Wednesday, June 04, 2008 City pushed on P20.3M lot debt By Linette C. Ramos Sun.Star Staff Reporter
FIVE years after the court seized P9 milion from the Cebu City Government as payment for an expropriated property, a court sheriff is now ordering the City to pay the lot owner’s heirs the balance of P14.1 million and P6.2 million in interest.
Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 9 Sheriff Antonio Bellones also noted that the city officials did not extend courtesy to the court when they ignored the first notice demanding payment that they sent last Feb. 8.
Bellones gave the City only until last March 29 to pay the heirs of Matilde S. Palicte the full amount of P20.3 million, representing the unpaid balance and interest for the lot purchase.
“In view of the undue obstinacy demonstrated by the concerned officials of the City of Cebu in complying with the lawful order of the court, final demand is now made for the City to pay within five working days from your receipt of this notice the entire amount of P14,093,335, plus interest,” the letter read.
If the City cannot pay in cash, the sheriff gave city officials the option “to choose from any of its properties that it may prefer to be levied upon for the satisfaction of the money judgment.”
The final demand for payment was issued after the City failed to appropriate the amount even after the court’s decision favoring the Palictes became final and executory last Aug. 29, 2007.
Negotiating
As of yesterday, City Hall officials were still negotiating with the lawyers of the Palicte heirs on the terms of payment.
City Administrator Francisco Fernandez said they have no choice but to pay the full amount soon, lest the amount balloons further because of the 12 percent interest per year.
The City received the final demand for payment last March 28.
“We have to pay. We have no choice but to pay them because we’re ordered by the court to do so. If we delay this, the interest will pile up and we will have to pay more,”
he told Sun.Star Cebu.
The 5,295-square-meter Palicte property in Barangay Capitol Site was expropriated by the City in 2001 for its on-site development project for the urban poor families occupying the lot.
The total purchase price of the expropriated lot is P23,782,500, or P4,500 per square meter, as set by the court’s appraisal committee.
P9M seized
A partial payment of P725,881 was made in May 2002. When the City failed to pay the balance in full, the court issued a garnishment order.
A total of P8,963,284 was seized from the City’s bank account in May 2003.
No other payment was made since 2003, so that the balance of P14,093,335 ballooned to P20,307,542.80 because of interest payments the Palicte heirs are collecting.
The sheriff approved to charge the City an interest rate of six percent per year from December 2001 to August 2007, and increased it to 12 percent a year from August 2007 to March 2008.
Fernandez said the City stopped paying for the lot because it did not want to pursue the expropriation proceedings.
“We filed an expropriation case for the lot in 2001 but had some problems with the very high price set by the court. So we wanted to back out because the occupants could not afford the lot, but the court did not allow us back out,” he said.
No answer
“Right now, we are still negotiating with the property owners and we’re talking to their two lawyers to negotiate on the terms of payment,” he continued.
In the final demand for payment addressed to Mayor Tomas Osmeña, Sheriff Bellones reminded the city officials of their failure to respond to the previous demand for payment.
“More than a month from your receipt of the said court processes, your office and other offices of the City that were given copies of the notice did not even bother to extend courtesy to the court that issued the said writ by sending a reply to the said demand,” he said in the notice dated March 24.
