Haddad: "Automatic progression will end"

Marco Damiani _247 - The Folha/UOL interview with São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad ended at 19:50 PM. Among announcements of measures, he guaranteed that the city will end the continuous progression school system, in which students do not need to take specific exams to move to the next grade level. "This system will end because it is harmful to the student," said the mayor. He noted that the capital city ranks 35th in education quality surveys among the 38 municipalities of Greater São Paulo.

- We will announce a complete plan in 15 days, which will include the reclassification of CEUs (Unified Educational Centers) for new educational programs and the establishment, initially for 75 children, of a two-shift school system.

Diogo Oliveira: Are you going to update the general property value assessment, anticipating an increase in property tax?

Haddad: It's a legal obligation. We have to do it. We will comply with the law, but with due care so as not to harm the population.

Oliveira: Could the money to freeze bus fares come from property taxes?

Haddad: No. The IPTU (Property Tax) revenue goes to other sectors. The risk the mayor runs when readjusting the general property valuation is making a mistake. This action, which is necessary, must be well-modulated. Everything increases, but if it's done fairly in terms of tax justice, I think the citizen will understand. What cannot happen is the increase in property value from one year to the next without taking income into consideration.

Are you in favor of halting the vertical growth of the city?

Haddad: There's a lot of misunderstanding about this. Often, buildings cause de-density. This happens in São Paulo. Our city isn't dense from a population standpoint, but it is dense from a construction standpoint. The classic case is Vila Olímpia. I don't see space for developments there. We're going to correct that in the Master Plan. The East Zone, on the other hand, is very little verticalized. When you have policies for employment, income, and housing, verticalization is a gain for the city. In the South Zone, there was a clear over-liberation of real estate developments.

Vinicius: - Will there be salvation for the Luz (central) region?

Haddad: The biggest urban planning challenge for the city of São Paulo is to take ownership of both banks of the Tietê and Pinheiros rivers. The city needs to look at them. This region has enormous potential for development.

Vinicius: Will anything be done in the Barra Funda area? It looks like there's a toad buried there.

Haddad: We are going to bring 20 homes to the city center. During the day, there's a vibrant life there that's almost impossible to find anywhere else. At night it's a desert, even dangerous. I trust in a partnership, the tender for which will be published soon, to achieve short-term results. We need to develop the Tietê River arc in a sustainable way.

Question: Can you guarantee that the residents of São Paulo will not suffer from floods next summer?

Haddad: What I can say about this is: for 18 years people have been waiting for a work order to channel the Água Branca stream. This will happen, but the work won't be finished next year. But there are things I will force the public machine to resolve. We have identified 150 historical flooding points in the city of São Paulo. More than half will have micro-drainage. The traffic lights malfunction because they are dilapidated. We have tendered more than R$ 200 million for four thousand intersections, out of six thousand throughout the city. Civil Defense has been restructuring for some years, and I intend to boost this. The degree of improvement against floods, on which we will invest R$ 360 million, will depend on the result of the works. But it is the first time that the city has anticipated the problems of summer.

Vera: Did you feel abandoned by your party when you couldn't maintain the bus fare?

Haddad: I always worry about the shoulders on which my decisions will fall. When I see that 48% of the subsidy falls on the employer who provides transportation vouchers, and that increasing the subsidy harms social goals, I think the subsidy is correct, but we cannot harm the poorest by depriving them of subsidies for public works projects.

Vera: If the risks were so great, why did you give in?

Haddad: Let's get down to brass tacks. The day before, the city was under our control. We almost lost two historic buildings in São Paulo, the City Hall and the Municipal Theater, with no one to defend them. The mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, called me worried about what would happen there the next day. The day before, I listened to the City Council and decided to make the decision. I think the demand is fair, but we cannot harm the poorest.

Question: When will you announce the expansion of the vehicle rotation system?

Haddad: We're not sure we'll make that decision. The idea, in a previous meeting, wasn't to increase hours and days, but to extend the traffic rotation to new arteries, to expand it. The technicians said that this expansion could reduce traffic flow by 20%. I thought that was excessive and ordered the calculations to be redone. We can even test the hypothesis for a month, a week, and even reverse course if the measure isn't adequate.

The mayor stated that, during his campaign, he promised not to take restrictive measures against private transportation without first encouraging public transportation.

Below, previous news item:

247 - Mayor Fernando Haddad stated, in a UOL/Folha de S. Paulo interview, that he will hire an international audit firm to oversee the bidding process for the renewal of bus services in the capital. The bidding was supposed to have taken place last month, but was suspended by the City Hall after mass protests against the increase in bus fares.

"We want transparency in contracts with the Social Organizations (OSs), following all the guidelines of the Court of Auditors. We are already reviewing contracts, with significant gains, in some cases, for the municipality. In the coming days, I should announce important news in this area, a partnership between the City Hall and a private entity. The system is difficult. Healthcare in São Paulo is not unified; it is fragmented," said Haddad regarding the sector.

Regarding the lines at municipal health facilities, the mayor said that "we still have the feeling" that, at the point of service, the line is getting longer. But he defended the situation, stating that about 40% of the names on the waiting list are incorrectly registered. "It's shocking."

A journalist reads a letter from an internet user who said they were not attended to at the Jardim Peri-Peri health center due to a strike in the sector;

"I haven't heard of any strike in the health sector. The newspaper didn't report it either," he added, to laughter from the audience. "This is the first time I've encountered this type of strike complaint; I'll look into it."

Vera: According to Datafolha, 40% said your response to the protests was not good. After seven months, are you a new mayor who has aged very quickly?

Haddad: Every mayor of São Paulo ages very quickly. I will never underestimate how difficult it is to manage this city. It's a difficult city, especially if you have responsibility for it. Many people may have used tricks to show that things were done by magic, but that doesn't last long.

