WHAT HAPPENED. The Cebu City Sangguniang Panlungsod Wednesday, February 9, decided to defer approval of the free use of at least 2.65 hectares of land at South Road Properties (SRP) for the terminal and depots required for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project in the city. Instead, the City Council will meet with officials of government agencies involved in the project.
The City Council will hold an executive session Thursday, February 17, to seek from SRP managers and officials of Department of Transportation (DOTr) and National Economic Development Authority (Neda) crucial information about the project, including why it has not yet moved since December last year when it was scheduled to go full blast.
SINCE WAY BACK THEN. Tomas Osmeña was the city mayor who "first proposed the BRT in the 1990s." The World Bank committed to support it "financially and technically." DOTC (Department of Transportation and Communication), forerunner of what is now DOTr, began planning in 2008. Then President Benigno Aquino III placed it in his Top 16 public-private partnership projects. When Rama assumed as mayor in 2010 -- until 2016 when his second successive term ended -- he pursued the project by, among others, creating steering committees. Preparations continued, including review and discussions, when Osmeña reassumed as mayor in 2016, later passing on the work to mayor Edgardo Labella who was elected in 2019. As of December 2021, with Rama taking over the mayorship when Labella's death cut off his term, the BRT project was supposed to start already.
Last Wednesday -- or 14 years after formal planning began -- Councilor James Cuenco told the Sanggunian that the local DOTr pointed to Manila decision makers when asked about the delay. The City Council was still debating on whether to give the usufruct of at almost three hectares of land for terminal and depots. And it was even revisiting the wisdom of the project.
IS IT EVEN PRACTICAL? The project's profitability was used by Minority Floor Leader Nestor Archival Sr. to support his motion for more information about the BRT. He seized the statement of Engr. Roberto "Bo" Varquez, chief of the South Road Properties (SRP) Management Office, who earlier told the City Council that the BRT is still "experimental," indicating it may not work and may be abandoned.
That may be too late in the day to raise, when the major concern must be over the delay in starting it, not its profitability.
BRT is the first mass transport project in the Philippines, which must explain Varquez's tentative view of its success or failure. The mayors during planning and study -- namely, Osmeña, Rama and Labella -- must see the BRT more as an answer to the city's problem of mobility and traffic than as a profit center.
Today's Sanggunian is supposed to know that too but it is bound as well to protect the properties of the City, the "obligation to constituents." If it's going into a project, especially the big-ticket ones, it must know what it is getting into.
WHERE'S THE DOCUMENT? Enumerated by Councilor Archival and "recapped" by Majority Floor Leader Raymond Alvin Garcia, the information the City Council seeks to get from invited officials in next Thursday's meeting includes the following:
[1] Whether the grant of usufruct over at least 2.65 hectares of city-owned lot to DOTr is specifically provided in the realigned BRT agreement. The City Council wants to see the document that says it is an obligation included in the realignment of the project. The P16.9 billion allotted for the BRT was supposed to cover all its requirements, including the buses, terminal and at least seven depots, Archival said.
[2] Whether the realignment was approved by Neda investment coordination committee (ICC), which "evaluates the monetary and balance of payments implications of major national projects" and recommends the timetable to implement them.
[3] The scope of the work: data on the phases of the project. What Varquez gave the Sanggunian were locations of terminal and depots and the flow of traffic. The councilors want the plans to know when the project will be finished.
[4] How the City Government will benefit from the project, for which, Archival said, the City will invest P20 billion in land cost alone. To the City, the usufruct cost, of course, is much less than its cost if it were an outright donation or giveaway.
[5] Mayor Rama's thinking on the issue, as the councilors need "direction" and guidance on deciding the grant of the usufruct. What if the mayor would reject what the Sanggunian decides? That would delay the project further, Archival said.
SIDE POINTS. Other than those listed by Archival and Garcia, there were side issues that bother the City Council, such as:
-- THE MATTER OF USUFRUCT: While the City does not cede, or part away with, the land, it holds it only on paper, according to Archival, as the land is used by another for at least 25 years, renewable for another 25 years. Councilor Joy Augustus Young said it wouldn't be easy to take back the land for the city's other purposes.
-- COMMERCIAL BENEFIT. Young and Archival also noted that while the contract of usufruct is entered into with DOTr, another government entity, it will be actually used by private contractors that will build the terminal and depots, part of which may also be used commercially. What does the City get from the commercial use? Young asked.
-- CHANGES IN ROUTE. Archival harped on the alleged exclusion of the original area and clientele the BRT project is supposed to serve: people who, he said, don't have private vehicles to take them to SRP and nearby facilities.
As chairman of one steering committee, he must have seen how in a big way the project ditched a major purpose. But as councilor, he must have also known why the realignment was made.
'CURATIVE' JOB. Once more, the City Council and the City Government it represents seem to be doing catch-up work: it is doing what the mayors and the earlier Sanggunians should've done before approving the contract. Looks like another case of Carbon Market project or the Kawit island development.
Still better for the local government and its constituents. "Curative" work is at least an effort to correct a mistake or oversight. Yet it also tells the world what the members of the "august" body could've done.