Hope Flickers for Alabel's Cityhood
Posted by Ayel | Posted in Blogging | Posted on 19-11-2008
7
FOLLOWING THE Supreme Court’s ruling that declared sixteen cities unconstitutional, Alabel’s dream of becoming a city crumbled to dust.
According to ABS-CBNnews.com, the Supreme Court has voided the laws creating the cities of Batac in Ilocos Norte; Tabuk in Kalinga; Tayabas in Quezon; Baybay in Leyte; Catbalogan in Samar; Borongan in Eastern Samar; Guihulngan in Negros Oriental; Bogo, Naga and Carcar in Cebu; Tandag in Surigao del Sur; Cabadbaran in Agusan del Norte; El Salvador in Misamis Oriental; Mati in Davao Oriental; Bayugan in Agusan del Sur; and, Lamitan in Basilan.
Just recently, Local Government officials of Alabel were quite confident that our municipality’s income and land area would already ensure its cityhood in accordance with the requisites stated in the Local Government Code of the Philippines (RA 7160). What they missed, as did officials of the sixteen cities, was the amendment to Section 450, which is RA 9009.
The ammendment raised the local income requirement from P 20 M to P 100 M for the last two years. The primer produced by the Alabel Cityhood Task Force (ACT), declared that Alabel earns over P 100 M in the last years. However, it includes the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) downloaded from the National Government. What the law refers to as income requirement is locally generated income, excluding the IRA.
Without the IRA, our humble town earns only around P 20 M says Vice-Mayor Salarda in an interview on TV Patrol SoCSKSarGen. That disqualifies our town from becoming a city anytime soon. The only hope our officials are clinging to is the fact that ours is Sarangani’s capital town and the province has no component city yet.
As I see it, it’s a game of IRA. City Mayors are happy that the sixteens cities were reverted back to municipality status because they have fewer co-sharers of their IRA. Each year, the law provides that 23% of the National Governement will be shared among cities. Since there are only fewer cities compared to municipalities, each city will receive bigger IRA than towns.
I don’t know what are the next steps that our local officials here are planning to do. But as I see it, teh law shall prevail. I think we will have to wait until our municipality can quadruple its local income. I wonder when our town could achieve that. Or, will it ever? I hope I don’t sound so pessimistic here. Realistic, maybe.
Your title – Hope Flickers for Alabel’s Cityhood | HomewardBound – caught my eye on the technorati feed page. Tahnks for writing this, I’ve added ariellalisan.orgto my reader, and will look forward to your next post.
[Reply]
Maybe time is not yet ripe for Alabel to become a City…And I hope our wait will not be too long………
Sana magkaroon ng maraming investor sa Alabel para ma met ang income requirement soon.
Officials in the local government I guess should bear more of the responsibilty in inviting more bigtime investors to Alabel… I know this time of worldwide financial prices — it might be too difficult but who knows??? Godwilling……..
[Reply]
Correction: typographical error Instead of prices…..should be CRISIS.
[Reply]
@Ram – Hoping for that, too!
[Reply]
@Ram – It’s okay.
[Reply]
Be positive alabelians………..
[Reply]
ayel Reply:
December 4th, 2008 at 4:47 am
@sydney257 -
It’s the numbers game that is at work. We could only abide by what the decision of the court. what Alabel could do is double its effort to raise its revenues to meet the qualifications.
[Reply]