City Hall makes fund cuts on barangay revenues to stay afloat, obtain P1.2 B loan – Salcedo

June 5, 2008

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By Lizanilla J. Amarga

The City Government of Cagayan de Oro is slicing-off millions of pesos from the real property tax collection shares of all 80 barangays just to stay afloat, project an image of financial stability and borrow P500 million from the Philippine Veterans Bank, barangay chairpersons said yesterday.

Also, they said City Hall is also making sure that it rakes in all the incomes from cedulas or community tax certificate (CTC) issuances by not releasing the proper forms to any of the its 80 barangays among others.

Should City Hall fail to return what they’ve carved-out from each barangay’s tax shares and continue these practices, the barangay chairpersons led by Gusa Barangay chairperson Enrico Salcedo vowed to stage a rally and slap legal charges against all officials responsible for these illegal funds cuts that were observed just last year.

Just last Friday during the Association of Barangay Captains (ABC) meeting, Salcedo raised these concerns to City Accountant Wilma Rugay who failed to give an answer to the barangay chairpersons gathered.

Salcedo recounted how Rugay asked for a “time-out” and that she “acted surprised” on the query he made before the entire gathering.

Nevertheless, he said many barangay chairpersons who attended the ABC meeting were convinced that Rugay knows what is going on and that the fund cuts were deliberately being made just to make sure that City Hall can augment and increase its P1.3 billion income for this year amid how it has already assigned its IRA to the creditor banks.

“Gipaksian na sa Syudad ang kita sa matag-barangay kay ang IRA sa Syudad mismo ginahold naman sa bangko aron ibayad sa iyang utang ug para ipag-pangutang nasab,” he said.

On slicing out the barangay’s shares in the real property tax collections, Salcedo explained by citing Section 271 of the Local Government Code which provides that 70 percent of the proceeds of real property taxes including interests must go to the City Government’s general fund while the remaining 30 percent will be for the barangay units.

He explained that this 30 percent share of the barangays will be divided with 50 percent accruing to the barangay where the property is located and the remaining 50 percent accruing equally to all component barangays in the city.

Salcedo who is also a barangay consultant for First District Cong. Rolando Uy said, in the case of his own barangay, over P7 million in basic real property taxes were collected from Barangay Gusa as of last year alone.

He said this means that City Hall gets to have the 70 percent or around P4.84 million while the 30 percent or just over P2.16 million will be for the barangays.

The 50 percent of this P2.16 million or P1.08 million going to Barangay Gusa as it is where the subject properties being levied upon are located and the P1.08 going to be equally distributed to all the other barangays in the city, he said.

However, Salcedo revealed that Barangay Gusa did not receive P1.08 million but only P752,000 as City Hall kept the difference of around P380,000.

Also, he said Barangay Gusa lost around P100,000 last year when the City Government prohibited it from issuing CTCs or cedulas to its barangay constituents and instead requiring them to really troop to City Hall to get one instead.

Salcedo said Barangay Gusa alone lost around P480,000 or P.5 million just for City Hall to come out with an image of financial security and with “borrowing capacity” enough to convince PVB that it can pay out a P500 million and even more.

“Maayo na malang unta kadtong half million pesos itabang to maintain peace and order, pamalit ug bulb sa atong mga poste ug proyekto sa atong Barangay Gusa,” he said.

Salcedo pointed out that this half-million added income to the city coffers was just from Barangay Gusa and that there are still other larger barangays with more multi-million incomes in real property taxes and cedulas such as barangays Carmen, Lapasan, Bugo and Bulua to mention some.

“Pero ang nakasakit niini kay daghan pa kaayo mga barangay kapitan ug mga opisyales nga wala nakasabot niini (But what is painful in this is that a number of barangay chairpersons and officials who fail to actually understand this),“ he said.

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