SP finally approves Dagupan budget

DAGUPAN CITY —After months of thorough scrutiny, the city council approved on Wednesday an ordinance authorizing a P487,116,296.73  budget which the majority members described as “reasonable and based on hearings they conducted”.

Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, presiding officer, said that the majority members came out with this amount after many questions were left unanswered, no specific programs were presented, and justifications not made on the proposed budget sought.

“Because they (department heads) have to justify, we listened and asked questions from them but if you noticed, some speakers couldn’t answer why they were asking such an amount,” Fernandez said.

She added that some department heads even snubbed some budget hearings, including the city administrator and members of the minority especially during their last hearing.

“We would like to ask many questions so we would be clarified but the problem is they didn’t show up,” Fernandez said.

This led the majority members to come up with a budget based on reviews made, she added.

Fernandez said they are playing their role to have check and balance and would want to ensure that funds requested would really go to the intended beneficiaries.

She said they were confronted with approving a budget without details presented.

Choosing to serve the people
Councilor Jeslito Seen, chairman of the Finance Committee said a special committee composed of all members of the Sanggunian was convened to study the budget. This gave the chairpersons of all the standing committees (such as health, peace and order, social welfare, public works) the opportunity to directly hear from the various city department heads their corresponding operations and budget justifications.

Seen said this eliminated the redundancy of repeating, in the session proper, the same questions and explanations already made in the committee level.

Discrepancies in the proposed budget were discovered again and again during the hearings and the City Mayor’s Office had to amend the proposed budget several times, Seen said.

He said the non-participation of several department heads from Feb 16 onwards despite due notice made it very difficult to study the budget proposals due to non-transparent funding purposes and the insufficiency of information on the previous and proposed projects, programs and activities of the city....


“If the Sangguniang Panlungsod submits, with blind eyes and deaf ears, the approval of the entire P568 million proposed budget, then Sanggunian members shall be violating Section 1 Article XI of the 1987 constitution which declares that public office is a public trust,” he said.

He said there are only two options in deciding the enactment of the 2011 ctty budget: either we serve the city mayor or we serve the people.

“We choose to serve the people,” he said.


Employees’ welfare ensured

The vice mayor assured city hall employees the budget for personnel services requested was approved in its entirety, with no single centavo slashed.

She said this is in accordance with the Salary Standardization Law, adding that, “We want them to be happy”.

She said the employees would receive their salary increase retroactive.

Also, Fernandez assured employees they would still receive their rice allocation in the supplemental budget the mayor would ask. She clarified that in the approved budget, it was not specifically pointed out by the chief executive the employees’ rice subsidy thus it was not included in the approved budget.

“That is the problem if no specifics are provided,” she said.

Fernandez said the mayor could still ask for supplemental budget and the city council would not hesitate to approve it as long as details are provided on where the amount would be spent.

Fernandez also belied reports that the people would be affected by the approved budget that suffered big cut.

“Which would you prefer, overpriced or correct price? Is it politics if you ask about overprice (of goods earlier purchased by the executive department)?,” she asked.

She said many department had their budgets approved uncut because their department heads were able to justify them.

Fernandez there was a big cut in the mayor’s budget, specifically on donations asked worth P12-million because there were again no specifics provided as to where these would go.