RIGHT before giving the green light for the biggest annual budget for 2017, some City Councilors Monday, December 19, said the P4.5-billion budget will face challenges and will test how the city chief executive will manage priority projects.
Cagayan de Oro City Councilor Edna Dahino, chair of the committee on finance, said she, too, has hesitated in supporting the budget but after scrutinizing it, she said she realized the city needs as much as it can get.
Dahino said during the deliberations, the Roads and Traffic Administration were made to come up with a new traffic management plan to justify their proposed amount of P90,471,711.
The new traffic plan includes an expansion of truck ban from only two hours to 14 hours, as well as the establishment of new road networks.
The City Local Environment and Natural Resources Office (Clenro) also proposed an amount of P53,149,402 for 2017.
Clenro meanwhile gears for the transfer of the sanitary landfill from Zayas, Barangay Carmen to an engineered sanitary landill in Barangay Pagalungan, a 25-hectare area for the city’s garbage.
City Councilor Eric Salcedo said the approval of the budget should address immediately the traffic and garbage woes, which he said are the two major problems of the city.
While Councilor Romeo Calizo and Lordan Suan both assured they will be watchful on how the city spends the money and not allow it to be put to “unscrupulous pockets.”
The P4.5-billion annual 2017 budget, which is said to the biggest annual budget under the Moreno administration, was approved by the City Council Monday, with four councilors who voted against, and with one abstention.
In 2014, the proposed budget was P2.64 billion but only P2.31 billion was approved. The succeeding year also showed a P1.72 billion slash with only P3.08 billion approved from the P3.8 billion proposal.
A P4.8-billion budget for 2016 was also proposed but only P2.4-billion budget was approved by the previous City Council.