Behind Urdaneta City’s phenomenal rise to stardom in governance is a tested and proven public official who believes that adoption of full transparency and accountability as a policy is the key to good governance.

 When informed of the Commission on Audit’s findings in 2005, City Mayor Amadeo Perez Jr. was both surprised and not too surprised.

“I don’t even know that we are number one as far as the finances are concerned among cities,” Mayor Perez gushed when told  about COA’s findings but expressed confidence that COA would find his city’s finances to be healthy and stable. 

Perez said Urdaneta made a fantastic recovery of its finances even if the city had a maturing loan of more than P400 million in 2001 obtained by the previous administration.
 

Perez mainly attributed the financial success to sound financial management and judicious spending.

He said the key was full transparency on the city government’s expenditures.

He had asked COA to regularly conduct a surprise cash count among the city’s collection staff to see to it that the money due the city is properly accounted for.

The mayor said he also personally monitors the daily collection of taxes by the collection officers, and said this partly contributed to the increase in the tax revenues of the city. 

“I was very careful in the expenditures of city funds in as much as when I assumed office in 2001, the city was heavily indebted,” Mayor Perez said, further explaining the reason for Urdaneta’s financial success.

He said stabilizing the finances of the city succeeded only through the adoption of a strict belt-tightening program.

“Starting 2004, we always had savings and the least was P20 million and this went up to P40 million last year,” he said.

He said the city raised P75 million for the construction of the first phase of the public market and borrowed only P200 million two months ago for the construction of the second phase of the market.

Only P170 million of that was set aside to finance the second phase of the public market as the P30 million was used by the city to pay its remaining loan of P30 million obtained by the previous city administration for the aborted construction of a city government-owned mall.

 “President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Congressman Mark Cojuangco helped complete the construction of the first phase of the public market,” he pointed out.  

       Perez said the plan to construct a mall was totally shelved because he believes the government has no business running and operating malls.

      “We’ll just leave this mall business with the private sector. We do not want to compete with them”, he declared.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments