Talk back: Stand on the South Road Properties

Sun.Star
Saturday, April 28, 2007

By Mary Ann de los Santos

(This letter is addressed to Pachico A. Seares)

IT pains me to note that you have not grasped fully my stand on the South Road Properties (SRP).

Let me tell you here and now that I am open to suggestions.

My idea to turn-over the SRP to the National Government is but one of the options.

To my mind, it is the simplest and most viable option for two reasons:

1. The SRP is covered by a sovereign debt with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation guaranteed by the National Government.

Legal complications can be avoided if the debt is assumed by the government instead of following Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s plan to sell it wholesale to the big taipans.

Besides, the National Government can later on deal with these taipans concerning the SRP in the same manner that Mayor Osmeña can.

But in the meantime, we will no longer be saddled with debt servicing and we can spend the savings on delivery of basic services and other necessary infrastructure projects.

2. Upon turning the SRP over to the National Government, we can undertake a Memorandum of Agreement that would give us some kind of control or participation in SRP’s development, something more difficult to do with private entities which have their own plan.

The SRP was turned over to the City in 2001 under the administration of Mayor Alvin Garcia.

During Mayor Osmeña’s first two terms, he did nothing to move the project forward.

I think five years is a lot of time for any mayor for that matter to market the SRP.

Instead of master planning and land-use zoning the SRP, the mayor has randomly constructed ill-conceived structures therein, including an ABC building, which is built probably in the most prime area of the SRP.

How can you market the SRP under these conditions?

I beg to disagree with your statement that “she doesn’t see it as most valuable real estate in Cebu, which it will be once it finally becomes hub of growth and progress of a city increasingly in need of more space.”

I`m sorry I cannot see your point.

SRP’s character “as a hub of growth and progress of a city increasingly in need of more space” is not lost even if it is turned over to the National Government.

SRP is here to stay; it cannot be physically uprooted from Cebu.

Once developed, all taxes will accrue to our city.

There will be no change except that the City will no longer pay P2 million a day in debt servicing.

Let me reiterate: I am open to other ideas on the SRP.

All I know is that the present course is not workable.

If we stay the present course, we will end up bankrupt or disposing the whole SRP in a fire sale, just like what Mayor Osmeña did on the City Hall block in the North Reclamation Area.

(He sold it to Robinsons at less than P12,000 per square meter.)

Let us get involved in our city’s future.

Let us think of alternatives and options to free ourselves from the debt quagmire we are in.

If you have better ideas, come out with it, I am open.