Elusive land title finally found 2 km from city hall

CEBU CITY—The title to the land on which this city’s main offices stand has been lying right under the noses of city and provincial officials.

The search for the title was prompted by reports that the city hall might be squatting on the piece of property it was built just as the city government was enforcing a campaign to remove illegal settlements.

Rolando Ardosa, head of the Cebu City Government Services Office, said on Wednesday that the title has been with the provincial registry of deeds all along.

The registry holds office at the Cebu provincial capitol.

The title was under the name of the “Government of the City of Cebu.”

The property was first registered under the name of the municipality of Cebu with the original certificate of title RO-644-0-464 issue on Feb. 5, 1918.

But the title was canceled and Transfer Certificate of Title No. 8837 was issued for the land by Martina Arnoco, of the Registry of Deeds, on Sept. 16, 1952. Cebu City became a chartered city on Feb. 24, 1937.

Ardosa said officials earlier thought that the land did not have a title because there was no record at the Cebu City Assessor’s Office.

He said when he came to office in July last year, he had asked his men to look for the title “but they just couldn’t find it.”

He said he was at a loss over why the Cebu City Assessor’s Office did not have a record of the title.

The failure to locate the title came about when Ardosa’s office was conducting an inventory of the city’s landholdings. It was during the inventory that officials realized that the city government didn’t have a copy of the title to the land on which the city hall sits.

Copies of tax declarations showing the city government’s real property tax payments for the city hall site were the only documents that Ardosa’s office saw.

Ardosa said he didn’t have a clue where the title was until he and his staff checked with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. They next proceeded to the provincial Registry of Deeds where the title is being kept all these years.