The Office of the Parañaque City Mayor, circulated a Memorandum of City Administrator Noli R. Aldip entitled “Unauthorized Collection of Fees by Homeowners”, enjoining “homeowners and the public to report any collection of fees not authorized by law to the proper authorities in order that appropriate criminal charge could be filed.”
Atty. Veny Cruz writes in reaction to this Memo (slightly edited):
The Memo has driven me to disgust and near dispair. It shows not only the ignorance of the law, but total ignorance of legislative processes.
It relies on a Committee Report of the House of Representatives several Congresses ago. To the uninitiated, Congress’ only power is to legislate. Enact laws, that is. Committee hearings are only in aid of legislation. They can compel witnesses yes, but otherwise there is nothing to the hearings, only to find out if there is need of legislation.
That Committee Report was never reported out on the floor of that Congress and never went farther than that. The thing is when the term of that Congress expired, that report died with it. In practice, if somebody wanted it seriously to become a law, it should have been re-filed. It never was.
In any case, just so the public may know, that report was occasioned by the noisy complaint of a congressman whose commercial vehicle was charged entry fees. You know how these blathering Congressmen are. He has been quiet after that. I went to the hearings myself.
Finally, the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) which implements Presidential Decree 957 has put it in its Rules on the Registration and Supervision of Homeowners Associations – that homeowners associations can indeed charge tolls, fees for the use of its roads for as long as the association is the one maintaining it and the same are not turned over to the local government concerned.
Which is exactly the case in BF Homes.
As to the matter of consent of all the homeowners, the fees we charge comply with that. Remember that BF Homes is all of 765 has; about 12,000 homeowners, over 64,000 actual residents. How in heaven’s name can you get a physical majority of that for every regulation we make? That is why, in our administrative structure, United BF Homeowners’ Associations, Inc. (UBFHAI) is divided into 15 sectors, each sector composed of homeowners associations. The duly elected sectoral chairman automatically sits as directors of UBFHAI and it is they, the Board that passes the resolutions on the fees, etc. The local presidents/homeowners are accordingly informed of this. This system has been in place for all of 17 years and officially sanctioned by the HLURB. It is by the way, the only one of its kind in the country, but yes, officially recognized.
But I guess, all these are beyond the comprehension of the city administrator and the one he serves. His intelligent understanding is also beyond our concern. We cannot help him out of it except by the letters we send. Read my lips.
The question of fees raised by the city is actually the same question raised by the noisy group of businessmen who have the mayor's ear since time immemorial, including a certain attorney who by the way was the one assiduously following up his informer's fee in the garnishment of UBFHAI funds. They have filed cases in the Regional Trial Court of Parañaque, intervened in the Court of Appeals in our nullification case of the zoning ordinance and when the Parañaque case was dismissed, they went to the HLURB, which also dismissed it on grounds of forum shopping. Now that they have nowhere to go, they go to the mayor's office, but that is a dead end. Just so you see the inanity of all these. The mayor and his administrator are not aware of what they did in the past and are acting on their say so. Let them all stew in their own juices.
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