Tinian Mayor Ramon Dela Cruz said the federal government should help bring down the cost of utilities in the Commonwealth to help the islands\u2019 economic situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very obvious that the CNMI government cannot handle the cost of utilities. It\u2019s beyond our control. Everything is dictated by the price of fossil fuel that we import. I think that\u2019s one area where the U.S. government can assist us,\u201d Dela Cruz told Saipan Tribune at the commemoration ceremony for the 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11 at the Saipan Grand Hotel on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Dela Cruz said the federal government can either subsidize the CNMI\u2019s fuel needs or run a cost-efficient power generation to lessen the burden of the high cost of utilities among consumers, particularly business owners.<\/p>\n
According to Dela Cruz, the high cost of utilities is a major factor in maintaining existing businesses and for entrepreneurs that want to start their companies here.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see people closing shop everyday because the utilities are just too expensive,\u201d said the mayor.<\/p>\n
Dela Cruz noted that for a small community like the CNMI has given \u201cso much in defense of freedom\u201d that the federal government should see the islands \u201cin a better light\u201d now more than ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re defending freedom but our economy is in shambles and I think it\u2019s important that as part of the American nation, something should be done to assist us in bringing our standard of living up a little bit,\u201d added Dela Cruz. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tinian Mayor Ramon Dela Cruz said the federal government should help bring down the cost of utilities in the Commonwealth to help the islands\u2019 economic situation.<\/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-155003","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\/155003","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=155003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}