Here’s yet another ‘free parking’ joke in QC

A Quezon City councilor is proposing “free parking for QC residents” (“Free parking for QC residents pushed,” Metro, 6/10/14). Councilor Alan B. Reyes wants them to enjoy free parking for the first three hours in malls and other places of convergence within the territorial jurisdiction of Quezon City. That should get him into the good graces of QC voters—were it not for the fact that he is just deluding them with a chimerical sense of optimism. Considering how City Hall screws things up, the plan could backfire.

This measure is akin to the “free parking” privilege of senior citizens already in place under QC Ordinance No. SP-2081, series of 2011, which supposedly grants senior citizens exemption from the initial rate of the parking fees (usually three hours). That ordinance speaks of no space limitations. But under the implementing rules and regulations issued by the Office of the City Mayor (OCM) in coordination with the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs (et tu, Osca?),  that “free parking” privilege was bastardized and made to spawn a scheme limiting it to some 15 slots only—which get filled up within the first 15 minutes of business hours! The big-ticket nabobs of SM, Ayala and Robinson’s malls in Quezon City are the notorious recipients of those “unwarranted benefits.” When is never enough for them?

Thus, with such “free parking slots for seniors” gone so fast, those coming in later are required to pay the regular rates. The ensuing needless altercations never fail to ratchet up blood pressures several notches higher.

That ordinance has become a joke more cruel than old age! The culprits are the scumbags in the OCM and the Osca who found the ingenuity to make a mockery of that privilege. Whatever gave them the gall to “modify or revise” a duly

approved ordinance in the first place?  It is an elementary principle that no administrative agency can modify or revise any law it is tasked merely to “implement.”  Yet, notwithstanding numerous complaints, the city council has not lifted a finger to undo the mess it has made out of its well-intentioned legislation.

And now comes another sick joke?

—STEPHEN L. MONSANTO,

Monsanto Law Office,

Loyola Heights, Quezon City,

[email protected]