Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong and the City Environment and Parks Management Office signed a memorandum of agreement with the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) allowing the media organization to adopt the picnic grove of Burnham Park.
Magalong and assistant CEPM Officer Marivic Empizo signed the MOA with BCBC president Thomas Picana and was witnessed by the club’s business manager Rizaldy Comanda.
The nearly 700-square meter picnic grove is used as a “media camp” especially during Holy Week.
Earlier, Picana expressed elation over the prospect of signing the MOA and is looking forward to funding the upgrade of the area used during media activities.
“Now we can start working on the possible funding of the camp’s upgrade,” Picana, the Amianan Balita Ngayon editor and publisher, said.
In June of this year, the BCBC wrote the city through Magalong that it intends to adopt the area.
Picana said the media group intends to call it the “Camp Peppot” in honor of the late Jose Nicholas Ilagan, editor of the defunct Gold Ore and a one time city councilor, who started a media camp in front of the office of the defunct paper at the former Baguio Colleges Foundation, now the University of the Cordilleras in 1988.
Picana said that the club will source out P500,000 for the upgrade of the area, where it will introduce landscaping, lighting, and additional chairs and tables.
Magalong said that the city will help fund the upgrade of the area, while divulging that it is included in the general improvements under the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority or TIEZA.
Magalong added that it will be part of the P700 million the TIEZA earmarked to improve the city’s centerpiece park but it will be the last phase of the development plan the agency conceived.