MUNICIPAL ORDINANCE
MUNICIPAL TOWN COUNCIL OF SANTA ANA OF COTACACHI

CONSIDERING

THAT, in the 1st Title of the Fundamental Principles. Art. 1: "the Constitution Policy of the Republic of Ecuador establishes that Ecuador is a state of social right, sovereign, unitary, independent, democratic, pluricultural, and multiethnical. Its government is republican, presidential, elective, representative, responsible, alternative, participative, and of decentralized administration."

THAT, in the 3rd Title of the rights, guarantees, and duties; Chapter 4, 5th Section, Art. 52 of the Constitution Policy of the Republic points out, "the state will organize a decentralized national system of integral protection for the childhood and adolescence, and is in charge of assuring the exercise and guarantee of their rights. Its rector organ of national character integrates partially between state and civil society and will be competent for the definition of politics. The public and private institutions will form part of this system. The sectional governments will form local politics, and will dedicate preferential resources for services and programs guided to children and adolescents."

In the case of the Cotacachi canton, the ASSEMBLY OF CANTONAL UNITY represents the cotacachean society, and in this sense, the children and youth participate actively. Their representatives are apart of The Council of Development and Administration.

THAT, in the 3rd Title, Chapter 5 of the Collective Rights, 1st Section of the native and Black, or Afroecuadorian towns, Art. 84, numeral 7 of the Constitution Policy of Ecuador expresses, "to conserve and develop their traditional forms of coexistence, social organization, generation, and exercise of authority."

In the Cotacachi canton the following people coexist: mestizos, native, and black. Since 1996 the realization of the ASSEMBLIES OF CANTONAL UNITY have had as its prominent objective to promote the civic participation, and to urge the organization and planning of the development with identity.

THAT, in the 11th Title of the Territorial Organization and Decentralization, Chapter 1 of the Administrative and Sectional Regime, Art. 225 declares, "The State will impel by means of decentralization and confounding, by the harmonic development of the country, the strengthening of civic participation, the sectional business establishments, and by the distribution of the public revenues of wealth. The central government will transfer functions, attributions, competitions, responsibilities, and resources progressively to the autonomous sectional business establishments or others of regional character. It will confound its administration by delegating attributions to the dependent sectional regime officials."

THAT, in the 11th Title, Chapter 3 of the Autonomous Sectional Government, Art. 237 of the Constitution Policy of the Republic expresses, "The law will establish forms of social control and the bills yield of the values of the autonomous sectional regime."

In such a virtue the ASSEMBLY OF CANTONAL UNITY is constituted as an instance of social control.

THAT, in Chapter 2 of Economic and Social Planning, Art. 255 of the Constitution of the Republic manifests, "... In the organisms of the autonomous sectional regime they will be able to establish departments of planning responsible for the plans of provincial or cantonal development in coordination with the national system."

THAT, in Chapter 4 of the Decentralization and Desconcentration, Art. 34, Competitions and Goals of the Law of State Modernization expresses, "The National Council of State Modernization, NCSM, will coordinate, supervise, and control the execution of the decentralization policies. Its object is the delegation of the political, economic, and administrative power, or the measure of tributary resources of the Central Government to the Sectional Governments. In coordination with the Association of Municipalities of Ecuador, AME, and with the Consortium of Provincial Council, CPC, in that which is pertinent."

THAT, in Chapter 1 Object, Application Limits, Main Purposes, Art. 3 Definitions of the Special Law of Decentralization of the State and Social Participation manifests, "The Decentralization of the State consists on the definite transfer of functions, attributions, responsibilities, and resources; especially financers, materials, and technologies of national and foreign origin, that are holders to the values of the Executive Function towards the Autonomous Sectional Governments, for effects of distributing the resources and the services in agreement with the necessities of the respective territorial districts.
The social participation is the system for which all the social sectors are actively involved in the juridical, political, cultural, and social economic life of the country. With the purpose of improving the conditions of the lives of the Ecuadorian inhabitants. With an eye towards a fairer distribution of the services, public resources, and other effective legal dispositions."

