After a long absence, I joined my Walk and Talk friends for the second straight day on Thursday, July 3, 2025, in an hour of brisk walking and even brisker talking at the Cebu City Sports Center (CCSC).
I missed the oval. I couldn’t miss the cracks. They’re all over the supposedly Olympic standard facility (400 meters) for athletics but which is actually, we were told during the Palarong Pambansa last year, a few feet shorter.
One of these days, an athlete in training or a recreational runner could get seriously injured if they’re not mindful of these ever widening and ubiquitous holes in a project that cost taxpayers millions of pesos.
It’s been a year since the installation of the rubberized overlay on the CCSC oval was completed and months since it was repaired by the contractor, yet until now I could not figure out how such travesty was allowed by City Hall to happen.
There is a management committee that the City installed at the CCSC, but if you expected them to be City Hall’s eyes and ears there, perish the thought. The body is inutile, absolutely ignored by the city’s leaders. I should know. I used to be its chairman.
I was appointed to the job by the late mayor Edgar Labella. He had repeatedly asked me if there was a job in the City Government that interested me and I replied in jest, only the mayorship. Fine, he said, I will make you the mayor of the CCSC.
The first thing that I did after that was to ask then city attorney Rey Gealon if he had a copy of the ordinance, resolution, memorandum, executive order or any document creating the CCSC. He promised to call back but never did. It seemed that he wasn’t able to find any. We had no guide.
We had no real say on how to operate the CCSC either. The mayor or anyone claiming to speak for him can close the center without even letting us know in advance. Labella did it but it was because of the Covid-19 pandemic so we understood. Rama who reappointed us after succeeding Labella did not have that justification when he also closed the center for a considerable length. I resigned.
Rama would close the CCSC again for much of 2023, according to him, in preparation for its repairs for the Palaro that the city was hosting the following year. In fact, work did not start until late 2023 or early 2024. The management committee did not contribute, not even a single comma, to the plans. They were not asked.
But City Hall invited the committee members for the ceremonial opening of the oval. I gatecrashed the party and made one round of the oval. I was impressed. A few months later, the cracks began to surface. They ordered a repair of the just-repaired facility. Weeks later, the cracks showed up again.
Mayor Nestor Archival is an engineer, although not the kind who builds roads and bridges or paves surfaces. But I’m sure he is better equipped to recognize poor construction work when he sees one than, say, a lawyer.
I already spoke to him about the sorry state of the CCSC when we had breakfast with him one Saturday in May. But it would be better if he sees it with his own eyes.
Come on, Mayor. Walk with your people at the CCSC. Just mind the cracks.