Raising property taxes? Be very careful, Mike

Last Monday's headline in The Freeman blared, "Rama eyes hike in property taxes: to raise revenue for services." Let me say it out very clear, we are already paying high taxes in Cebu City. On my house alone, I pay nearly P16,000 a year in real estate taxes and I'm not even living in a plush subdivision like Maria Luisa or North Town homes. If Mayor Michael Rama wants to raise property taxes and succeeds in doing so…he would end up getting only rich Cebuanos living in Cebu City, while the rest have to live in places that are affordable to live. In fact this is already happening today!

Mayor Rama's plan to raise property taxes is supposed to pay for services. But have he and his management team already considered the many other options that are available in order to increase revenues in Cebu City? A case in point is the fees for garbage. Are residents paying the garbage tax and are these the right figures for collecting garbage? Or has this service been given to the various barangays?

What about traffic fines? Have they looked at whether those fines are on an optimum level or are they still very cheap? Yes, I use the word cheap because I know too well that whenever Cebu City Traffic Operations & Management  increases its fines… there is a huge howl from jeepney operators and drivers because they cannot afford to pay the fine. Truth be told… they couldn't afford to pay the present one anyway. Yet the main purpose in increasing traffic fines is to force drivers to obey the law.

Last week, my best friend, Tony Rizarri and I were driving back from our visit to the City of Austin, Texas, which is nearly 3 hours away from Houston and we decided not to use the freeway but pass through many old towns of Texas and whenever we hit a main street, Tony would never break the speed limit of 35 miles per hour. In Houston, the speed limit in a freeway is 75 miles per hour and you can even drive up to 80 and the cops won't stop you. But in small town Texas, Tony would tell me that cops watch speed limit violations because that's the only income they could get.

So now to the question… should Mayor Mike Rama increase property taxes with the promise to add more services for Cebu City? Or should he first show what kind of services does he have in mind so that he could justify the increase in property taxes? It is very easy to justify an increase in property taxes… but in truth we are still woefully lacking in services from the city.

A case in point goes back once more to CITOM. Last Saturday, I passed through an exit along Banilad Road from the AsiaTown IT Park, and despite the sign that declared "All Traffic" with an arrow directing towards the right, two vehicles in front of me turned left, a clear violation of traffic rules. My instinct being a former CITOM Chairman was to run after those two vehicles for clearly violating traffic laws…but I reckoned that perhaps a CITOM enforcer was lurking around and would catch those two. Alas, when I looked back… the two vehicles merely sped away scot-free!

I later met with CITOM Chair Rueben Almendras and told him this story and he merely shrug his shoulders and he said, "It's a Saturday, we have very few traffic enforcers on the road." Since the Business Process Outsourcing  landed in Cebu City and turned the AsiaTown IT Park into one of Cebu City's bustling commercial areas, Cebu City is no longer the same Cebu City you and I used to love. We have become a 24/7 city, as ol' blue eyes Frank Sinatra sang about New York, "A city that never sleeps!"

Yet the mentality of Mayor Mike Rama and the Cebu City Council hasn't changed… they still think that we live in the old Cebu City where people sleep at 12 midnight and on weekends… we all stayed home. Perhaps this should be your wake up call, folks! Cebuanos during weekends go to the various shopping malls and therefore… traffic is still just as bad as it is on an ordinary day. As for the AsiaTown IT Park, traffic is normal even on weekends because the BPO industry is a 24/7 industry.

But it is sad to note that the schedules of CITOM haven't changed since my time when I left in the Year 2005. At the very least… if major intersections cannot be manned… may I suggest to Mayor Rama and the CITOM Board that they make use of technology and put up a video camera on those unmanned intersections so at least whenever there are vehicles that violate traffic rules, the video cameras can trace their plate numbers and CITOM enforcers can track those offending vehicles rather than let them go.

Video cameras are in wide use in the US and they're no longer as expensive as they were in the past. Best of all, you can raise the fine to the highest limit because a responsible driver is supposed to obey traffic rules even if there is no traffic enforcer around. Now buying that video equipment will not force Mayor Rama to increase property taxes, but certainly he is giving extra service that we have long required especially on weekends.

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