BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan reminded market building owners who have not yet renewed their final 15-year lease contract with the local government to ensure their continuous operation of their establishments and prevent them from being evicted from their occupied areas after the lapse of the August 27 deadline imposed by the City Treasury Office.
The local chief executive said after the expiration of the 90-day deadline given to the still undetermined number of market building owners who have not yet renewed their contracts, he will order the inventory of those who have renewed their final 15-year lease agreement so that the local government will initiate the appropriate legal proceedings to evict those who continue to defy the prescribed deadline or for them to voluntarily vacate the city-owned lots and remove their structures in the area.
“We already gave the concerned market building owners sufficient leeway for them to renew their lease contracts with the local government because their agreements already expired as of December 31, 2015, thus, it only means that their occupation of the city-owned lots where they built their structures are merely tolerance on the part of city officials, thus, the concerned offices are now exerting the appropriate efforts to convince the building owners to renew their contracts for the last time,” Domogan stressed.
He pointed out the market building owners had already been occupying the city-owned lots for over 45 years now and once they decide to renew their final 15-year agreement with the city, then they will be occupying the lots for more than 6 decades which would mean that they have fully recovered their investments in constructing their buildings over the government lots.
According to him, the decision to give the market building owners the final 15-year contract was based on the negotiations that were done with the building owners themselves after the Commission on Audit (COA) found that the local government has been allegedly remised in maximizing the full potentials of the city properties, thus, the need to bid out the supposed lease of the said lots to interested bidders who could provide the appropriate arrangements that will be beneficial to the city.
Despite the negative findings of the COA, he explained that he worked out the necessary arrangements with the market building owners for them to increase their old rentals of P0.75 per square meter per day to P6 per square meter per day and for them to be given a final 15-year contract for them to continue occupying the lots where their structures were erected and are presently operating.
Under the final 15-year lease contract with the market building owners, the prescribed rentals for the areas that they currently occupy will increase by P2 per square meter per day on the 6th to 10 year and another P1 increase per square meter per day for the 11th to 15th year and that after the lapse of the agreement, all the improvements introduced by the owners will be automatically be the property of the local government without reimbursing to the owners their expenses for the construction of the said structures.
By Dexter . See