Chamorro Land Trust Commission or CLTC is now in hot water and being questioned following the oversight hearing that was held last October 16, 2015 by Senator Thomas Ada. The Senator’s agenda is to ask the CLTC about public property leases that they have recently accommodated. It has raised more queries that led to further investigation putting pressure on CLTC about the huge land property near Lajuna and the Guam International Country Club golf course.
The first issue that was pointed out in the hearing was the proposed lease of 400 acres of CLTC property close to Lajuna point in Yigo that was leased to an international privately owned construction company named The Smithbridge Group Inc. The construction company has been reportedly quarrying the publicly owned land for years under the nose of the Chamorro Land Trust Commission.
Senator Ada said in a new report that he wants to know how the lease was announced since the CLTC is not authorized to issue any leases until such that the rules and regulations have been adopted by the legislature since the commercial terms of CLTC was voted out by legislature before.
Another subject matter discussed by Senator Ada is the lease of Guam International Country Club golf course that was recently renewed for another 25 years despite of major known issues regarding the contract of lease between the lessor (CLTC) and the lessee.
The lease of the land was first granted during the 1980’s with the same lease rate and was renewed recently with the same rent amount and not the current land value.
Ada is questions why despite of unpaid leases and late payment which is prohibited and included in the terms of lease, the contract was renewed by the commission.
“At one point the arrears went up as high as $800,000 as of the end of the lease term the information that we have is there was still about $74,000 in arrears in rental payment and about $52,000 in arrears and tax payments that are due,” said Senator Ada during in an interview by local media before the oversight hearing.
It was also later that they found out that the problem is that it’s not even clear exactly who the lease holder is and who the lease holder should be, which raised the question if there is money involved with the anomaly.
“We had to ask the question who is the tenant now because the signatures on the documents are very different so if in fact there was a sale or a change or an assignment of the lease, the lease is very clear that would require the approval of the governor and the legislature and I’m certainly not aware and so we requested the documentation to find out if in fact there’s been a change of hands,” reports another daily.
It was also said during the hearing, that the golf course was supposed to be monitoring wells use to test the water safety and ensure that their fertilizers are not contaminating the northern aquifer of which they haven’t provided any water reports yet.
Ada assured that he will dig deep into the matter./The Junction News Team
