The lumber used to construct the booths for the 2010 Liberation Day celebration will no longer be recycled for this year\u2019s festivities as most of them are termite-infested.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saved all the materials from last year but the termites are very fast. A lot of them are already termite-infested,\u201d Jonas Barcinas, 2011 Liberation Day Committee overall chair, told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Barcinas said the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office staff salvaged the other lumber that can still be used by cutting out the termite-infested parts and using the leftovers to build benches or donate them to schools.<\/p>\n
Because of this, Barcinas said the booths for this year will be just tents. <\/p>\n
According to Barcinas, some 12 vendors have already registered for this year\u2019s Liberation Day celebration, which will be held from June 17 to July 10 at the Garapan Fishing Base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe committee decided that we\u2019re going to have ours [Liberation Day festival] right after the Flame Tree festival,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Barcinas said they considered holding the festival in Koblerville \u201cto move it around\u201d and accommodate more local customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot be stagnant. There\u2019s no such thing as tradition or just holding it here in one venue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Barcinas noted that the main focus of the Liberation Day festival is the local customers since only a few tourists visit the festival grounds. <\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, I didn\u2019t really see much tourists. But still, that\u2019s part of our community\u2019s job. It\u2019s everyone\u2019s responsibility within the CNMI to attract and lure the tourists to come and join us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Barcinas, who also served as overall committee chair last year, said he will strongly support moving the festival to a different venue if he is reappointed as next year\u2019s committee chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anybody is opposed to that, I think they should come in and step in and help us with the event by taking charge and finding us a good venue or area where the entire community can be provided with great services and entertainment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The lumber used to construct the booths for the 2010 Liberation Day celebration will no longer be recycled for this year\u2019s festivities as most of them are termite-infested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}