Cebu City Council session moved to Wednesday

City council session on November 5, 2019. | CDND PHOTO / Delta Letigio

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Council will move their regular sessions on Wednesdays starting December 4, 2019, following an amendment of the internal rules of the 15th Sangguniang Panglungsod.

This was decided unanimously by the council members after presiding officer, Vice Mayor Michael Rama, said they could change amend the house rules, which stated that they could only change the day of the regular session within one year of the inaugural session and one before the next local elections.

Majority floor leader, Councilor Raymond Alvin Garcia of Barug-PDP Laban, previously said this was what stopped the Sangguniang from moving the regular sessions on Wednesdays.

Read more: Cebu City Council sessions will still be held on Tuesdays

However, Rama said the council could make a memorandum of undertaking expressing the unanimous desire of the council to move the sessions on Wednesdays.

With this, the council members finalized and signed the memorandum of undertaking on Wednesday, November 27, 2019, which would be ratified on December 4.

“Moving the sessions on Wednesdays would really allow us to study the agenda. This is something all of us in the council wants to do,” said Garcia.

In the memorandum, the council members agreed to conduct all public hearings on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. while the Citizen’s Hour and the regular session will be conducted at 1 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Read more: Cebu City Council to hold offsite sessions in barangays

This way, the council can hold their regular session outside the Cebu City Hall and in the barangays as they have recently passed the ordinance to conduct off-site sessions, which Mayor Edgardo Labella duly signed on November 26, 2019.

Councilor Alvin Dizon of Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) said that the moving of the regular session did not matter to him as he would be present in the sessions any day, but he agreed this would help his fellow councilors study the agenda better.

Dizon initially proposed that the sessions would be moved in the morning, but his colleagues chose to conduct the sessions in the afternoon instead to ensure more attendance.

As for Vice Mayor Rama, he encouraged the councilors to commit to their new schedules and he said he would expect them to be present as much as they could in both the Tuesdays’ public hearing and the Wednesdays’ regular sessions off-site or not. /dbs