Today thanks to our hosting of the ASEAN Summit and the thousands of workers doing their work even in the night, we have beautified the once plain avenues of Cebu City into something that we've never done before. Who could miss looking at that landscaping, complete with a tartanilla in the island right in front of the Capitol Building? The island dividing Juan Luna Avenue has also been landscaped like it was someone's expensive residence. It is a sight to behold. Thanks to the relentless effort of Mrs. Therese Gonzales of the Cebu City's Parks and Playgrounds.
I'm sure that the general public appreciates what has been done to beautify our thoroughfares taking their usual uneventful ride on a jeepney. If you ask me, they should have done this long ago. But now that those plants and shrubs and flowers are put in place I'm just wondering, how long they can stay beautiful? I had a long talk on the phone with Cebu City's First Lady Margot Osmeña. She too was already thinking ahead that after the ASEAN Summit, our beloved Cebu, now very clean, beautifully dressed complete with makeup might just be destroyed by the ever-present vandals or by sheer neglect.
What Mrs. Osmeña did was to call upon all the barangay captains in the city to seek their assistance in keeping an eye on those beautiful islands. Not only should our barangay officials keep an eye on our landscaped islands they should provide money for their maintenance so that Cebu City would always be pleasing to the eyes not only for the tourists, but for the local residents as well.
Under Gov. Gwen Garcia, we are seeing uncanny cooperation between the City of Cebu with Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Cebu Province when as part of our clean up drive, the Squatters Prevention Encroachment and Elimination Division (SPEED) is expected to demolish the famous, but totally unsanitary and dirty-looking Larsian barbecue stalls along Fuente Osmeña, which should never have been allowed in the first place.
But they're not merely destroying Larsian. The Province of Cebu will construct a more orderly, cleaner and sanitary barbecue stalls just a few feet away from the present Larsian except that this time, it would be on Province-owned lot and not on the road which they have blocked for many years. I have made this suggestion a long time ago. For the sake of helping those barbecues stall owners, they ought be given the first crack at renting those stalls. Yes, I said renting because there is no free lunches on this world… everyone pays either their rent or taxes.
A parade of 216 dancers from nine school dance contingents wearing specially designed lantern headgear and carrying pairs of hand lights that would illuminate Sta. Catalina street, Carcar's famous "Heritage street" where tourists can see Carcar's main attraction, the oldest and most famous heritage houses, where houses built during the Spanish era are mixed with houses made during the American Commonwealth years. The town of Carcar is especially close to my family; after all, the Avila Family originated in Carcar. My late aunt Sister Adela Visitacion Avila of ICM was stationed there next to the main church that her grandfather finished when he was the assigned parish priest in Carcar.