The Northern Marianas Housing Corp. is now working with the Council on Developmental Disabilities and the Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems, Inc. to make the Valley Inn property compliant with standards for accessible design as required by the American Disabilities Act.<\/p>\n
The Valley Inn is a 17-unit apartment rental property in As Lito right across the former Happy Market, which the corporation bought in July, along with the private lot in Koblerville where a proposed junior high school will be built.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan for the Valley Inn would be to house medical referral patients from the islands of Rota and Tinian,\u201d Jacob Mu\u00f1a, NMHC planning administrative assistant, told Saipan Tribune. <\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a disclosed that the ADA compliance was \u201cthe utmost priority\u201d brought up during a meeting with representatives from the Tinian and Rota guest houses, which are used to accommodate medical referral patients from both neighboring islands.<\/p>\n
Based on an initial room inspection, Mu\u00f1a said the units at Valley Inn cannot accommodate wheelchairs and the building itself does not have a ramp entrance.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a, during Thursday\u2019s board meeting, said they will start working on the issue by scheduling inspections within the week for ADA compliance.<\/p>\n
But Mu\u00f1a noted that the corporation can only do up to 20 percent rehabilitation work at Valley Inn to make it ADA-compliant, so they are looking at having one ADA room each for the east and west sides of the building.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a also revealed at the meeting that the management agreement contract for Valley Inn ended Thursday. While his recommendation is to extend it until the end of the month, Mu\u00f1a said he would consult with corporate director Joshua Sasamoto if the corporation would extend the contract.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a reported to the board that 10 tenants have already been relocated since the corporation acquired the property in July. <\/p>\n
Two tenants, however, have already asked that they be allowed to extend their stay at Valley Inn. Mu\u00f1a said one tenant \u201casked the governor\u201d to extend her stay until Nov. 15, which has already been approved by Sasamoto. Another tenant, who\u2019s requesting to extend her stay until Nov. 30, already told the Valley Inn resident manager that he will seek help from the governor about his request.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the governor needs to be bothered by this,\u201d said board chair Marcie Tomokane, who instructed Mu\u00f1a to have all tenant inquiries and requests forwarded to NMHC.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a said payment of tenants who extended their stay at Valley Inn are made to NMHC. \u201cAny money that we incur with Valley Inn will go to program income,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Given the usage of Valley Inn for medical referral patients, Mu\u00f1a said they are trying to meet with Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta to discuss the corporation\u2019s roles and responsibilities in managing the property.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, we can\u2019t get a meeting scheduled because everything, according to Dr. [Jon Joyner], is on hold at CHC,\u201d Mu\u00f1a informed the board.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a is also poised to recommend to the corporation that two of the units at Valley Inn\u2014one two-bedroom unit and one three-bedroom unit\u2014be allocated to visiting specialists since it already has the amenities that they need during their stay on island.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of having the government pay money to the hotels, at least they could stay here because it\u2019s a full facility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Northern Marianas Housing Corp. is now working with the Council on Developmental Disabilities and the Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems, Inc. to make the Valley Inn property compliant with standards for accessible design as required by the American Disabilities Act.<\/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-156463","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\/156463","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=156463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}