FAST forward to the present.
When the administration of Mayor Nestor Archival assumed office on June 30, 2025, it refused to extend the appointments of all non-regular city employees. This was a reversal from his earlier public statements where he expressed a willingness to extend them for at least 90 days.
Among those who suddenly found themselves jobless were workers from the Task Force Gubat sa Baha and the River Troopers. These were the very units at the forefront of soft flood mitigation initiatives that complemented the city's hard infrastructure projects.
Just 15 days after all non-regular City Hall employees were cut, with everyone told not to report for work starting July 1, heavy rains fell. The weather bureau reported 19 distinct flooding incidents in Cebu City.
Mayor Archival justified the mass non-extension by claiming there might not be enough money for payroll. He then made serious accusations of bad spending by his predecessors, including the supposed purchase of T-shirts for P20,000 each.
Former Mayor Raymond Garcia reacted, and according to a July 8 Sun.Star report, Mayor Archival offered a sort of apology — an "if-I-was-wrong-then-sorry" kind of statement.
Garcia reiterated what he had pointed out in his end-of-term report a week prior: he was leaving City Hall with P12 billion in the bank, zero debt and solid revenue streams. He had just been recognized by the Bureau of Local Government Finance for sound fiscal management and revenue collection.
Of course, Garcia’s correction notwithstanding, everyone at City Hall knew that the non-extension was not caused by money problems.
Instead, it was a way for the new administration to bring in its own people — leaders and supporters owed gratitude for their support during the last elections — and those who would pledge loyalty. No one was surprised; this is a common practice among local government units.
On July 22, six days after the flooding, neophyte Cebu City Councilor Harry Eran gave a privilege speech and asked Mayor Archival to revive the Task Force Gubat sa Baha.
As of this writing, no action has been taken on Councilor Eran’s formal request. The Gubat sa Baha remains in limbo and the River Troopers are still without staff.
It’s not that City Hall has nobody to replace these key people. I’m sure they can pick from those who supported them during the last election. In fact, they have already started hiring new casual employees, with appointments valid from July 1 to 31 (which City Administrator Albert Tan extended to Sept. 30 in a memo dated July 30).
The real question is what kind of solutions will be considered a priority for City Hall's new leadership.
Following the July 16 flooding, Mayor Archival, an engineer by profession, convened a series of meetings with engineers and contractors to find fixes. The findings were somewhat obvious: the city’s drainage infrastructure was outdated and poorly maintained.
People like John Paul Gelasque, acting head of the Department of Public Services, and Lowell Corminal, officer in charge of the Department of Engineering and Public Works — both also engineers — have long lamented the state of the city's drainage.
Providing engineering solutions to engineering problems, like drainage and the need for related equipment and infrastructure, is technically sound.
And given Mayor Archival’s background, I’m sure he will gravitate toward engineering solutions. At the very least, he'll have friends in the construction field who would be delighted to carry out the projects.
But can these solutions, no matter how many billions are up for grabs among engineering and construction firms, be implemented before the next torrential rains fall? Hardly.
Given City Hall's governance structure, designing a new intervention, funding it and carrying it out while navigating road right-of-way issues can't be done overnight.
What would help is to continue desilting and declogging the city’s waterways, a critical number of which are choked with garbage and sediment precisely because there has been nobody to clear them since July 1.
Engineering solutions are great. But there is no reason they can’t be explored alongside immediate flood mitigation interventions that, while labor intensive, worked sufficiently in the past.
Mayor Archival himself admitted this on July 27, when he argued in another Sun.Star article that clearing and desilting are not "band-aid solutions" but an "important step" to solving flooding.
Now if he can only fix the staffing problem that his administration created in the first place. (knrama@gmail.com)