Stages of Municipal Cadastral Management

Territorial management is a local competence, municipal laws generally attribute this responsibility to local governments. The diversification of municipalities or municipalities, with their different levels of development, territorial dimension, criteria of jurisdiction, topography and management capacity makes the cadastral activity go through different spheres of action.

A. Tax Sphere

It is the stage in which the cadastral management is directly linked to the collection of taxes, and in turn is divided into three levels of action:

1. ID. The priority of this level is geared towards tax collection. In this respect, the existing cadastral information corresponds to a simple list of taxpayers and its most important function is to answer the question Who do I charge?

2. Assessment. In a second level of territorial vision, it seeks to determine the size of the collection of the tax, presuming that it is known who to charge it, the second question arises: How much do I charge ?, what cadastral management intends to respond by providing a value that can be fair . Up to this point there is no geometric information of the plot, and although there may be a cadastral data sheet that additionally reflects data of area, use or boundaries, continues to be uncertain and subjective information. At this stage, the concept known as the "Affidavit," which consists of a particular document, where the taxpayer claims to be acting in good faith in the declaration of his assets.

3. Collection management. In a third level, where the information of the geometry and physical conditions of the plots exists, the valuation criteria can be proportional to their area, then the concept of Valuation or cadastral valuation arises. At this level, the two previous questions have been overcome, the tendency is oriented to answer a third question: How do I charge you ?, responsibility that you should not assume, because it is not your competition.This nascent sphere is usually maintained in many municipalities in a vicious circle of four years, where the cadastral management is summed up in answering three questions, who to charge him, how much to charge him, and how to charge him. But all the action in this respect corresponds to the tax control department, and this is one of the reasons why many municipalities keep cadastral and tax management in a single department.

There is a transversal aspect in this first area that has been the object of many conflicts, and it is the responsibility that the law allows the municipality to grant property titles. In this sense the laws have evolved at a level where the management and availability of information has not been sufficient, this complicates the process in the face of entrenched customs of irregular land tenure, little registration culture and overlap of competencies in the issue of titles by the agrarian bodies and Instances of Property Registry. This aspect has generated a level of complexity to the municipalities, usually is identified with a bad experience in the cadastral management.

B. Sphere of Management

This is another stage overcome by many municipalities, which break the insane processes of transition in local governments, and focuses on being able to separate the cadastral management of the management of taxes. Their linkage exists only to answer the first two questions, to whom to charge and how much to charge. This sphere is also divided into three levels:

4. Upgrade. The cadastre department no longer tries to carry out repetitive surveys on areas it has already built, it strives to keep them updated and to extend to the goal of measuring all its jurisdiction. For this, it must break the traditional procedures of the executor and become a regulator in a task that it shares in concessions with local private entities or civil society.

5. Improved Services. The need arises for the provision of services related to territorial ordering, generally this need must be induced through cyclical processes of updating or ordering, at this time the user of the cadastre perceives the cadastre in a different way to what he had considered before, a municipal tool to collect more taxes.

6. Policy Generation. The municipalities achieve the use of cadastral information, in combination with other territorial information for the implementation of management plans, investment projects, local economic development and the generation of territorial policies that lead to improve the quality of life of citizens. At this level, the integration between municipal government, civil society and private participation is complemented.

This is the process in which municipal strategic plans must be linked to investment projects and community action programs. Under the conception of the administrative processes of Latin America, as the municipalities associate themselves for the better attainment of their objectives of common benefit, the mancomunidades, as representative entities of the involved municipalities, for processes and projects of joint execution pro of better management of the territory.

Faced with the possibility of achieving economies of scale by reducing costs in some shared activities, cadastral management becomes a challenge in the face of an increasing advance of technologies, tools and models of resource management. The opportunity to link a local effort, carried out by the municipalities or mancomunidades becomes extremely important, when there is a national effort to integrate the processes in the territorial management.

There is then a need to standardize methodologies and create exchange tools that facilitate the coordination of national efforts. Does anyone know of good practice experiences that can be used as examples?