MAYOR Marquez announces his administration's accomplishments. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

MARQUEZ'S FIRST day in office, however, was an indication that he and his administration would face an uphill battle; only one department head welcomed them to the municipio, and it was a tepid welcome at that. What followed were trying times.

As far back as anyone could remember, the municipal employees recorded their attendance in logbooks. But logbooks are easy to tamper with and thus encourage dishonesty and truancy. Or as a town employee now admits, "You'd see some of the municipal employees at the mall, but in the logbook, they're at the municipio."

To professionalize the local bureaucracy, the Marquez administration purchased a biometrics time and attendance system. It broke down suspiciously several times, but it seems to have since been grudgingly accepted as part of the municipio's day-to-day life. Breakdowns are now few and far in between.

It wasn't only within the municipio that Marquez was met with resistance. The new mayor also angered various groups in Rosario when his administration implemented policies handed down by the national government, but which previous mayors had ignored. In one instance, Marquez, Morpe, and other town officials had to personally explain the intricacies of waste segregation and management to leaders of the town's 48 barangays, in compliance with Republict Act 9003, which had been in effect since January 2000. Reasons Cabralda: "It was important to have this in place so that when Rosario becomes a city, it will already be clean."

To popularize waste segregation, the town held a "Miss Ecology" beauty contest. The barangays had a competition aimed at involving the community in waste management. To show the public that municipal employees were practicing what they preached, there was an inter-office garden contest that used organic fertilizer from the town's compost pits. The local council also passed an ordinance penalizing littering with a P500 fine or community cleanup for a day.

Just as all the grousing over waste segregation was beginning to die down, complaints came about the growing traffic in the town's main intersection. Marquez formed the Rosario Traffic Management Group that manned the streets all hours of the day. Residents then started finding fault with the enforcement of stricter rules on the road. Marquez's policies may be right, they said, but it wasn't "cool" of the old man to impose restrictions. The mayor now says his constituents eventually noticed that traffic eased up because of the rules, and stopped complaining.

Then there was Marquez's strict implementation of the taxes for the registration of businesses and public-utility jeepneys and tricycles, and the imposition of penalties on those who were habitually tardy in settling their taxes, or were not paying these at all.

In previous administrations, says a municipio insider, some businessmen and PUV owners were able to get a tax discount just by approaching the local chief executive and asking for one. Under Marquez, a stiff penalty of 50 percent for late payment of business permits and taxes was imposed to coax more funds into the town purse. Last December, using a P2-million fund, the municipio also computerized the offices handling the registration of businesses and PUVs, thereby enabling it to trace transactions, tax payments, and documents with ease. Naturally, some taxpayers resented being unable to get discounts, delay payment, or escape payment altogether.

Another battleground was the public market. While legitimate vendors were pleased that Marquez built them a new one to replace the decrepit place where they used to have stalls, they balked at the higher fee they now had to pay. At the same time, sidewalk vendors felt aggrieved when the town hall ruled that only those who had paid their business tax in previous years would be given priority in the new market.

THE TOWN'S balance sheet does reflect improvements in collection. Real property tax was recorded at P2.7 million in 2003. It went up to P2.9 in 2004, the first six months of Marquez's term. Taxes from permits and licenses were P1.63 million in 2003, P1.8 million in 2004, and P2 million in 2005. In 2003, the combined collection from services and businesses was P5.76 million. It dipped a bit to P5.6 million in 2004, but shot up to P7 million in 2005. It is also notable that the property taxes were always reported with discounts in 2003 and 2004, but there was none in 2005.

	The town's market, rehabilitated with the help of pork barrel funds from Sen. Ralph Recto. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

Marquez sought to placate taxpayers by showing them where their money went. He immediately set up 48 high-powered streetlights in the town center. The town also purchased 10 new additional patrol jeeps for the Rosario's 48 barangays. Public schools were given computers, books, and sets of encyclopedia.

In the last three years, too, Marquez has been able to oversee the infusion of some P50 million for infrastructure in Rosario. The money came from the Philippine Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) of Senator Recto, with whom the mayor and his daughter have close ties. When he was younger and still single, Recto had approached Marquez for help in getting the support of local politicos for his first congressional bid. Recto won and never forgot his debt of gratitude to the old man. Next to Lipa, where Recto's wife Vilma is mayor, Rosario has received the biggest share of Recto's PDAF. The funds were used to build the new market, farm-to-market roads, a lying-in clinic, a two-story annex for the municipio, and repair schoolrooms.

Despite all that money pouring in, Marquez says he has kept his nose clean. There were times contractors themselves offered him money after winning a project, but the mayor says he waved them off. Cabaldo admits, though, that in rare times when a contractor is insistent, the money is donated to the town hall for use in "unsupported requirements." That's the catch-all phrase for various requests that come with running a town. And there are many. Even today, they are varied and often odd, a reflection of the kind of politics the town has had and cannot quite get rid of just yet.

Marquez takes it all in stride, although in one of his earliest days in office his staff were taken aback when a man barged in, demanding money for liquor. The man was livid when his request was denied, and said previous local officials were "kinder."

The mayor says he has had visitors who asked for pigs to raise in their backyard. His daughter, town administrator Morpe, was once reduced to tears when a woman asked why she couldn't have the airconditioner she was asking for when Morpe's own home was cooled by such. There are requests for money for medicines that cannot be found in the town's health centers. The mayor scrounges around for funds, often digging into his own pocket. He perpetually owes pharmacies; he pays one pharmacy each payday and borrows from the others while waiting for the next payday.

Unable to refuse requests for him to stand as sponsor during weddings and baptisms, he has developed a modus vivendi of sorts with couples who approach him: for weddings, he can give only up to P2,500; for baptisms, P500. Marquez estimates he has stood as sponsor for over 500 times since becoming mayor. He says he's not embarrassed over the amounts he gives because "iyon lang ang kaya ko (that's really all I can afford)."