Senate set to approve revised Baguio charter

By Dexter A. See

BAGUIO CITY – The Senate committee on local government is inching closer to approving the revision of the century old Baguio Charters that its provisions will conform with rapidly changing times and in accordance to existing national laws, rules and policies.

“We have still one remaining issued to dispose which is the conflict between the implementation of the Free Patent Law and the city’s Townsite Sales Application (TSA) award, Sen.r Ferdinand R. “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., chairman of the Senate committee on local government said.

He noted the committee created a technical working group composed of the committee secretariat, the city government of Baguio and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to iron out the problem before the revision of the City Charter will be submitted for plenary debates and amendments in the Senate floor.

Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan informed the committee that there is no problem in the implementation of the Free Patent Law in the city provided that the DENR will stick to those being issued residential free patent awards as those occupying 200 square meters and below while those subjected for TSA titling are those with more than 200 square meters but not exceeding 1,000 square meters.

However, he said the problem exists with the DENR because some of the agency’s workers are the ones convincing lot occupants with more than 1000 square meters to subdivide their property and avail of the 200-square limitation enshrined in the free patent law for the issuance of the title to their property.

“If the DENR insists on continuously convincing local residents owning more than 200 square meters of land to subdivide their property to comply with the free patent law, the city government will be constrained to file a petition for declaratory relief for the court to interpret the free patent law considering that it is silent on lands with over 200 square meters land area,” Domogan added.

Leonora Guinid, a local market leader, appeared before the Senate committee to inform the members that the revision of the city’s century-old Charter is timely provided that the disposition of lands to qualified homelot applicants is through direct award by a created committee and not through the TSA mode of public bidding.

According to her, the public bidding of lands in the city is anti-poor since any moneyed individual from the archipelago could just come to the city and outbid existing qualified homelot residents.

Guinid welcomed the creation of the awards committee which will be chaired by the city mayor and co-chaired by the DENR regional executive director since it would help fastrack the process of awarding the city’s alienable and disposable lands to qualified homelot applicants.

Marcos said the committee will take into consideration the earlier written request of Domogan to delete the provision that provides for the protection of ancestral land claimants from speculators since it might affect the control of indigenous peoples to their ancestral domain.

Mayor Florencio Bentrez of Tuba, Benguet, who was present during the second committee hearing held at the Coconut Palace in Pasay City, said the people of the nearby municipality are in favor of the immediate passage of the revision of the Charter of Baguio City since it will put to rest an early nine decades of boundary conflict between the town and the city and will greatly contribute to the development of the two local governments.

“We want the bill to be passed the soonest so that we could also move on in terms of determining our actual boundary and chart our development thrust for the growth of Tuba. We are already agreed on how to resolve our long standing boundary dispute and we want it to be concretized by the approval of the revision of the Baguio City Charter,” Bentrez said.

For his part, Rep. Vergara, author of House Bill (HB) 3759 which seeks to revise the 1909 city Charter, explained the passage of the revisions will settle the disposition of lands in the city and would bring in greater income for the city government because lands will be directly awarded to qualified home lot applicants and that they will be obliged to purchase their properties from the city and subsequently pay their real property taxes to the local government.

“We have to come out with regulations that conform with the trend of the times, thus, the need to amend our century old Charter. We want the present and future generations of Baguio to enjoy the fruits of development,” Vergara said.