Churchill Aguilar THE municipality of Roxas in Zamboangadel Norte has been my valued client for more than a year now.  Since the mayor is a young first termer, he started everything from scratch. Starting off was most challenging as he did not have much to work on, the previous administration left the municipality with a 68-percent poverty incidence and high unemployment rate. The burden was just overwhelming. But Roxas has gone far now since. Just in their municipal port, from an average income of a million and a half   in 2012, now it has reached to six million and a half. Hundreds of jobs were generated as infrastructure projects, mostly roads and classrooms, sprouted like mushrooms in its 31 barangays. There is also an entry of a new cement industry that will surely cater more jobs and propel the local income of the people here. To encapsulate the mayor’s efforts, Roxas is starting to experience stability for the very first time. Having said that, there are three things that are worth emulating in Mayor Jan Vallecer’s leadership style. First is that Mayor Jan spends more time visiting barangays than in his office. He checks the situation of every sitio firsthand. He would walk four hours just to reach the farthest sitio and camp for a night or two with his team since some of the places are still impassable. He would listen to stories of struggles and triumphs of our indigenous Subanens and rally with them, then brings all their concerns to his department heads and the Sanggunian for them to be addressed. And when you see the leader in the front line of the battlefield, you also see how the rest of his constituents take their weapons and face the challenges head on. Second is that the good mayor demands no less than excellence starting from his rank and file to his department heads. Some of the employees may have entered the local government through political accommodation, as with the case in all other LGUs but the only way for anyone to keep his job is if he or she performs well. He puts value on performance evaluation more than anything. I have seen him laid off “job orders” who did not perform and strictly disciplined regular employees who underachieve their targets.  By far, Roxas is the only municipality in this region who takes SPMS to heart and implements them to the latter, strictly counting every client served, every baby immunized, every malnourished child fed, every swine raised, and every seed distributed. Anything that cannot be measured is of no value. Third is that Mayor Jan knows how to make public service a fun thing to do. Programs are launched always on a festive mode. Everytime he visits a barangay he would always take detours to explore caves and unchartered forests. Municipal staff are always eager to join him in all his field work because it would mean a whole new offoad experience again. He would play basketball and soccer with his staff and with other sectors in the municipality. From the usual bureaucracy, he always shows that serving is fun as it should be. I may have been a poisoned source since he is my client. But putting bias aside, one can always learn a thing or two from someone who made it through. Kudos to Mayor Jan!