Dagupan City Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, the general campaign manager of the administration’s Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats in the city, showed local media some documents and list of projects that the P143 million cash savings at the city coffer at the end of the term of his father, mayoralty candidate Alipio Fernandez, Jr., funded when he stepped out of office in 2001.

The Lim administration had earlier issued a press release quoting City Administrator Rafael Baraan denying the ‘savings’ claim of Al Fernandez, who served as Dagupan mayor from 1992-2001.

Baraan later reversed himself and acknowledged the existence of the surplus and savings left by the Fernandez administration in 2001.

The vice mayor defended the elder Fernandez’s performance by showing copies of appropriation ordinances enacted by the city council that reverted the savings to the general fund to finance various projects of the administration of Mayor Benjamin Lim.

Saying that the documents speak for themselves, Fernandez accused the Lim camp of resorting to black propaganda to discredit his father and to boost the candidacy of the incumbent mayor’s son, Brian, who is running under the opposition PDP-Laban party.

“There was P143 million savings as well as the cash surplus from the 2001 budget,” said Fernandez, adding that Lim began his administration with the city “awash with cash, thanks to his predecessor.”

Among the projects funded by the savings was the controversial P16 million worth 30-hectare lot in barangay Awai, purportedly as the site for a sanitary landfill.

The vice mayor also pointed to the “planning and visioning seminar” hosted by Lim at Clark in Pampanga, costing P1 million, is one of the first undertakings funded from the savings.

There was also the expensive beautification project with an initial P4.5 million appropriation, then boosted with another P1.8 million.

“Practically, all the projects that one can see in Dagupan were funded by the savings left by the Fernandez administration although implemented by the current administration,” Fernandez said.

The vice mayor also pointed out that though the city government had increased its tax collections by more than P100 million as compared to the Fernandez administration owing to higher taxes imposed under a city ordinance, most of the income are going to debt-servicing and electric consumption.

Fernandez said that based on records of the city government, the city’s debt-servicing totals P72 million yearly while it is paying Dagupan Electric Corporation from P38 to P42 million yearly, much higher than the average P12 to P14 million billing incurred by the Fernandez administration.

He said the taxpayers of Dagupan are now assuming the burden of paying the yearly amortization to the more than P300 million debts obtained by the city as Malimgas Market, one of Lim’s major projects that failed to realize its target revenues.

The loans were secured by the city for the construction of the new Malimgas Market and for the purchase of a dredging machine.

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