THE City Council of Bacolod City ratified the deed of donation of the 8.8-hectare land from the Yanson Reality Development Corporation (YRDC) and Vallacar Transit, Inc. during their regular session on Wednesday, January 30.
The property will be utilized for the city’s South Public Terminal, museum, and coliseum.
Those who voted in favor of the move were Councilors Distrito, Cindy Rojas, Dindo Ramos, Bartolome Orola, Ana Marie Palermo, Renecito Novero, Elmer Sy, Sonya Verdeflor, Ayehsa Villaflor, and Lady Gles Gonzales-Pallen.
Councilor Wilson Gamboa Jr. opposed while Councilor Claudio Puentevella abstained. Councilor Em Ang was out of the session hall while Councilor Ricardo Tan was absent.
Councilor Caesar Distrito, chairperson of the City Council committee on laws, said: “We are now expecting the start of the bidding process because there is already a donation.”
The coliseum and museum also had a land area of 7.3 hectares while the South Public Terminal has a land area of 1.5 hectares along Barangays Alijis, Pahanocoy, and Circumferential Road.
“As a city official and citizen of the City of Bacolod, I am truly grateful that we have this family willing to donate the property worth almost half a billion for the city. Being noble gesture on their part wherein the city consciousness brought us another area that would be a growth area and will develop the sleeping southern part of Bacolod,” Distrito said.
He said this will be another area where jobs would be created, business will arise and tourism will definitely blossom considering they have donated the property where the coliseum, museum, south terminal, and other business establishments will arise in the areas of Barangays Alijis, Pahanocoy, and Circumferential Road.
For his part, Gamboa said “we do not question nor are we complaining about the act of the property donation of the Yanson family but rather we are only questioning the web of deception on the part of the present administration, just to accommodate their coliseum to be funded by the P1.7 billion loan from DBP (Development Bank of the Philippines) which as I have said earlier tainted with several legal infirmities.”
He said that after studying and reviewing the ordinance establishing the South Bound Terminal, and the supposedly ordinance or ordinances that it would require prior to the approval of the donations, the previous deed of donation and the present action of this present administration, he believe that it did not undergo the regular and correct legal processes and procedures and just like the P1.7 billion loan, it is tainted with several legal defects.
“This is also to belie the malicious insinuation that I am anti-development and anti-progress,” he added. (MAP)