THAT, in the 11th Title, Chap. 3 of the Autonomous Sectional Governments, Art. 228 of the Policy Constitution of the Republic expresses, "... The provincial and cantonal governments will enjoy fully from autonomy, and in use of their legislative ability, they will be able to dictate ordinances, create, modify, and suppress rates and special taxes for improvements."

THAT, in the 1st Title, Chapter 2 OF THE MUNICIPAL GOALS, Art. 12 of the Law of Municipal Regime expresses that it corresponds to the Municipality, fulfilling the goals that are essential for them to satisfy the neighborhood's collective necessities. Especially those derived from the urban coexistence whose attention doesn't concern to other governmental organisms.

The essential goals of the Municipality, in conformity with this law, are the following:

1. To offer the material well-being of the community, and to contribute to the development and protection of the local interests.
2. To plan and urge the physical development of the canton and urban and rural areas.
3. To increase the spirit of nationality, civilism, and fraternity of the associates. To achieve the growing progress and the indissoluble unit of the nation.

THAT, in the 2nd Title of THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT, Chapter 3, Art. 64, numeral 49 of the law of Municipal Regime manifests, "to exercise the other attributions that are confered by law and to dictate the ordinances, agreements, resolutions, and other legislative acts necessary for the government of Municipality."

THAT, it is necessary that the Municipal Town Council of Cotacachi in use of its attributions, institutionalize the initiative of the civil society and organized social sectors of constituting the Assembly of Cantonal Unit through a Municipal Ordinance in agreement with the Political Constitution of the Republic and other effective laws.

IT SOLVES

Art. 1- To send the following Municipal Ordinance that recognizes the statutes that will govern the Cantonal Assembly Unit legally as a space of civic expression to fraternize, to concert, and to plan participatively the future of the Canton. Whose decisions are based on the principles of respect, solidarity, and tolerance to the diversity pluricultural and multiethnical existents, without becoming a simple channel of demands.

Art 2.- To recognize to the COUNCIL OF DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION as the executive instance of the Cantonal Assembly Unit. It will be the one in charge of giving functionality to the decisions of the assembly, and will be constituted for: a President, a Vicepresident, a Secretary, and main board members with their respective substitutes.

Art. 3- To recognize to the INTERSECTOR COMMITTEES as the instance of collective execution for operating the activities, guidelines, and politics defined by the Council of Development and Administration and the Cantonal Assembly.

The Intersector Committees are: Education, Health, Tourism and Production, Environmental Administration and Handling of Natural Resources, and Organization.

Other Committees will be constituted if they are necessary. Each Intersector Committee will name its corresponding directive between its members.

The members of the Council of Development and Administration will form part of the Committees that are designated automatically.

Art. 4- To recognize to the ADVISORY COUNCIL as a consultantship, support, and orientation space to the Cantonal Assembly Unit and the Intersector Committees. It will be constituted by the former Mayors, former Councilmen, and former Presidents of the Council of Development and Administration.

Art. 5- To recognize the COTACACHI CANTON DEVELOPMENT PLAN like a work document which will govern the activities and actions that will be undertaken from the CANTONAL ASSEMBLY and the MUNICIPAL TOWN COUNCIL, with the purpose of impelling the Cantonal Development.

Art. 6- The present ordinance will enter in validity starting from its approval on the part of the Municipal Town Council of Cotacachi.

Given in the Room of Sessions of the Municipal Town Council of Santa Ana of Cotacachi, on the thirty and fisrt day of the month of January of the year 2000.

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THAT the State will impel by means of the decentralization, contemplated in the Art. 225 of the Republic Constitution, the invigoration of the civic participation.

THAT Art. 1 of the state decentralization and social participation law, establishes the social participation in the public administration.

THAT Art. 4 of the special state decentralization law, authorizes the Municipalities to foment and to enlarge the social participation in the public administration as well as to promote the self-management of the community social forces.

THAT the State Decentralization Regulation and social participation law, published in the Official Register -O.R.- Num. 349 of June 18, 2001 conferes to the municipalities the capacity to approve the statute and to inscribe the Neighborhood Commitees.

THAT the governability proposal emitted by the Center of the United Nations for the human establishments requires to change the politic government sections , considering to the civic participation as one of the fundamental axes of this process.

