The Jocotepec municipal government has relocated its principal customer service offices to a new address at Hidalgo 187, situated two and a half blocks south of the central plaza.
The three-story facility houses the municipal treasury and cashier counters where residents pay predial property taxes, water services and other local fees.
Operating hours during January are set for Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Taxpayers will find a guard standing at the entrance to hand out numbered fichas (tickets) to control first-come, first served attention.
Other administrative offices headquartered there as of January 4 include the departments of urban development, planning, public works, land registry, water services, municipal licenses, provisions, government property and compulsory procedures.
The new and spacious Unidad Administrativa was originally built to serve as a boutique hotel, complete with luxuriously equipped bathrooms, fancy tile floors, a rooftop meditation room with a glass pyramid skylight, mural paintings and other frills for high-end lodging.
Jocotepec Mayor Manuel Haro Perez decided to move municipal agencies from a rented building opposite the east side of the plaza as a cost-cutting measure. The price for occupying that location ran to 45,000 pesos per month. The rental contract for the new place sets the monthly fee at 25,500 pesos for 2016, rising to 27,500 pesos through next year and 30,000 pesos in 2018, translating into a half a million pesos in savings over the administration’s three-year term.