First and foremost, I wish to take this opportunity to thank everyone - my siblings, the alumni and all our leaders and supporters - who, in one way or another, big or small, helped my team get elected to the municipal government of our town, Sta. Barbara.

Most especially, I wish to thank my wife, Fim and my only son, Ricky, his beloved wife Kaye, and my two grandchildren - Alex and Robin - for having given their wholehearted support since the start of the campaign period, and stayed by my side throughout the campaign. They have given me strength and courage in crucial moments of the campaign - on to our road to victory.

To them, my decision to run for mayor of our town, and now to serve for the next three years as its chief executive, is more of a sacrifice. Having served the country, first as a government scholar at the Philippine Military Academy in my youth, and as a military and police officer for 38 years, it has always been the wish of my family that I live a simple and private life.

They have awaited my long overdue retirement from the service:

To enjoy their precious company and make up for the lost years of being together.

To just simply go to places and explore the best spots in our beloved country and other countries.

To just simply smell the flowers, see the beauty of the sunrise and the sunset every passing day.

To just be a simple farmer.

To just play golf.

And most of all, to be just being Private Citizen Rey Velasco.

BEING MAYOR, A NEW VOCATION

But the noble calling to serve Sta. Barbara was a matter and opportunity that cannot be refused. The collective clamor for change and reform was more than enough to come out of retirement to be of service once more to our country and our people. I consider public service as a vocation.

Serving our town, to me, is a new career, devoid of the trappings of power and prestige that went with earning three stars in the police service. Being mayor is my humble way of paying back our people with what I can do to make a difference, to make up for what I owe the taxpayers for sending me to a military school and to replicate the good things I did for other people in other places in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao in my hometown.

The people of Sta. Barbara made history in the last elections.

They dared to bet on a team that promised change, a team that presented a vision for this town, a team that dreamed for a better future of this town and a team that anchored its campaign on “Balon Pulitika, Aliguas Sta. Barbara.”

NEW BEGINNINGS

Today, we are taking the first bold step to a new beginning.

Good beginnings begin with big dreams.

My administration has big dreams for Sta. Barbara because we believe that only leaders who dream big, achieve big results. We shall deliver more than what we promise and not promise more than what we cannot deliver.

In the frenzy of the campaign, many of you may no longer recall what we sought to do for our town. But to refresh your memory, it is all packaged under my name REY VELASCO. Allow me then to lay them before you once again. R is for reform in governance; E is Education for All; Y is for Youth and Sports Development; V is for Values Formation and Strengthening; E is for Environmental Care and Protection; L is for Livelihood and Jobs Creation; A is for Agricultural Productivity; S for Social and Health Services; C is for Community Partnership; and, O for Order and Peace.

We envisioned Sta. Barbara to be a model town, not only in Pangasinan, not only in Region One, but we aspire to make it a model town in the whole country. Making it one is hard to do, but it can be done. Pag sama-sama tayo, kayang kaya natin ito.

THE ORDER OF THE DAY

Our town will be a model in terms of peace and order. Right from the start, we intend to make Sta. Barbara the safest town in Pangasinan, safe to its residents, safe to businessmen, safe to visitors - in their homes, in their place of work and on the streets.

But it will be the most dangerous place to criminals. I advise any criminal, or would-be criminal to leave the town of Sta. Barbara soonest. It is dangerous to your health.

Keeping peace and order in our town, which also means the fast and correct administration of justice — is my top priority.

This is because it is one area where I know I can deliver. More than that, peace and safety in any place - are the two key ingredients to progress anywhere in the world.

Ask any serious investor why he almost always chooses to put up his business in big cities or close to big cities, or why they prefer to put up businesses in Luzon and the Visayas over Mindanao. And they will tell you they feel safer where they invest.

JUSTICE FOR ALL

Restoring peace also means that if previous officials of this town abused their power and committed crimes when they were in office, I feel it my patriotic duty to bring them to justice. That I will do.

Don’t get me wrong though. This is not about being vindictive but it is all about restoring our sense of justice and decency while in public office.

It behooves upon every public official elected by the people or appointed by those in power to embrace the noble dictum that public office is a public trust.

No one is above the law and crime does not pay.

Everybody has to answer for his misdeeds and abuse of power.

TOP PRIORITIES

Hand in hand with restoring and keeping peace and order, we will make Sta. Barbara a model for good and honest governance.

To start it right, in the next 30 days, I shall commission the staging of Strategic Planning and Visioning Seminar for Sta. Barbara not only among the local and barangay officials but it shall involve other sectors and stakeholders of our town.

The results of this strategic planning seminar will determine the courses of action this administration will take in the coming months and years.

A medium term development plan will guide us to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.

However, let me share with you some of the things I want to do.

We will build a local government system that delivers quickly and efficiently its frontline services to its people.

We shall develop a one-stop shop system for the processing of business and individual papers in just one day.

