How small towns in Pangasinan fare

Aguilar Town Hall

San Jacinto's public market

Urbiztondo Town Hall

What the towns of San Jacinto, Urbiztondo, and Aguilar have in common? They are classified by the Department of Finance as 3rd Class municipality based on their annual local income.

San Jacinto

San Jacinto, located at the 4th Congressional District of Pangasinan, will have a budget appropriation in fiscal year 2012 of P76 million.
According to her mayor Robert de Vera this amount, that could dwarf San Jacinto’s contemporary towns, is because of the revenues she gets from the multimillion of pesos tobacco excise tax and the business taxes from huge industrial plants that are based there.
De Vera opined that the appropriation for next year could most likely qualify her for the 2nd class town category someday.
The mayor said that for the past years his town received P120 million from the excise tax where the district congressman receives 80 percent of it, and his town and the provincial government divide by themselves pro-rata the remaining 20 percent.
“But all of the amounts from the excise tax from the congressman and the provincial government accrue to my town through projects".
De Vera added that his district congresswoman Gina de Venecia has allocated P11 million as additional fund for his town’s P6 million for the renovation of the municipal public market.
He cited too that Magnolia Dressed Chicken Plant pays his town P7 million of business tax a year. He lamented that RC Cola Plant that pays his town P7 million annually transferred shop to Sta. Barbara town in the 3rd congressional district.
“It was a loss of P7 million a year tax,” de Vera quipped.
But Brgy. Captain Zandro de Guzman said that food producer Monterey would put up its plant in this tobacco and corn producing town anytime from now after its management decided to leave business tax heavy Urdaneta City.
Because of the savings from her income San Jacinto has accumulated for the recent years, De Vera has given each of the municipal ranks & file employee a P30 thousand Christmas bonus plus 13th month pay for each of them—probably the biggest bonus a worker of a local government unit in Pangasinan has received.

Aguilar

Aguilar, located at the 2nd congressional district of Pangasinan, will lose more or less P3 million of the Internal Revenue Allotment from the national government next year.
Her mayor Eduardo Ballesteros said that the IRA dependent town will consequently have a less than P60 million budgets for 2012.
His dilemma now is how to replenish the lost amount to buttress the coffer of the town in the next year’s budget.
The soft spoken mayor said there are no businesses that put shop there as his town continues to depend primordially on the revenue paid by its taxpayers who are mostly relying on agriculture.
A political kibitzer who asked anonymity said that just like the town of Bani, what aggravates the economic conundrum of Aguilar can be blamed on the present set- up of the Sangguniang Bayan (town council) dominated by the progress stalling vice mayor and majority of the councilors who are members of the opposition party.
Ballesteros, the husband of a former long reigning mayor of Aguilar, defeated the wife of the incumbent vice mayor and his predecessor former mayor Ricardo T. Evangelista in the 2010 local poll.

Urbiztondo

If Aguilar suffers political and economic gridlocks because of the anti-progress Council, Urbiztondo blazes her economic agenda as the SB collaborates with Mayor Ernesto Balolong’s endeavor to level up his town.
The mostly Pangasinense speaking town is located at the same district with Aguilar but shares borders with San Carlos City.
According to Mayor Balolong around P3 million of IRA would be slashed on it’s more than P60 million budgets for next year.
Despite of that loss, his town will see the inaugurations of a mall owned by the Dagupan City based CSI Group of Companies on December 20, 2011 and the more than P64 million fully air-conditioned covered gymnacium similar to Dagupan City’s air-conditioned astrodome on December 28, 2011.
"It is the first air conditioned covered gym among towns in Pangasinan," the mayor stressed.
Balolong said that P1.5 million of the P64 million appropriations came from the Priority Development Assistance Fund of the town’s district Rep. Pol Bataoil (MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA).