Controversial Baguio parking issue revived

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – The controversial private-run on-street pay parking scheme in the city springs out anew.

Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan challenged the city council to come up with a new ordinance to regulate parking at the central business district.

Apparently irked by the chaotic parking situation, Domogan is thinking to institute another pay parking scheme to control the disorder amid the absence of an ordinance to control parking in the city. 

He said the city has had no existing street parking regulatory measure since the repeal of Ordinance No. 003-2000, the payparking ordinance of the city in November 2006.

“Let us try to craft a new ordinance to put back order on our streets,” the mayor said as city residents who fought the private pay parking firm Jadewell chuckles with its “rising from the dead.”

Before the pay parking ordinance was repealed here, since 2001 chaos was present not on the parking but on protesting motorists and residents on the apparent privatization of the city’s parking areas to Jadewell, which some questioned legally if such streets could be under “the commerce of man.”

In 2006, the city council crafting Ordinance No. 33 series of 2006 repealed the pay-parking ordinance and res­cinded the memorandum of agreement that authorized Jadewell in 2001. This stopped the operation of the controversial parking firm which was accused of violating the terms and conditions of the contract.

At present, the city is awaiting the final decision of the Supreme Court on the case questioning the constitutionality of the pay parking firm’s operation in the city. A bevy of court cases have arisen since the main case was filed and most of these remained unresolved up to the present.

Domogan urged the city council to support his plan to revive the operation of the existing parking lot near the Ganza restaurant, once occupied by Jadewell and to establish new parking facilities at the Melvin Jones grounds and the lot near the Solibao restaurant, all at Burnham Park.