as socialized housing site because, notwithstanding the occupation of this road for years, it is still a declared road. The process adopted by the councilor is a legal short cut. If he wanted to arrive at this end, he should have first sought the counsel of legal minds who would have advised him to sponsor an ordinance declaring that this road is abandoned.

Why is such a cumbersome process needed? An ordinance abandoning a road that it may be devoted to another public use is likely to assail standard norms, especially so in the present times when we clamor for government to build more roads. The more logical question that would be asked is: "if we need roads for our increasing vehicular traffic, then why should we abandon road lots?" I could foresee the accompanying interest that such a measure stands to generate as it pits the public weal that a road offers versus the need to fill the interests of private individuals to own home lots.  The ensuing public scrutiny would have been a good guide to our sanggunian.

Just the same, whatever stand the council took yesterday should tell us its preference. A road is always for public use. It lies beyond the commerce of man. A sanggunian steeped in public welfare would not yield to a plea to make it a site for housing. But, on the other hand, the horde of political support that a homeowners' association is supposed to promise might be difficult to resist. On this parameter, we will have an idea on whose side our council bets.

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