This article was published in the Facebook group site called AAV is My Home October 2015 If Ayala Land donates the roads of Ayala Alabang Village to the City of Muntinlupa, can we keep our village “private” and only let those with stickers have free access? That’s the ideal situation that you want, is that right – that in spite of our roads becoming publicly owned, we the residents have control over who comes in? In previous posts, the warning has been that AAV would be subject to what the Mayor of Muntinlupa has on his agenda. If he says our roads need to be opened up for whatever reason, then they might be opened up. So the hope is that the Mayor now, and every Mayor in the future, will always be friendly to us. But is there any other way that our roads might be opened for public access? THE ANSWER IS YES. The mechanism for opening roads owned by the City (Local Government Unit) in a private village is simple. Anyone who can show that the roads are “public,” i.e. donated to the City, can file a legal challenge to have publicly-owned roads opened to the public. That’s all it would take. It might not be automatic that the roads are open to the public once donated – we can keep our sticker-checking guards at the gate. But once someone challenges what we are doing and demands our roads be opened, then our roads would be forced open. So… a non-resident parent, whose child attends school at LaSalle can file a legal challenge against AAVA -- and the roads would be opened to the public. The parent will no longer need to line up and leave his driver’s license at the gate. The owners of school buses could do it, so that they can enter Champaca, and exit Mindanao. The operator of a fleet of jeepneys or tricycles could do it. Anyone. All it would take is a legal challenge versus AAVA. Do you know of a village whose roads are owned by the City, but still has gates to guard against the entry of the public? Would you like to try to challenge that village, to see if opening them up to the public can really be done? Or would you like to wait until someone challenges our village, if Ayala Land hands us over to the City?