Edifice complexed

P1-B LOAN for AC’s future.

Can it get any nobler than that?

It’s for a new city hall. Angeles City is perhaps the only highly urbanized city in the entire country with an old city hall that is not even senior citizens- and PWD-friendly.

It’s for the IT equipment for all the offices which is also needed for the new city hall.

It’s for a multi-level parking building for the taxpayers and those transacting business at city hall.

It’s for police mobile vehicles and motorcycles.

It’s for a sports complex for the athletes of the city. Angeles City has lagged behind in sports competition because of lack of facilities to develop the athletes who compete in CLRAA, Palarong Pambansa, Batang Pinoy and other sports competition to bring glory and honor for the city.

It’s also for 33 mini-dump trucks for solid waste management as required by existing environmental laws.

It’s also for various heavy equipment like payloader and backhoe for the city engineer’s office.

It’s also for new dialysis machines for the renal care unit at the Ospital ning Angeles.

So, itemized the city government the impact projects to be funded with the colossal loan it contracted with the Development Bank of the Philippines.   

Indeed, can it get any more sublime than these?

How dare now Alexander S. Cauguiran crying “Inconsiderate!” and calling out Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan and Vice Mayor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno on these “extravagant projects”!

So lamented Cauguiran: “How can we in conscience put the convenience of LGU officials over and above the need for medical services of our residents, most of whom cannot afford to go to the private hospitals?  Build a sports complex, or provide more opportunities for free quality education? If you are truly responsive to the needs and priorities of our fellow Angeleños, please listen to the people and stop your extravagant projects.”

The projects will benefit tens of thousands of Angeleños. So, the Pamintuan camp asserted. Where’s the extravagance there?

Never mind Cauguiran saying: “The city government will be heavily burdened for the payment of these loans over a period of 15 years and will add up to the previous borrowings of the LGU… that last year alone, the city government appropriated P176 million to service its outstanding loans.”

Or that “two-term loans were signed between the city government and the DBP, one in the amount of P1,043,000,000, and another at P183,800,000 for a total of P1,226,800,000.”

What matters most is that – as Pamintuan averred – the loans are for securing the city’s future.  

Be that as it may, there is a deeper wellspring – hugot, more aptly – to Cauguiran’s indignation than what he impacts as Pamintuan’s insensate prioritization of his edifice complex over the complicated needs of his constituents. If only for two things, aye, twin complexities for which the city had come to grief, though its citizens have so indifferently come to grips with. Cauguiran’s peeves, precisely.  

1.    City hall

What is now the Museo ning Angeles served for the longest time as city hall. At the time of Mayor Rafael “Apung Feleng” Lazatin, a new city hall was planned in the vicinity of Barangay Pandan, whence rose the now misnomered City Center.

At the turn of Mayor Francisco “Mang Quitong” Nepomuceno, the new city hall was proposed – and indeed construction started – in Barangay Pampang. With its then-princely budget of P19-million – if fading memory still serves right – all that was erected were the pillars, girders, and beams, infamously meriting the tag “monumental ruins to corruption,” as the now-dearly departed mediaman Sonny Lopez denounced it, earning for him the lifetime wrath of the Nepomuceno patriarch.

It was Mayor Antonio “Bubusuk” Abad Santos that succeeded in actually relocating city hall to its current site, but fell far short of occupying it, having lost to Edgardo Pamintuan before its full completion.

2.    Sports complex

The original Angeles City Sports Complex was a brainchild of Mayor Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno, for which the city contracted an P800-million loan with the Philippine Veterans Bank to cover the purchase of the lot in Barangay Mining and the total construction cost.

It was opposed primarily on two points – 1) the access road to the site built virtually for tricycles; 2) the valuation of the site, given to speculation, raising so much suspicion of corruption.   

Envisioned to wean away the city youth from drugs and nurture a culture of sports excellence in the city, Nepomuceno considered his “sports stadium…an impact project and a legacy for the future of young Angelenos.”

Said he then: “This is a major point for our administration and we will be remembered for this project.”

It would seem now that only Pamintuan remembered, having revived the project which feasibility, if not (ir)regularity, he himself questioned earlier in his term. Why, did he not start the construction of the City College of Angeles (CCA) with an allocation of P300 million from the P800 million his predecessor loaned for the sports complex?

Prudence, said Pamintuan in his SOCA of that time, dictated that an education facility can better address the felt and urgent needs of the Angeleños than a sports complex.

Ask not where the remaining P500 million of Nepomuceno’s loan is now. Ask rather if the educational needs have been so sufficiently addressed by the CCA, that the idea of a sports complex has ceased to be imprudent and has become an imperative. Which Cauguiran very much doubted.

Drift

Got the drift in this recollection of even but snatches of the city hall saga and the sports complex story?

The public suspicion of corruption attendant to both issues – separately – was just too strong, too pervasive to be dismissed as balderdash. It has, in fact, spelled political doom to their key players.    

That these now come – at once – with a P1-billion price tag, at this time immediately preceding an election, can only stir the nastiest suppositions of fund-raising, the unkindest speculations of loot partition among thieves, and the blackest suspicions of plundering the public coffers. Malice, concededly, rearing its ugliest head there.

Or, utter disbelief. Of the World’s Best Mayor even dipping but a finger in the cookie jar, as with his name etched in the narco-politicians list of his beloved President. No. It did not happen. It will not happen. It cannot happen.

Cry louder. Call out more.