Chapinero is the number 2 town in Bogotá, one of the most traditional in the city due to its high artistic and cultural component.
Oscar Yesid Ramos Calderón, local mayor, spoke with THE NEW CENTURY on the problems of the area in terms of the road network, security panorama and initiatives in favor of the community.
THE NEW CENTURY: What are the main problems of the town?
OSCAR RAMOS: We have challenges in various issues such as mobility because our town will be impacted by large city projects such as the construction of the Metro or the Green Corridor of the Seventh and as are different investment and recovery projects that are being managed by the Development Institute Urban (IDU).
In turn, we have some investment projects to carry out rehabilitation, maintenance and conservation of the urban and rural road network. We have already carried out an intervention of about three kilometers. Our town is the epicenter of different district projects such as Pago Parking that has started its pilots in the town of Chapinero and the public bicycle system.
In these two projects, there are still adaptation challenges, how do we improve it, how do we potentiate it; but the use of the bicycle in the locality has had a very important advance. Paid Parking in some areas has been well received and in others it is advancing with the different adaptation processes.
The sellers
ENS: What are you going to do with the street vendors?
OR: In public space we have important challenges such as the issues of street vendors, inappropriate use of parking, and there we have a whole series of operations, follow-up strategies, and constant monitoring to mitigate this situation and for citizens to feel that we are working on the streets, that we are doing a specific exercise, that we are in the territory.
We have not only police strategies but also education and citizen culture strategies to teach citizens to make good use of public space, to be remembering the rules of coexistence and everything that is associated with reducing pressure factors in public space .
ENS: How much is the investment budget for the year 2023?
OR: For the year 2023, the Local Development Fund, which is the one that manages the City Hall’s money, has a budget of more than $28,000 million.
This budget is divided into what is going to go through participatory budgets, which was what the citizens decided, we also have some issues of the operation of the Administration and some aspects related to the District Administration, such as the Guaranteed Minimum Income, all the education issues and of course all the issues of the operation of the Local Development Fund.
Security
ENS: What is the current security situation?
OR: In security and coexistence, without a doubt, we have three prioritized UPZ: Pardo Rubio, Chico Lago and El Refugio; where the rates of personal theft and cell phone theft were quite significant last year.
All our commitment this year is to reduce theft, to guarantee that commercial establishments comply with all the security and coexistence conditions to reduce crimes, to reduce fights and reduce issues associated with citizen conflict.
ENS: How do you articulate the actions of the Mayor’s Office with those of the JAC?
OR: Within the framework of our governance, we work with the 17 Community Action Boards of the town and the neighborhood associations that we have. With the JACs, we have developed exercises to provide technological elements, we have been working on different investment plans and projects associated with their neighborhoods and territories, we have articulated community and social cultural processes, and we also have work on urban road network issues.
The Community Action Board and the neighborhood associations are a pillar, because that generates governance in the territory and different actions on all fronts to address. Citizens not only feel heard, but also feel that their needs are being met.
Stake
ENS: What initiatives are you leading from the Mayor’s Office to encourage citizen participation?
OR: This year, the Local Mayor’s Office of Chapinero is guaranteeing the closure of all its strategies and all its follow-up to achieve our goal: to become a more sustainable town.
For this, we are restoring the eastern hills, eight hectares of ecological restoration, we have more than 10 environmental participation processes in the territory where we have created different territorial actions to improve trails, so that the communities appropriate the ravines, to strengthen environmental organizations and social based on a great commitment to strengthen the community environmental fabric.
In the cultural sphere, we have strengthened more than 100 cultural organizations in different categories, be it theater, visual arts, circulation, appropriation and/or cultural training; they have been strengthened.
Chapinero already has its first Local Care Block located in the Pardo Rubio sector. There we have served more than 3,000 women, strengthening their production processes. We have created a niche and we are forming the Women’s Network of our locality.
ENS: What is the support for the local economy?
OR: In the development of the local economy, we have assisted more than 500 enterprises, either locally driven or local microenterprises, to strengthen and capitalize grassroots enterprises and some larger microentrepreneurs, both with resources and training.
We have our network of local orchard growers, who are allied with all the rural strengthening that we have been carrying out in a great investment strategy that is to reborn El Verjón.
Finally, the strengthening of education since we have more than 200 young people linked to technical, technological and university careers in our town who receive a scholarship to be able to study and some resources to be able to support themselves during the development of their career.
All this within the framework of the consolidation of our development plan to strengthen a town in which the social, environmental, cultural, sports and territorial sectors have a voice and vote. Very surely we will advance in a public agenda, in a democratization of local management and in a transparency of efficiency with the sole aim of transforming Chapinero.