Why Marikina is shelving new city hall project

FOR NOW, Marikina City’s plan of having a new and disaster-resilient city hall is being put on hold as the local government realigned the budget to a “much better” project.

Mayor Del de Guzman last week disclosed that the construction of the P100-million city hall had been shelved because of the congestion problem at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Marikina (PLMar).

De Guzman noted that the number of students at the local government-run school has nearly doubled over the last two years, from around 5,000 to nearly 9,000. He attributed the increase to the influx of students transferring from private to public schools.

“We saw it fit to realign the fund [allotted for the new city hall] to a much better project that would benefit our citizens,” he said.

The new city hall building which was supposed to begin construction next year was touted to be more disaster-resilient than its predecessor, since its ground floor would serve only as a parking area and the offices would be on the second floor, 27.5 meters above sea level.

With this design, the offices will be 4.5 meters higher than the flood level recorded in the city during the onslaught of the killer typhoon “Ondoy” on Sept. 26, 2009, which raised the water line to a staggering 23 meters.

7-story school building

De Guzman said the school building that will be built on PLMar’s campus in Barangay Concepcion Uno is expected to be operational by July this year. He added that the seven-story building can absorb the current student population of PLMar, plus about a thousand new enrollees.

The project would not affect the tuition and other school fees being collected at PLMar, which is also looking at the possibility of welcoming senior high school students in the coming school year, the mayor said.

The new city hall project can begin once the local government increases its collection of real property tax, De Guzman said. Since 2010, Marikeños have been given a 50-percent tax discount to help them recover from Ondoy.

The mayor recently signed an ordinance retaining the 50-percent discount this year and gradually reducing it to 40 percent and 30 percent in 2017 and 2018, respectively. An estimated P300 million in taxes has been forfeited because of the discount.