CIPC funds: which town council got how much, and which got none

A public argument over funding for a single barrier-free access ramp in Eunos brought a longer-running question back into view: how community improvement money is allocated between town councils, and why one of them keeps receiving none of it.

The figures below come from the annual reports of all sixteen town councils, which list the money under “payment from Citizens’ Consultative Committee” or as a CIPC grant.

The two-year picture

Over the two financial years to March, grants for community improvement projects across the fifteen People’s Action Party town councils totalled $67 million. The Aljunied-Hougang Town Council, run by Workers’ Party MPs, received none of it.

Disbursements through the Community Improvement Projects Committee came to $25 million in the most recent financial year, distributed among the fifteen PAP town councils. The year before, CIPC grants totalled close to $42 million.

Aljunied-Hougang last received CIPC money in 2016, when it was allocated $316,000. Whether any of that sum related to the ramp now in dispute is not stated in the reports.

Across the longer window from 2015 to 2018, the sixteen town councils received a combined $146.3 million from Citizens’ Consultative Committees, according to a tabulation of their financial statements. Financial years close at the end of March, so the annual figures do not align with calendar years.

How the money reaches a town council

Two funding routes exist, and the difference between them is the whole of the argument.

The first is the standard government grant, disbursed directly to every town council on a formula: the number of lifts, the number of HDB flat units, and the mix of flat types in the estate. It is arithmetic. A town council does not apply for it and cannot be refused it.

The second is CIPC funding, and it is not a formula. Money must be sought through the constituency’s Citizens’ Consultative Committee, which submits proposals. The CCC decides what to put forward and when.

That procedural difference is the reason the totals diverge in the way they do.

Who sits on the committees

The advisers to Citizens’ Consultative Committees are appointed, and they are invariably PAP MPs. In wards the party does not hold, the adviser is often the candidate who lost there.

The main CIPC body has likewise been composed of PAP MPs — ten of them — alongside Mr Victor Lye, a former PAP candidate who stood on the losing Aljunied GRC team.

The opposition’s objection over the years has been that a process routed through appointees of one party cannot be neutral between parties, whatever the merits of any individual project. The government’s position has been that grassroots advisers are best placed to explain government policies to residents, a function it does not expect opposition MPs to perform.

Where the money sat, ward by ward

Nee Soon Town Council received the most CIPC funding since 2015, followed by Ang Mo Kio Town Council and Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council. One plausible reason is the density of HDB flats in those estates, which increases both the number of eligible projects and the population they serve.

Aljunied-Hougang received the least.

Its chief, Mr Pritam Singh, told Parliament in 2015 that while Aljunied was in PAP hands before the 2011 election, its town council had received around $12 million in grants through the CCC between 2009 and 2011 — a figure he raised precisely because the ward’s allocation after 2011 looked nothing like it.

What the projects are

CIPC money funds physical improvements in and around estates, and the range of project sizes is wide.

At one end, $445,000 of covered walkways in Sembawang. At the other, $29,000 of landscaping in East Coast-Fengshan. And in between, the barrier-free access ramp in Eunos that became the subject of the online dispute.

The projects are not exotic. They are walkways, ramps, drop-off points, shelters and landscaping — the sort of work whose absence is noticed daily by the people who live with it.

The wider complaint

CIPC allocation is one strand of a longer opposition argument that Citizens’ Consultative Committees have absorbed functions that would otherwise sit with an elected MP. The examples usually cited are the presentation of government bursaries to students by CCC officials rather than by the ward’s member, and decisions about opposition MPs’ access to community facilities.

The government’s standing answer has been the one above: grassroots leaders explain government policy, and that is a function distinct from representing a constituency.

On CIPC specifically, the replies have varied. They have included the point that the scheme permits improvements to areas outside HDB estates, and that community bonding is among its purposes.

In the 2015 budget debate, Senior Minister of State Mohamad Maliki Osman — then Minister of State for National Development — defended the role of grassroots leaders in securing CIPC funds, describing the intent with which the committee was set up.

The 2015 precedent

A related dispute over CIPC money surfaced during the run-up to the 2015 general election. The then-Workers’ Party chief, Mr Low Thia Khiang, made claims about the state of the previously PAP-run Punggol East Town Council’s finances at handover.

The argument turned on a stated deficit of more than $280,000 in the town council’s financial statements at the point the funds were transferred. The PAP disputed the characterisation, pointing to another figure in the same report.

That exchange established the pattern the current one follows: a specific sum, two readings of the same document, and no mechanism for settling which reading is correct.

What reopened it

Mr Pritam Singh returned to the subject on 15 October, complaining about the CCC’s handling of the town council’s proposal that CIPC funds be used to build a ramp on Bedok Reservoir Road. His account was that the proposal had sat without resolution.

The grassroots adviser, Mr Chan, described the complaint as a “red herring” intended to draw attention away from the court proceedings involving Workers’ Party members and the Aljunied-Hougang town council entity.

What the figures can and cannot settle

The annual reports establish the amounts. They show that CIPC funding is substantial, that it is distributed unevenly across town councils, and that one town council has received none of it for two consecutive years after receiving a small amount in 2016 and a much larger flow before 2011.

They do not establish why any individual proposal was approved or declined, because the reports record receipts rather than decisions. The CCC that assesses a proposal does not publish its reasoning, and there is no appeal from it.

That is the gap the argument occupies, and the reports do not close it. What they do is make the pattern visible enough that the argument has to be about the pattern rather than about whether it exists.

What a town council actually pays for

The significance of the gap depends on what town council money does, and that is not obvious from outside.

A town council maintains the common property of the estates in its constituency: lifts, corridors, lighting, drainage, landscaping, refuse collection, the covered walkways between blocks. It levies conservancy and service charges on residents and flat owners to fund that work, and it receives the formula-based government grant on top.

Those two sources cover maintenance — keeping what exists working. They are not designed to fund additions. A new ramp where there was no ramp, a new shelter, an upgraded drop-off point: these are improvements rather than maintenance, and improvements are what CIPC money is for.

That is why the distinction between the formula grant and the committee grant is not a technicality. A town council with the first and without the second can keep its estate functioning but cannot readily add to it. Over several years, the difference is visible on the ground.

The audit question, and why it is separate

Aljunied-Hougang Town Council was also, during this period, the subject of litigation and of repeated findings by the Auditor-General concerning its accounts and its management of funds. Those proceedings are frequently raised in the same breath as the funding question, including in the exchange that prompted this piece.

They are separate matters. The audit findings concern how the town council handled money it had. The CIPC question concerns money it did not receive, disbursed through a body it does not control. A resolution of either would leave the other exactly where it is.

Conflating them is convenient for both sides in different ways, which is a reason to keep them apart.

What would settle it

Very little, on the current arrangements, and that is the durable part of the problem.

The reports establish the amounts but not the decisions. The CCC assesses proposals without publishing its reasoning, there is no appeal, and no body external to the process reviews it. A proposal that is declined and a proposal that is never resolved look identical from outside — both produce no grant and no document.

Publishing proposals received, decisions made and reasons given would convert the argument from one about motive into one about merits. Nothing requires that publication, and nothing in the present dispute is likely to produce it.

Where these figures come from

Every amount above is taken from the published annual reports of the sixteen town councils for the financial years 2015 to 2018, where the money appears as “payment from Citizens’ Consultative Committee” or as a CIPC grant. Financial years close at the end of March. The parliamentary exchanges cited — the 2015 budget debate and Mr Pritam Singh’s 2015 statement on Aljunied’s pre-2011 grants — are in Hansard, the official verbatim record of proceedings published by the Parliament of Singapore.