THAT the Unit Cantonal of Assembly is a democratic space of social participation in the Cotacachi canton, legally recognized, and in its organic structural , the Neighborhood Federation of participants in the Intersector Committee of Organization, and
the use of the abilities that conferes to it the law of Municipal Regime in Art. 64 numeral 1 of the Municipality of Cotacachi - Local Government.

IT SENT
The following ORDINANCE TO PROMOTE, TO REGULATE AND TO CONTROL THE NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION AND THE SOCIAL PARTICIPATION IN THE COTACACHI CANTON.

Art. 1. - The Municipality will determine the limit and the environmental action of the neighborhoods of Cotacachi according to the Urban Development Plan, and the approval of the Direction of Works and Public Services and the Urban Department of Planning.

Art. 2. - The Municipal Town council will approve the statutes of the Committees that constitute in the parochial or sectoral environment, as well as the Federation of Neighborhoods of the Cotacachi Canton.

Art. 3. - To constitute a Neighborhood Commitee an application will be required signed by the President and Secretary and a minimum of 25 family bosses. The requirements constatute of numbers of citizenship identification who reside in the neighborhood; accompanying with the following documents:

• Three copies of the neighborhood constitution Act organizational records signed by the assistants, containing the date, place and payroll of the provisional directive.
• Three copies of the statutes project, with the certification of the directive secretary,and of the corresponding dates to two different days in what it was discussed and approved.
• The signatory´s payroll with indication of their domiciliary address and their resident condition, proprietor, tenant, employee or member of the family responsible for the housing, properly certified by the secretary.

Art. 4. In each neighborhood there will be only one Neighborhood Commitee who will construct a census which has registered on it the number of its inhabitants, and instruments that will be modernized permanently which a copy will rest in the Direction of Community Development of the Cotacachi Municipality and in the Assembly of Cantonal Unit.

Art. 5. The Statutes of the Neighborhood Commitees will be elaborated taking in consideration the following limits:

• Name of the neighborhood, sector, parish and canton.
• To reside in the neighborhood for a minimum of six months.
• Goals and objectives of the Committee, among which the main ones will be:
  • The obtaining infrastructure and attention to the necessities of the sector for the collective well-being.
  • The mutual help for the benefit of social services in the community.
  • The planning and execution of the public work in which the neighborhood acts as a complament.
  • To stay vigilant and to collaborate in the execution of the sectional government's public work.
  • The training of the residents to undertake in community economic activities.
  • To foment the execution of the civic responsibilities and their obligations with the Municipality.
  • The diffusion of the rights, effective constitutional, and legal guarantees of the care and defense of the environment.
  • To participate in the processes of decentralization in those that the Municipality and the Assembly of Cantonal Unit intervene. Mainly in those of health, education, environmental administration, production, tourism, organization, employment, housing, gender, generation and in all that implies well-being and social interest.
  • The other ones that elevate the cultural, social, and economic level of the community.

   

• The Neighborhood Assembly and the directive as administration organ and of the committee.
• Work and attributions of each organism and period of the directive, who will last two years in their functions.
• The election form of the directive that will be obligatorily in public processes; in a direct, universal and secret way according to the norms of the Electoral Supreme Tribunal for the pluri-personnel elections and based on the census of inhabitants' registration modernized until the ninety days before the elections.
• Of the sessions, the same ones that will meet in monthly form, having two general Assemblies a year.
• Form and causes of the directive removal.
• Causes and application way of sanctions to the registered inhabitants.
• Causes and ways of breakup and liquidation of the Committee.
• The other dispositions that legal and constitutionally they are valid.

Art. 6. - For the constitution of the Cotacachi's Neighborhood Cantonal Federation or, Parochial or Sectoral adorations, it will fulfill the following requirements:

• An application directed to the Mayor signed by the President and provisional Secretary of the Directive will contain:
  • The payroll of participant Committees with a minimum of five organizations.
  • The certification of the Municipality's Community Development Department about the inscription of the directive of each participant neighborhood.
  • A constituent act signed by two delegates of each committee that will be part of the Neighborhood Commitee directive.
  • Three copies of the projected statutes certified by the provisional Directive Secretary, which having been discussed in two different sessions.

