Close to ₡10 million ($20,000) in line item allocations of the regular budget of the Republic for 2013 and 2014 have been earmarked for the districts of Samara and Nosara.
In Samara’s case, for 2013 the district received some ₡5 million ($10,000). Those funds are being invested in improvements to the elementary school in Samara; work is already underway. Meanwhile, the budget for 2014 has been approved in the amount of ₡4,685,579 ($9,370).
According to Bonifacio Diaz, Samara’s syndic, “We used the 2013 budget for improvements to Samara’s elementary school. We installed new roofing material in all the rooms and repaired the miniature soccer field. We will invest the 2014 budget in a project to enlarge the soccer field in the community of Chinampas to make it a regulation-sized field, as required by the Costa Rican Institute of Sports and Recreation (ICODER – Instituto Costarricense del Deporte y la Recreación). For that, we have already developed the proposal, which we will be presenting to the Municipal Council to be sent to the Comptroller General of the Republic for its approval.”
The approved amounts were the same for the district of Nosara as those for Samara. For 2013, the budget ($10,000) was spent on the construction of a meeting hall at the Bocas de Nosara high school, which is still in progress, according to Marco Avila, Nosara’s syndic. “We are investing in a small hall at the Bocas de Nosara high school; they already have the materials to begin next week (the last week in May).The 2014 budget ($9,370) will be spent on the purchase of furniture and musical instruments for the SINEM school in Nosara,” Avila indicated.
The budget line items stem from a rule established by the Legislative Assembly in 1998, known as the “Law of Line Items in the National Budget” (law 7775). Funds are granted to municipalities according to the number of residents, geographical size and poverty rate in each canton. The resources should be distributed by the municipalities to their respective districts according to the same criteria.
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