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1st EPISODE : THE DEAD-END OF CORTES

Road transfer
In the last years of the last century (1990 – 1999), Cortes decided to transfer the roads to the Municipality of Altea. And “What you see is what you get”: no paving and no sewerage!
The Municipality obtained the land for these roads for FREE.

Chance lost on private management
Had Cortes transferred the roads to an Owners’ Association, this association would have required participation for all owners.
After all, without Membership you have no access to your home.

Barrier
The association could also have placed a barrier at the entrance to the Galera de Las Palmeras.

Trucks that are too heavy and unauthorized persons cannot then drive onto the Galera unnoticed.
Asphalting
The roads and paths transferred by Cortes were not paved. They were gravel-based paths and roads.
The Municipality wanted the roads – now that they were public roads – to be asphalted. No sooner said than done.

Account to the owners
The fact that this was not the case was seen as “overdue maintenance” by project developer Cortes and so the owners were confronted with an invoice for every meter of asphalt that was laid along their site.

The warranty period for an asphalt road is 20 years
The average lifespan of an asphalt road is 15 years.
If there are two lanes in each direction, the left lane will last 5 to 7 years longer.
So if there is a road that runs through a hamlet, it can be expected that this road can last 20 years.
Informationj provided by GOOGLE.
A road needs to be replaced when cracks appear here and there.
These cracks ultimately lead to the release of stones, also known as fraying.
The asphalt road of the Galera was therefore already “written off” 5 years ago.

Poor debtor management from the Municipality
Many owners never paid this bill. Our letter writer received a reminder from the Municipality of Altea in 2004 in the name of the first owner.
He had sold his house to a project developer in 1998.
And he sold the house again to our letter writer.
He had to pay thousands of euros to the municipality because previous owners had never paid their bills.

Lameness!
Your reporter was looking for addresses of people who were not yet members of the association and came across a list on the internet with names and addresses of people who had not yet paid their asphalt bill.
This list was on a non-secure website of the municipality of Altea and per home it looked as follows:

X2568865H       JONES BEDSTER CAROLINE ANN 2005/99 CUOTAS URB. GALERA
PALM                PUPUT-GALERA PALM 88 BUZ 11 03590 ALTEA €1126.39

X5231593J        THORNTON JONATHAN JAMES 2005/182 CUOTAS URB. GALERA
PALM                 CAPSOT-GALERA PALM 30 BUZ 39 03590 ALTEA €2405.82

There were dozens of claims on this list, e.g. the asphalt.
Schrijver has warned many owners that the municipality had registered an interest-bearing debt elsewhere with the provincial administration. Most accounts were in the name of the previous owner. And so the letter writer has had at least 45,000 euros in overdue invoices paid to the Municipality of Altea.
However, the Municipality does not care who the debt is in the name of. The balance is interest-bearing and therefore a wonderful investment.

Whats in the barrel does not sour
The asphalt had been laid and someday a future owner will have to pay the bill.
The debt will probably be deposited with third parties to cover loans and the Municipality sees its task as completed. And… what civil servant wants to collect bills from people who don’t even know that an account is open!
After all, then you will only meet angry residents!

To be continued in : EPISODE TWO