Mitigation of flood, improvement in the delivery of health and social services delivery, assistance to basic and special education, building and repair of schools, roads bridges and other public work projects - are top priorities under this administration.

In the area of infrastructure development, I want to make special mention to solving of the perennial problem of yearly floods on top of my development agenda.

It may not be accomplished in only three years.

But a specific, doable, action program must be started soonest.

On this note, I wish to inform you that Public Works and Highways Regional Director Fidel Ginez has initially mentioned the amount of P25-million needed to start the long and arduous task of mitigating or minimizing flood.

We will immediately look for the funds to start the project by early January next year.

Like keeping peace, stopping the yearly flood is a prerequisite to the development of this town.

I appeal to your sense of understanding, patience and cooperation.

AGRICULTURAL & LIVELIHOOD PRODUCTIVITY

The third area where we want Sta. Barbara to become a model town is in its program to pursue progress and development.

We fully know that this is the biggest challenge that my administration faces. It cuts across the lives and livelihood of all families and segments of the local economy.

Foremost in our agenda will focus on farming families that make up the biggest part of Sta. Barbara.

The rehabilitation of our irrigation system should be given top priority.

On the long term, we will endeavor to build a new and efficient irrigation system that can service all the arable land of this town.

I will put to task the whole machinery of the town government to come out soonest with a farm development program adopting the best practices that other rural cities and more progressive towns have adopted plus teaching the latest farming techniques to our farmers.

We will attend not only to the production side of farming.

We will put equal stress on marketing farm products.

We will look at the viability of getting neighboring farmers in a cluster that produces bigger volumes of similar crops or products the way the city of Alaminos has been clustering its farmers.

We must also find ways of harnessing other family members of farmers whose energies can be channeled to home-based industries like handicrafts, food processing and making exportable items like Christmas decors - in between planting and harvest seasons to augment family incomes.

Maybe, a modest target of getting farming families to earn an average of P10,000 a month after three years may be a reasonable goal. This, we still have to validate.

URBAN SUBURB & INVESTMENT HUB

In other areas, we will seek opportunities offered by Sta. Barbara’s closeness to the cities of Urdaneta, Dagupan and San Carlos in terms of supplying commercial crops and other products that we can provide these cities and other big towns in the province.

Housing development is one strategic business for the fast growing suburb and services which need to be supported and encouraged.

We have at least five housing developments and we intend to invite and encourage more real estate developers to make Sta. Barbara a primary housing development center in Pangasinan.

This early, we have identified a potential airport on a 500-hactare marginal land along the border of Sta. Barbara and Mapandan specifically in the corridors of Barangays Erfe and Leet.

Together with Governor Amado T. Espino Jr., we have already met with Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza to put on track this airport project which was earlier endorsed by Pangasinan congressmen. Secretary Mendoza has committed to allocate the initial funding for engineering and technical studies for the airport project including helping the town and the province to look for investors to make this project a reality.

If we have to directly benefit from the on-going development of the Macapagal International Airport in Clark Freeport, we must build a feeder airport in Pangasinan so that investors and tourists who go to Clark can jump to our province through smaller aircrafts within a few minutes.

All of these development projects will require investments by the local government, the provincial government, the national government û and above all, private citizens.

MASTER PLAN & INVESTMENT PACKAGE

This will only mean that if we have to make grand plans, we need to come out with a master development plan similar to what the City of Alaminos did with world-renowned urban developer and designer Palafox and Associates.

Aside from the envisioned master development plan, we need an investment package for Sta. Barbara.

An investment package needs not target the theoretical foreign billionaires or big-ticket investors. Even before the start of my term of office, some big companies like Magic Group and a Korean investor have signified their intention to invest in Sta. Barbara.

We can also pioneer in offering investment packages for overseas Sta. Barbarans, the OFWs and those who have become citizens in the U.S. and other nations.

Deep in their hearts, most overseas Filipinos are raring to do something for their motherland.

We intend to get them to invest in some projects where they can make money in the long term and collect later. Eventually, other Pangasinenses may find it worth putting in stakes in viable economic projects in our town.

But most importantly, we shall value the noble contributions of the overseas Sta. Barbarans by institutionalizing a yearly Pawil Sta. Barbara Program, a local tourism project aimed at bringing them home and honoring them for their heroism and contributions.

OUR COLLECTIVE DREAM

At the start of my term therefore, I am sharing with you a dream.

It is a dream that we are determined to convert into practical plans and programs.

It is a dream that does not come true overnight.

It is a dream your mayor, his vice mayor and councilors cannot achieve on their own.

That dream will be collectively achieved by the people of Sta. Barbara with us leading the way.

Every waking day, we will put on one building block and at the end of the day, we will build a town that is indeed a model for good and honest government, and a model for peace and prosperity.

Let’s just do it.

Let’s make it happen.

God will bless our town.

Mabuhay ang Sta. Barbara!

Mabuhay tayong lahat!