• CHERYL G. CRUZ
The Bacolod City government will purchase about 25 hectares of land in Barangay Felisa at P128.6 million, or P500 per square meter, for the expansion of the City’s sanitary landfill site.
The Sangguniang Panlungsod already authorized Mayor Alfredo Benitez to sign the Deed of Absolute Sale for the 257,216 square meters of real properties between the City of Bacolod and Willy Au, Jan Nico Espadero Yap, Jose Horace Chavez Yap, Kay Marie Espadero Yap, Jose Antonio Alonte Jr., Martin Jose Alonte, and Anton Miguel Alonte, represented by their attorney-in-fact, Willy Au, during its session Oct. 31.
Under the proposed Deed of Sale, first payment equivalent to 50 percent, or P64 million, shall be made upon the execution of the contract, and the second and final payment once the title is transferred in the name of the City of Bacolod.
The approval of the resolution for Benitez to sign the deed is subject to several colatilla prior to ratification.
These include a certificate of final or full payment for the parcels of land “subdivided and awarded to agrarian reform beneficiaries in April 2018”, but “later transferred to Willy Au, et al., through the issuance of a new Transfer Certificate of Title (TCT)”, as per an evaluation report of the City Engineer’s Office.
The Land Banking Committee, in Resolution 16-2023 in September, also noted that “absence of (the properties) access to existing service road (that) must be considered”, and the need for the offeror to submit a certificate of full payment from Landbank, release of mortgage from Landbank annotated in the title, electronic Certificate Authorizing Registration issued by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and a clearance from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
City Legal Officer, Atty. Romeo Carlos Ting Jr., in Legal Opinion 23-241 dated Oct. 23, 2023, noted that OIC-Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer II, Teresita Mabunay, of the DAR Negros Occidental I, said in her letter Oct. 12 “that the acquisition of an agricultural property by the City is no longer subject to the provisions and requirements of DAR Administrative Order (AO) 4, series of 2021”.
AO 4 states the revised rules and procedures governing the issuance of DAR clearance on land transactions involving agricultural lands.
Mabunay told Ting that Section 4 of Republic Act 9700, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms, provides that local government units “acquiring private agricultural lands by expropriation or other modes of acquisition to be used for actual, direct and exclusive public purposes…shall not be subject to the five-hectare retention limit”.
As such, the five-hectare aggregate landownership ceiling under the law “is inapplicable in the case of the City Government of Bacolod”, Mabunay added. | CGC
