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[av_heading heading=’ P174M add’l budget OK’d ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY MAE SINGUAY
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BACOLOD City – The Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) has approved a supplemental budget worth P174.2 million. The amount will be used for:
* personal services (Mayor’s Office) – P1.5 million
* maintenance and other operating expenses, or MOOE (Mayor’s Office) – electricity, P14 million; donation, P4.3 million; other professional services, P2 million; other MOOE, P2 million
* general services (various offices) – P116.1 million
* general services (SP) – P2.4 million
* furniture and fixtures (Bacolod City College) – P500,000
* land improvement (Bacolod Housing Authority) – P400,000
* 5-percent City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) fund – P5 million
* terminal leave benefits – P500,000
* back salaries and wages – P2.5 million
* City Anti-Drug Abuse Council – P1 million
* Tourism Development Fund – P2 million
* environmental/sanitary services/solid waste program (construction of sanitary landfill) – P20 million
The SP approved the appropriation ordinance for the P174.2-million budget on Wednesday.
Mayor Evelio Leonardia requested for the supplemental budget.
He suggested sourcing it from operating surplus (P20 million); underestimated income for 2017 (P100 million); 5-percent unutilized balance of CDRRMO fund in 2011 (P8.9 million); unutilized accumulated cost of bids in 2016 and prior years (P1.2 million); savings from unfilled vacant positions from January to June 2017 (P26.8 million); and reversion/realignment (P17.2 million).
Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran assured the two-hour deliberation on the supplemental budget was “thorough.”
Familiaran said it lasted that long due to the item on the appropriation for the sanitary landfill. The rest of the items had no objection.
Jesus Claudio Puentevella, one of the two councilors who objected to the passage of the appropriation ordinance (the other was Ricardo Tan), believes there was not enough time to study the request, which Leonardia made just this Monday.
Puentevella also argued that the city cannot build an additional cell at the sanitary landfill, which lacks a land title.
But Familiaran said City Legal Officer Joselito Bayatan explained that the court has dismissed the ejectment case the Lopez family, who formerly owned the property where the landfill was put up, filed against city hall.
The city government is not yet fully entitled to the property pending an appeal before the Commission on Audit, which found that the landfill property it bought from the Lopez family was “overpriced.”/PN
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