The city council in its 13th regular session presided over by Vice mayor Daniel Fariñas last Monday acted on 85 legislative matters.

“Technically and legally, there has never been a Vice President’s Mansion,” claimed Atty. Benilda Tejada, executive vice president of the Development Bank of the Philippines.

Tejada enlightened the body on the surrounding facts concerning a mansion located at Lualhati Barangay, which was purportedly acquired by the DBP and in effect left the second highest official of the land homeless in the City of Baguio. Unlike the President, the Senate President and other national officials and dignitaries that have mansions or cottages in the city provided by the government.

It was learned the property refers to the Norham Mansion, which was only called the “Vice President’s Mansion” because it has been used by the vice president at the concurrence or with tolerance of the DBP.

The property sits within a 22,502.37-square meter lot acquired by the Republic of the Philippines from Marscon Incorporated in 1953, which in the same year assigned by the national government as its capital stock subscription to the Rehabilitation Finance Corporation, which is the DBP now.

In 1971, the title was transferred to the DBP and from then, the Office of the Vice President used the mansion until 1991 when the vice president Salvador Laurel turned it over to DBP.

The property now serves as a training complex for all especially for local government units at a special discount. Tejada said DBP intends to link it with the Development Academy of the Philippines and with ADFIAP, which are on the forefront of the corporate governance for governments. From a capital of P296,000 in February, the whole complex has total improvements of around P76.9 million now with a new appraisal worth P486.461M.

Guests from the Baguio Water District namely engineers Salvador Royeca, Reynaldo Jayco, Charles Carame, and Lucero apprised the body of their major projects and programs in reducing systems loss or non-revenue water (NRW).

NRW represents revenue losses, hence BWD continuously adopts measures to reduce it to a normal level. BWD claimed that it was able to reduce its NRW from 47 to 37 percent after the implementation of its major pipeline rehabilitation and expansion works through the Australian Aid project amounting to about P798M.

The project comprising Areas 1, 2, and 3 of Baguio is already 75 percent complete. Its components are re-piping works, construction of new reservoirs and tanks, and refurbishing.

BWD is targeting to reduce its system loss within ideal the range of 25 to 30 percent so they are aiming to educate the public on how to control or reduce it.

With its efforts, the utility company continuously addresses the following causes: 1. underground leakages, the highest cause of NRW that were corrected through its major re-piping project; 2. Illegal connection, which is being controlled by clustering water meters in cages and soon the implementation of its “reward system” in the reporting illegal connections 3. High system pressure which is now maintained at a standard level by installed numerous air release valves or pressure regulating valves.; and 4. seepages, a minimal cause, is due to the replacement of old reservoirs and tanks.

BWD had constructed four new reservoirs and three of these are the Ambiong tank at Busol, Woodsville tank at Camp 7, and a tank along Marcos Highway.