Lands Commissioner Clarifies Valuation in Controversial Land Purchase

One of the major points of contention surrounding the purchase of the land was the price the government paid. To the untrained eye it may have looked like the government was overpaying for the 15 acres of land. However, yesterday, Lands Commissioner Talbert Bracket clarified that the government ensured it paid a fair price for the land. The owners had valued the properties at 9.3 million while the government’s valuation was 6.2 million. He explained the process of valuing the land and coming up with a counter-proposal suitable for the government and the private landowners.

Talbert Brackets, Commissioner of Lands, Ministry of Natural Resources: “If we look at five or six acres and we use a comparative parcel. We would use that comparative parcel and see the size and compare it with the subject parcel to see the amount of lots that subject parcel would entail. The LUA, the physical planning, the planning authority will have a compliance that you must take away 10% for green area. So when you take away 10% that was done in the valuation. There are road networks which is subtracted. There are surveys that was subtracted. If you look at the process of subdivision, you must have an authenticated plan. Meaning that not me, not the department, but a private land surveyor, let me be exact because you have valuation surveys and many other surveys. I don’t want to go and record for somebody to come at me at that. So I’ll say land surveyor have to survey that parcel of land. When that land surveyor surveys that land that land survey is authenticated, it is checked by the principal surveyor’s office, not the commissioner of land, not conflicting.”

Brackett stated that the ministry did not rely on the landowner’s valuation but used international standards to accurately determine its value. He also noted that it was not out of the norm for the private landowners’ valuation to contrast the one conducted by the government. 

Talbert Brackets, Commissioner of Lands, Ministry of Natural Resources: “I have never seen the valuation from the private valuer that did that valuation. I have done my valuation. I’ve heard 7 million, I’ve heard 9 million, but that was not my interest. I did my valuation over 3.2 and that was at 3.2 and that was what I did. I also want to indicate that Mr. Vasquez had asked a question about, and we had looked at the elevation of the land and it’s over a hundred, it’s about a hundred and thirty-five feet above the ordinary sea level sir. The elevation on the slope, it’s on the slope, it’s not in the slope, it’s on the slope, it’s sloping land. So it’s sloping.”

Brackett added that his team did not locate any other parcel of land in the area that would have been suitable for the hospital’s construction.