Baguio
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01.24.08What is Your Vision for Baguio?
The Baguio Centennial Commission a.k.a Centecomm (sounds like a menacing Soviet agency during the cold war haha) is asking you to share your vision for the city in the next 20 years. Our ideas will be taken seriously daw by the Centecomm folks so let’s go ahead and envision something.
Mine is not so much a vision for Baguio but I hope that officials will pedestrianize the city. Instead of constructing projects designed to solve the problems of the rich (i.e., where to find a parking lot) let’s build pedestrian lanes that will encourage people to walk and make walking enjoyable.
Really a pedestrianized Baguio will be a much better city. You know, a city with cleaner air, lesser traffic, and healthier people too.
Oops, by the way, isn’t the Baguio Centennial logo above kind of cool? Congratulations to whoever designed it.
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01.22.08Baguio Flyover to Open Without Her Highness
In the first place do we have to have her inaugurate everything? Like she has no more important things to do? But wait, she really has no more important things to do.
From the Inquirer:
Top public works officials will no longer wait for President Macapagal-Arroyo to open the city’s controversial flyover, whose construction she once tried to stop.The flyover “will open to all types of vehicles 14 days after Tuesday (Jan. 14),” which is Jan. 28, according to Public Works Undersecretary Ramon Aquino. It needed “further curing” over two weeks, he said.
Ms Arroyo’s schedule was no longer “an issue,” Aquino told the Inquirer on Friday, when he supervised a “final inspection” of the flyover together with the quality assessment team of the Department of Public Works and Highways.
INFO SOURCE: Inquirer. PHOTO CREDIT: Aldrin Zapata
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01.18.08Give Him Credit
Well, we’re sure you know that we’re not a fan of Baguio Congressman Mauricio Domogan (note: we used to like him when he was starting his political career) but we’re giving him credit for putting up a website which provides details on where his pork barrel is going. So let’s give the Congressman points for transparency. We hope that other Cordillera officials are just as transparent with their use of public funds so their constituents can see where these are being spent.
In the case of Congressman Domogan, click here if you like to see where he budgeted his pork barrel.
Now, it’s up to the people of Baguio to investigate if the projects listed by their Representative are worth the money that were supposedly poured into them. If they are, then we should give more points to Morris. If the projects turn out to be “for compliance only”, then we should deduct points from him.
What do you think?
IMAGE CREDIT: morrisdomogan.com
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01.16.08Land Scam in Baguio?
Ramon Tulfo is not my kind of columnist but he does have interesting “exposes” sometimes. In his December 22, 2007 column he writes about a Cordillera official who is reportedly selling Baguio ancestral lands.
Hah! If Tulfo’s story is true, we are totally clueless as to who this official is but maybe some of you know.
From Ramon Tulfo’s On Target:
During the time of President Marcos, a judge of the defunct Court of First Instance approved the titling of Burnham Park in Baguio City to a private person.
Up to now, that kind of scam is going on in Baguio City.
There is reportedly a racket in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources where ancestral lands of native tribes are auctioned off illegally.
The Court of Appeals recently nullified land auctions conducted by the DENR in Baguio, calling them scams.
An official of the Cordillera Autonomous Region, a professed close friend of a former Cabinet secretary, is reportedly selling ancestral lands of Igorot tribesmen in the City of Pines.
Secretary Lito Atienza, please look into this matter!
SOMEWHAT RELATED POST: The Biggest Landgrabber of Them All
INFO SOURCE: Inquirer.
