MURRIETA -- The city is moving steadily forward with plans to initiate foreclosure proceedings on 141 homes because the owners each owe thousands of dollars in delinquent taxes.

The Murrieta City Council authorized city representatives to pursue foreclosure on about 450 homes in late August. Since then, more than 300 of those cases have been resolved by city officials working with residents to arrange a payment plan.

City officials have said they believe a large number of the homes that still have delinquent taxes are owned by banks.

The minimum amount owed is more than $4,000 per house, city officials have said, although they were not able Wednesday to provide a figure for the total amount owed.

The money owed is for numerous facilities districts in the city, the fees for which are included in the homeowners' property tax bills that the county sends out twice a year. The taxes were being collected to pay off debt for bonds that were issued to finance infrastructure improvements, such as building fire stations and parks or installing sewer systems and street lights.

City officials say they are duty-bound to aggressively pursue payment of the back taxes.

The aggressive move to collect the back taxes is a calculated effort to prevent the city's credit rating from suffering. If the city's payments on the bonds are not made and Murrieta's rating suffers, it would translate into steeper interest on bonds for future projects, City Manager Rick Dudley said Wednesday.

In effect, he said, all Murrieta residents would suffer as a result of a relative few who are behind on their tax payments.

"It means that the people in Murrieta who are paying like they're supposed to be paying are subsidizing the nonpayment of these other people," Dudley said. "We have an obligation to aggressively pursue this."

So far, he added, the city's credit rating has not suffered because officials have been able to demonstrate that they're working to recoup the money and become current on the bond payments.

Initially, Murrieta officials sent out letters to all the homeowners who were delinquent. That prompted some to call the city and negotiate a payment plan.

The city's next step in the process, said Deputy City Attorney Bisi Ezeolu, is to conduct a title search of the 141 homes on which taxes are still delinquent to determine who is responsible for the payments.

Once that information is in hand, the city will initiate judicial foreclosure proceedings.

Dudley said the city has no interest in getting into the business of owning homes. The goal, he says, is only to keep up with the bond payments.

A judicial foreclosure, which the city will be pursuing, is different from a trustee foreclosure in that the property owner maintains a 120-day redemption period where the amount due can be paid to stop the proceedings, Ezeolu said.

That's been the case so far with more than 300 of the homes on which the taxes were delinquent.

Once the city authorized the foreclosure proceedings last year, it allowed the county to peel off from the total property tax bill only the amount due to Murrieta. That move enabled the city to begin working to set up payment plans with the homeowners -- or at least the ones they could track down.

Of the remaining delinquent properties, Ezeolu said, city taxes haven't been paid on many of them since fiscal year 2005-06. The majority of those homes are owned by banks, he added.

"Our plan is always to get people to pay," he said. "The foreclosure is what we're doing because we have no other choice at this time because (the city) can't really let the (credit) rating drop."

If the payment is not made and foreclosure is completed, however, the home will be sold and each body with a financial interest in the property will receive a percentage of the sale price, Ezeolu said.

"We give everybody the same information. We don't give any deal that we can't offer to the other homeowners and we try to be fair and equitable," Ezeolu said. "Hopefully by taking efforts now to get people up to speed, there won't be any delinquencies left."

Contact staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or nrodriguez@californian.com.