Are you referring to former mayor Paulo Maluf?

Haddad: I don't want to mention names. The term is so long that some have decided to shorten it to a year and a half, said the mayor, addressing former mayor José Serra.

Vera: Have you gone from being a springboard to becoming a 'voter repellent' in São Paulo (referring to the 18% approval rating for your administration according to Datafolha)?

Haddad: My term is four years. I've heard this question several times in the last year. They said I wouldn't get past 3% in the polls, that I wouldn't make it to the second round. But I did.

Below, previous news item:

247 - Mayor Fernando Haddad arrived at PUC headquarters in São Paulo shortly before 18:00 PM to participate in the UOL/Folha de S. Paulo interview.

247 greeted the mayor upon arrival.

Ready for the debate?

"One is never truly prepared," said Haddad, in good humor. "Do you want to address any specific topic?" "Let's see what comes up," he replied.

Then, in the dressing room of the PUC amphitheater, he was greeted by journalist Vera Magalhães, from Folha.

It's 18:09 PM, the interview is about to begin. Haddad sits among the journalists assigned by the newspaper and the online portal: Vera, Vinicius Torres Freire, Diogo Oliveira, and Alencar Isidro. Questions can be submitted in writing. Beforehand, the microphones were adjusted. A voice in the amphitheater requested voice tests, one by one. The broadcast started at 18:11 PM.

Follow here.

The first question argues that Haddad, after the June protests, made a "shift" in favor of public transportation.

"It wasn't exactly a turning point, let's be realistic," Haddad countered. "Public transportation was a central point of our campaign, it was in tune with those sentiments. It included exclusive bus lanes and a monthly pass," he added. "Transportation occupied the agenda of almost all competitive candidates," he stated. "We had the correct diagnosis."

Vera Magalhães: "Did you underestimate the issue of the adjustments, which were not given in January?"

Haddad: "There was a request made to me and the mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, and we agreed not to give the raise, in exchange for tax breaks in the sector. When we did give the raise, it was less than we would have given before. The adjustment was less than half the inflation rate during that period."

Question: Cutting the vehicle inspection fee was a clear choice in favor of individual transportation...

Haddad: We have 15 buses, which transport two-thirds of the workers, and five million cars, which transport one-third of the workers. Not prioritizing the opening of exclusive bus lanes seems counterintuitive to me.

Vinicius Freire: Why not urban tolls in São Paulo?

Haddad: I find the measure unpopular. I think the use of Cide (Contribution for Intervention in the Economic Domain) to subsidize public transportation, which I launched alone in March, is ideal. I proposed that individual transportation should finance public transportation.

The mayor, in completing his response, stated that using Cide (a tax) to subsidize public transportation is deflationary.

Question: Did something worse happen during the protests?

Haddad - The City Hall building was attacked. It took the Military Police two hours to get there. There was a lot of vandalism, people were injured. The UOL headline said that we had the resources to finance the reduction in the fare increase. That information was very damaging; at a time of great violence, it could have generated more problems. I called to correct it. I think it's a duty.

Haddad - The demonstrations showed that it is necessary to review the federal pact. I have already said in the PT that users of public services have diffuse interests, which are very difficult to deal with. This includes urban mobility and public safety, which was implicit in all the protests.

If you were a student, which flag would you carry?

Mayor: Education. I think education is at the root of the solution to all problems.

Vera Magalhães: You made an incorrect diagnosis of São Paulo's finances during your campaign because you were too optimistic.

Haddad: No, I made the right diagnosis. Now, we will have the support of the federal government. Tomorrow, São Paulo will reconcile with the federal government. We will launch the PAC (Growth Acceleration Program) in São Paulo, with a series of projects, making up for lost time, for example, compared to Rio de Janeiro. We will launch this alongside President Dilma.

Was there a fight that needed to be resolved now?

Haddad - São Paulo wasn't making the right requests. And the city made a terrible debt renegotiation agreement, with 57% interest. President Dilma was sensitive to this problem and made a change in the index used, which will apply not only to São Paulo, but to many states and municipalities.

Question from the audience: "How many daycare spots are you going to create?"

Haddad: We have already located 86 plots of land and we will find another 86. From there, we will put the construction projects out to tender. What Cesar Calegari (municipal secretary of Education) has conveyed to the business owners is that if they want to build daycare centers, they can be reimbursed for their investment through federal programs.

Vera, returning to the issue of the Monthly Single Ticket: Has this program, a campaign promise, fallen through?

Haddad: Initially, it's still scheduled for November. But we have an equation to solve that didn't exist before. However, in principle, we will inaugurate it in November of this year.

Vera; Open the Pandora's box of transportation for us, is there a transportation mafia?

Haddad: It's a very complex sector. During Marta's administration, I saw how difficult it was to create a stable and trusting relationship with this segment. The Single Ticket system, implemented by Marta, gave us security regarding revenue. The use of cash on buses ended. Now, we need to have security regarding these companies' expenses. Before, with the interest rate under Fernando Henrique's government, which was 25% higher than today, it was understandable for bus company owners to ask for a higher rate of return, but today a 10% rate of return is reasonable. That's less than before.

Question: Would you accept an 8% return rate?

Haddad: I would like to, but the problem is more complex. Bus production is very concentrated. You have Marco Polo and Caio producing the bodies. There's already an oligopolistic model in production. There's a barrier to entry for new players in the market. Who has 5 buses to sell today? That doesn't exist. Public transportation bidding is different from public works. Spaniards, Portuguese, French companies come, but how do you do that with buses? There aren't groups to participate. I'm benefiting from what happened in June to reflect on this market (referring to the cancellation of the bidding for the renewal of the bus fleet in São Paulo).