   

• In the Statute, besides containing the dispositions that were applicable according to Art. 5 of this Ordinance, it will include for the Cantonal Federation the following norms:
  • It will be an instant organism to know the conflicts among Parochial and Sectoral Federations with their Community based neighborhoods or of internal character in each Neighborhood or Federation.
  • It will be the one that will direct and control the elective processes of each neighborhood or parochial or sectoral federation, guaranteeing the free democratic participation of the registered inhabitants or of the delegates as it is the case;
  • To present an annual report to the Municipality, to the Assembly of Cantonal Unit of Cotacachi and the National Confederation of Neighborhoods of the Ecuador (CONBADE), about their activities.
  • The legal representative of the Cantonal Federation or his /her delegate will have the rigth for participating with voice and vote in the companies of public services or in the Intersector Committees of the Assembly of Cantonal Unit, and others that were promoted by the Municipality.

Art. 8. - The Director of the Cantonal Federation, will present up to August 31 of every year the plan of works and necessities of each Neighborhood previous consultation of each Neighborhood, Sectoral or Parochial Commitee identifying and prioritizing the works of preference and investments of general character.

Art. 9. - Each Neighborhood Commitee, according to the work dynamics, it will implement political of self-management, to execute programs and projects of social benefit.

TRANSITORY DISPOSITIONS

FIRST. - In execution of the third transitory disposition of the Regulation to the special law of the State Decentralization, the neighborhoods Committees existent to the date, with or without juridical personnel, they must be registered in the Direction of Community and Parochial Development, by means of a sworn in declaration subscribed by all the members of the directive in a form that will be provided by the Municipality or in front of the Notary.

SECOND. - All the Neighborhood Commitees in operation or those that could be formed in the term of six months starting from the expedition of this ordinance, they will request the approval of their statutes to be able to participate in the new conformation of the Cantonal Federation of Neighborhoods of Cotacachi.

THIRD. - The existent Federation of Neighborhoods, will continue working with its current statutes until the Cantonal Federation according to the rules of this Ordinance is constituted or until it concludes the period for which its directive were chosen.
Given in the Room of sessions of the Municipal Town council of Cotacachi, to the three days of the month of June of 2002.

Olga Estrada Saltos
GENERAL SECRETARY

CERTIFICATION: Engineer Patricio Coba Unda and Olga Estrada Saltos, Vice-Mayor and General Secretary of the Municipal Town council of Cotacachi, respectively, they certify that the Ordinance that precedes, was known, discussed and approved in the Ordinary session of date of June 3, 2002.

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MUNICIPALITY OF COTACACHI - LOCAL GOVERNMENT: DIRECTION OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION
PRESS BULLETIN

MUNICIPAL TOWN COUNCIL OF COTACACHI APPROVED THE ORDINANCE CONSERNING DISABILITY

In an Ordinary Session in August 5, 2002; the Municipal Town council of Cotacachi approved the Ordinance conserning disability. The purpose is to establish the norms that will allow equal opportunities for people with a disabilities, to eliminate any discrimination of any type, with the purpose that people with a disability consent to the services that are offered to the citizenship in the Cotacachi canton.

In any event, the Municipality of Cotacachi will implement programs of disability prevention, services, attention, the recovery of health, physical rehabilitation and provision of technical help to people with a disability in medical and administrative units, in coordination with other institutions involved in the topic.

The Municipality of Cotacachi will also give special treatment in all types of municipal procedures, through its windows or offices for the payment of their obligations, corresponding with the municipal officials for execution of this disposition.

It is important to show clearly that this Ordinance had the meticulous study of the Commission of Social Services who presented to the Town council for its approval.

In this respect, Mayor Econ. Auki Tituaña manifested that it is an obligation of the Municipality of Cotacachi - Local Government to develope - concrete actions in people's benefits with a disability. The first step is given with the approval of the ordinance, so that it will allow the realization of a series of actions in the citizens' that require the help and commitment of everyone in this case benefit.

Patricio Toro Moreno
EDUCATION, CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

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The Municipality of Santa Ana of Cotacachi, in an ordinary session of December of 23, 1.997 declared to Cotacachi "Healthy Canton".

