BEIRUT: Beirut Mayor Bilal Hamad acknowledged that the municipal council has been having problems with the city’s new governor, adding that he would involve the interior minister to address their differences. “We are having some problems,” Hamad told The Daily Star in an interview. “I am a frank person.”
“He wants to study every little project that we decide on,” the mayor said, referring to Governor Ziad Chebib, who was appointed to his post last May.
“We said: ‘We decide, you execute, this is the law.’ But he has a big team and they want to study each and every decision and give their comments before they start implementing and this is taking time,” Hamad said. “If the governor wants to restudy the decision to amend it, then things will never get done.”
In all municipalities in Lebanon, the municipal council is tasked to decide on a policy and the mayor is in charge of seeing it through. However, Beirut is an exception – its mayor lacks the executive power to implement policies, which is in the hands of the governor.
The power distribution has been the source of tension between mayors and governors in the capital city for decades.
Hamad said that Beirut’s previous acting Governor Nassif Qaloush had blocked the execution of several municipal council decisions. “We are trying to get things that were halted by the previous governor to move,” he added.
Hamad voiced hope that Chebib would not affect the jurisdiction of the municipal council.
“These powers have been defined by the law rather than by me and I am not the person who will give them up,” he said.
He acknowledged that the municipal council and Chebib’s new administration needed time to get familiar with each other.
The mayor said he would resort to involving Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk to help to solve issues burgeoning between the council and Chebib. The ministry has a supervisory authority over municipalities.
“When we feel projects need support with administration ... we resort to the interior minister,” Hamad said.
Separately, the mayor outlined projects the municipality was working on, including public gardens and parking lots.
He boasted that the Sanayeh Public Garden, refurbished last year, was now “the most beautiful piece of land in Lebanon.”
“This is our dream, this is what we are, this speaks about our vision for green spaces.”
He added that the municipality had just completed a “beautiful garden” in Hawd al-Wilaya neighborhood, and the construction of another public garden in Mar Nicolas, Ashrafieh, would start very soon. The municipality has also approved the design of a new garden nearby in Sioufi.
“Now it is with the governor to implement. He has to prepare the tender, and then we will launch the bidding [to select a company to construct the garden].”
The municipality is also working on building a public garden in Karantina and a third one in Ashrafieh, which will be named after Beirut Metropolitan Orthodox Archbishop Elias Audi.
Hamad said that when he became mayor in 2010, he and then-Culture Minister Salim Warde agreed on a policy to protect heritage buildings not included in the Culture Ministry’s list of heritage sites.
Under the policy, anyone who wants to demolish a building must first get permission from the Culture Ministry, whose officials will inspect it. The owner of the building can only receive demolition authorization from the municipality by presenting a permission form.
Hamad also noted that the renovation of the Karantina slaughterhouse would conclude in a month.
Last November, Chebib ordered the closure of the slaughterhouse because it failed to meet health and safety standards.
Hamad echoed that the current slaughterhouse was not up to standard. “We will look for a place to have a modern slaughterhouse ... whether it is in the same location or another location, we have not decided yet, but we will decide and we will have a modern slaughterhouse for Beirut.”
Hamad went on to say the municipality had decided to expropriate 10 pieces of land to construct multistory parking lots in a bid to solve parking problems in the capital.
These pieces of land are located in Hamra, Mar Elias, Burj Abi Haidar, Zarif, Corniche al-Mazraa and Ashrafieh, among other neighborhoods.
However, he said the expropriation process was very sluggish.
To expropriate a piece of land, the government issues a decree and submits it to the Committee of Expropriations. Headed by a government-appointed judge, the committee appraises the piece of land and informs the municipal council, which pays the appraised price to the landowner.
“None of them has reached the Expropriation Committee yet ... none of the decrees has been issued by the government yet ... it’s taking time,” Hamad said.
The mayor voiced hope that construction of a parking lot under Martyrs’ Square would begin by the summer.
“We will have parking for 1,600 cars and above it there will be a beautiful landscape designed by Renzo Piano, who’s one of the top architects in the world.”
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