Territorialization vs Sectorization: The curious case of the Mystic Bus.

 

 Foto: Sociedad Raleigh Costa Rica.

Last week it was announced that the mystical bus, a tourist landmark of the Braulio Carrillo National Park, is going to disappear. Not because of the mysticism attributed to it, but as a result of a sectorial, fragmented and inefficient State.

The constant visitation of curious walkers and mountain bikers seems to have caused damage to the National Park and for this reason the National System of Conservation Areas, from an exclusively environmental perspective, has ordered the dismantling of the mysterious "Blue Bird" that, without explanation , appeared one day in the middle of the forest of San Rafael de Heredia.

It may seem like a logical solution for the environment sector, but it is a great loss for tourism, culture and the economy sectors, which did not have the opportunity to present their own solutions to this singular "problem", because our government sector scheme grants rectories to institutions "specialized" in solving specific issues and does not promote interdisciplinary work.

The opposite is a territorial and subsidiary government scheme (close to the territory and its inhabitants), in which all sectors of the administration respond to the same command structure, which allows the different technical offices to contribute to the integral solution of problems . During its planning processes, a territorial government can integrate various sectors to solve the problem of just one. In this case, the environmental office could have had the support of experts in tourism, economics, engineering and other disciplines to provide a comprehensive solution to the problem.

Our municipalities already work in this way, but their scope is still extremely limited, both due to their legal powers and their scale. They do not have the legal power to make or direct all decisions that directly impact their territory, and their territory is too small to make a positive difference. In our country there are so many "mini-cipalities" that their activity is also territorially fragmented, and if each one made all the decisions about their jurisdiction, it would inevitably affect their neighbors.

In fact, this already causes problems and contradictions in the bordering areas, since the differences between the policies and the regulation of urban areas confuse the average citizen and generate inconveniences and unnecessary pressures on the sustainability of the territory.

Montes de Oca, for example, has just declared its San Rafael district "ecological", while La Unión and Goicoechea allow the development of condominiums in this same geographic basin, this confuses the construction sector and generates unnecessary pressure for the new ecological district. Why does this happen?

In Costa Rica, issuing urban planning regulations is the constitutional authority of the 81 Councils of the 81 municipalities of the country. They are advised by their 81 technical offices of territorial planning, which are overseen by the 162 mayors and vice mayors of the country. Each municipality has it’s own autonomous organization scheme.

By law and administrative decree, this discipline is also supervised by four central government institutions: The National Institute of Housing and Urbanism (INVU); The Ministry of Environment and Human Settlements (MIVAH); The Mortgage Bank for Housing (BANHVI), and the Technical Environmental Secretariat (SETENA).

But most of the public works are executed by the administrators of services and infrastructure such as: concessionaires, the National Power and Light Company, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute, the Costa Rican Radiographic, The Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers and the Ministry of Public Transit; who carry out their work plans independently from each other (because of alleged autonomy).

In this scenario, citizen participation remains -tragically- as a symbolic token, because after each of these actors makes their own plans - naturally - there is nothing left to decide.

If we analyze the insides each of each of these administrative structures, we could make a thesis of biblical proportions but for the purpose of this note it will be enough, to understand the complexity of decision-making in a sectorial state, that we analyze only the decision making structure of the 3 main actors in this sector:

INVU: has a board of directors, an executive president, a management and a deputy management, two directors and three deputy directors. The institute is so loaded with administrative positions that its administrative budget is higher than the budget for the urban planning unit:

BANVHI also has a Board of Directors and a General Manager.

MIVAH has a Minister, a Deputy Minister and three Directors.

(Each with his or her own confidential paid advisers.)

In Europe, despite retaining some administrative autonomy, the small historic municipalities were grouped under the aegis of regional governments. The regions plan the territory, address these problems, and order the municipalities, concessionaires and service providers to address the problems of the population according to the development plans of each region.

The unification of these institutions in a regional structure could be the solution to reduce costs to the State and promote efficient investments. May the reader consider only the Housing and Human Settlements Sector as an example:

Instead of this, a regional structure would merge the 162 mayoral and vice-mayor positions, with their 81 territorial planning offices, to constitute 6 or 7 administrative regions, each with its own subsidiary headquarters, for example: Ciudad Quesada ( North Zone), San Isidro de Pérez Zeledón (South Zone), Puntarenas (Central Pacific), Liberia (North Pacific), San José (Central Region) and Guápiles (Caribbean Region), each with its Council, its Governor and its office territorial planning.

The regions could assume many of the responsibilities that the Executive currently has, allowing it to decrease significantly, allowing the regions to compete in freeing us from tax burdens.

 

The municipalities that exist today could become efficient service operators, receiving political direction from the regional government and executing their plans under the supervision of administrative career managers, instead of mayors who may not have the necessary training or experience to be a territorial administrator.

From experience, it can be affirmed that the due coordination that must exist between public entities is illusory in such a sectorial and fragmented scheme and that possibly, if we continue like this, we will have many more taxes and many fewer mystical territories.