[smartads]
I just got a bit of news today that we’ve been kind of expecting, but we didn’t think it would be so soon. Before I get into it though I wanted to put in the only item I have in my notes. I’ve been staying at home even more than usual lately, so I just don’t have anything of note. However on 28 Feb I met Carl Evangelista. He came by the house with Randy Landis. He seems like a pretty cool and intelligent guy to me. I hope that he enjoys living here in Calbayog City. I also found out that they finally got around to tearing down the cock fight arena and starting the shortcut road to the market.
Okay now, the news. Today they came by to measure for the road expansion. We had already heard about it a long time ago, but the speculation at that time was that it would be 5-10 years down the road. Well now it seems that the time frame has been pushed up. They are talking about either this year or next year now. The people that came by to measure say that the expansion will be all the way up to our house. I mean right at the beginning of the house. That means that our 2 out buildings will no longer be. Supposedly they will be doing the same thing on the other side of the road, which would take out the little parking lot in front of the Ciriaco Hotel. The idea is to change the highway to a 4 lane, instead of the 2 lanes. Why, I don’t know. Unless there are some plans that are unbeknownst to me, I don’t see where it is necessary. The amount they are talking about taking is enough for at least a 6 lane highway, so maybe they will have sidewalks or walkways or something.
Now I’m over here complaining about this, but at least I will still have the house. This expansion, as far as I know, will be all along the current highway. If that is true, then plenty of people in many areas along the way will lose their homes and/or businesses. Maybe it will be making it wide after the bridge here in Bagacay, but even then some people will really be losing out.
Supposedly they will be paying us for the part of the property that they will be using, but I’ll believe that when I receive the money and somehow I doubt it will be at fair market value. Of course my name is not on the deed, but Lita’s is, so hopefully it will be even close to fair and they won’t discriminate against me for being a whitey. Also they better be doing for ‘Everyone’ along the way AND taking fair shares from each side of the road. In other words, it would not be fair for them to take so much for our side and less or nothing from the Ciriaco side. Also right now from us is where a politician lives. He better be getting his taken too. I mean it’s ‘probably’ all on the up and up, but sometimes I wonder about things like that.
This also puts a damper on our plans for our store/restaurant. We still plan to have it, but there’s going to be a much smaller area to built it in. If the city has big plans for this area, they have not mentioned it to anyone here yet. Maybe it would be wise to be sure that this restaurant/store get started. It could end up being very profitable in the near future, even if it will be smaller than we wanted.
Of course we also had plans to build another room. We were going to put another room out front so I could have visitors over and there would be room to entertain them. Maybe we should just take out the front wall of the house and redo it with those 2 projects in mind. I don’t like where my front door is anyway. Or maybe we can just expand on the computer room side and make the room bigger, about 1/2 of what the room we planned was suppose to be. Well we just found out all this information today, so it will take a little time to get all the thoughts thought out. It’s going to take some creative imagination to get all done to everyone’s satisfaction.
I’ll keep y’all up to date on what we decide about all this. Also when/if they decide to pay us for what they are taking, I’ll let you know. Its always got to be something.
Salamat Y’all