Through this ordinance, the Municipality seeks: to reach an appropriate level of health and quality of the population of the Canton, prioritizing of promotion and prevention of health, and to institutionalize and to give continuity to the Intersector Committee of Health.

The municipality declares to Cotacachi, healthy Canton with the purpose of establishing a legal base in order to strengthen a policy of continuous health, which means, that application is guaranteed in the future administrations.

When settling down as municipal ordinance, with the purposes and proposals that this institution has, the quality of life improvement program and health, will continue. The interest besides maintaining the program, is that the community has conscience that the health is one of the most important topics in the Municipality.

On the other hand, the Intersector Committee of Health, through this ordinance, assumes the responsibility of continuing with this objective sustained in a legal base.
This way, the Intersector Committee ratified the Assembly of Cantonal Unit, will define actions that promote the improvement of the health and, for it, according to what says the municipal ordinance, its work will consider as primordial aspects the following ones:

• The universal access of the population to the basic services;
• The justness in the benefit of the services of health;
• The emphasis in the promotion and prevention of the health; and,
• The active population and organized participation in the diagnosis, planning, execution and evaluation of the actions of Health.
  

The declaration of Cotacachi "Healthy Canton", it is fundamental, even more when they know each other and their population's current conditions.

Since then the necessity of establishing an integral concept of health, which means the achievement of an appropriate quality of life, the access to a fair remuneration, housing, education, feeding, public services of quality, appropriate environment, etc. to settle down.

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In this last September 11, 2000, the Municipal Town council of Cotacachi approved the Ecological Ordinance, which was not only created the first Ecological canton in the country and Latin America (and possibly in the world), if not that also it created an earthquake in the national and regional environment that will shake, for many years, fundamental concepts of what is the development and the handling of natural resources.

Concepts that were included so far were considered sacred, and managed by an extremely centralized, corrupt and completely inefficient system. With the declaration of Ecological Canton, the town of Cotacachi has an effective tool to create its own future, based on the respect of the human rights, the aspirations and rights of the communities and harmony with the nature. It is necessary to show clearly the fundamental role that was played by the Assembly of the Cantonal Unit, because it was in the Second Assembly of 1997, when the creation of the Ecological canton was approved.

The Ecological Ordinance, as an innovative administration, contains several momentous aspects, one of them is that which gives another heading for the development of the canton. The other one is that which creates a participatively administration model environmental controlled for the Local Government and communities. A development and administration that takes into account the rights and obligations that we have as inhabitants of the canton in determining the use, the care of our natural resources and to respect the right of living, just as the Constitution of the Republic says, in a free contamination and ecologically balanced atmosphere.

On the other hand and in more practical terms the Ordinance incentivates to conserve and to sustainability manage the natural resources, especially our singular biological diversity. Also, to adopt technologies and clean activities, including the organic agriculture and the ecological tourism. It creates the mechanisms to brake the serious environmental degradation which was suffering and hurts the canton.

Degradation impacts the human health and the cantonal economic development, due to the serious erosion of the lands, the contamination of the water and the air, the wrong kill-plagues use, the pruning of the forests and the burning of moors. Which in turn, impacts the climatic regime and the agriculture and cattle raising directly. It incentivates on the other hand the establishment of clean industries, an understanding of these industries that will use the resources in sustainable form and that they don't contaminate the environment or they impact the health of their workers. It also supports to the community ecological tourism and the creation of community protected areas. Another important aspect of the Ordinances is that it looks toward the future. With an atmosphere in balance and free of contamination, added to a sustainable handling of the natural resources. It is much easier to guarantee the health of the residents of the canton, the future economic and ecological well-being of future cotacachean generations.

As momentous as this is, at the end of the day the Ordinance is just a tool, it would be good for Cotacachi to become a model for the rest of the world in the administration and handling of natural resources and environmental protection, or it can stay as an other tool in the cellar being oxidized and in disuse. The destiny is, and has always been in our hands and in no way just in the hands of the Government Authorities. Let us use this wonderful tool and let us build a future worthy, healthy and, in harmony with the nature.

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