WE HAVE written a previous article in this column, “Zoning shapes the city”, that pointed out the need for a strict enforcement of current zoning regulations governing improvements on private properties.
Iloilo City’s zoning rules are covered by Regulation Ordinance No. 2012 – 248, the “Revised Zoning Ordinance of Iloilo City.”
We have now the widening of city roads and the expansion of the city that includes an area bordered by a 14-kilometer stretch of the four-lane highway identified as the Iloilo Circumferential Road. This is the present “Metro Iloilo Area” development, along with many improvements introduced.
You will note that the circumferential road for Iloilo City runs from the north along the city boundary of Leganes and Pavia and southward around the City Proper on a counterclockwise direction and reaching up to Villa de Arevalo district. The highway passes an expanded area which at one point is already part of Barangay Pulo Maestra Vita of the adjacent municipality of Oton where Vista Mall of Manny Villar’s group of companies now stands.
Along this circumferential road residential subdivisions and commercial and industrial developments like stockyards and bodegas have sprouted. Here is where city zoning rules must be strictly enforced by follow-up inspections conducted of our city regulatory bodies.
One point we would like to emphasize is, because of the distance from city hall of the circumferential road establishments, there is the risk of laxity in supervising the construction of improvements.
Small businesses like sari-sari stores or even nipa huts outside the fence fronting the highway are sometimes tolerated by landowners even if it can obstruct access to their establishment, thinking that the area left for sidewalk is no longer owned by them.
We wish that city hall must strictly inspect establishments along the circumferential road and see to it that the highway is free of unsightly structures or nipa huts along the road.
Perhaps now is the time to start with student population dispersal to outside the city proper and surrounding business districts by encouraging our colleges and universities to expand their campuses at the circumferential road, like that of St. Paul University (SPU).
Our city hall authorities can ask our colleges and universities to adopt and submit a cap to their student population in the City Proper and adjoining districts, and then require them to set up extended locations along the circumferential road starting this coming school year 2019-2020.
With the current development of our city and some problems we brought out here, we strongly recommend that our Sangguniang Panlungsod look again into our city zoning regulations to update it and cope with Iloilo’s expansion. Have they done this?
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To add to your reading entertainment by your kerosene lamp in case of brownout, we are sharing with you another story for today:
THE ARRAY
I like being a wedding sponsor because I have the chance to listen and relive again the marriage vows pronounced by the bride and groom during the ceremony. When I got married, I guess I did not listen to them very well.
But this time, the priest who officiated at the marriage ceremony simply went too far. He also asked the mother of the groom to take a vow.
In that part of the ceremony when the array is blessed by the priest and the groom would pour the coins to the open palms of the bride to receive them, he called the mother of the bride to please step forward.
“From this day on your son will no longer be giving you his salary but to his wife here present, do you agree?” the officiating priest asked the groom’s mother.
“Yes, Father, I do!” the mother of the groom solemnly replied. (For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com)/PN
