With their three-times-elected Mayor SB about ready to step down, the people of Quezon City are all agog over what they see as alarming developments.

For once, those reacting are not the majority, not the “informal settlers” who form 51 percent of the population, but the middle class of working and hardworking professionals, businesspersons and far-from-plain housewives. The loudest, most vehement objectors to news that directly impacts their lives are up in arms against a proposal to charge parking fees in places “of special interest”; an ordinance that would change the landscape of the fourth district by allowing the construction of buildings higher than four floors; and the redesign of Quezon Memorial Circle incorporating a carnival and parking areas using more concrete instead of planting more trees.

Pay-parking would be neat were it not for the implications of someone out to turn a quick ROI from the business. When new cars are born each year without the commensurate space to move them and park them, what assurance is there that the fees collected will not go into private pockets? Parking is a lucrative industry. Car parks are built by mall owners, who then turn over management to a contractor. But who owns the streets of QC – city hall, councilors, barangay chieftains?

They call it a parking fee, but it is a tax. For now, every time we park we pay a tip to street urchins and security guards as an exercise in charity, but once the tip becomes a tax, the little cash will pile up into a mountain of profits for a few select individuals. Who are they? Come out, come out if you dare.

For “rapidly” approving a special permit to build three high-rise condos on Benitez Street, residents of Lipunan and Horseshoe Drive dug up these names: Belmonte, Lagman, Suntay, Banal, Medalla, Borres, chanceilors all.

“Public servants” who see high-rises as a beautiful sign of progress should buy into a cement plant, then they could turn the metropolis into a vulgar concrete jungle.

Unlike urban planner Jun Palafox, who doesn’t like concrete parks – is that why his master plan for the Circle was trashed? The plan called for “750 more trees, preserving the mature trees, plus more greenery, flora and fauna.” Trees don’t vote, they don’t cry when they’re felled.