Saipan Mayor Donald G. Flores expressed concern over a local appropriations bill that does not contain any funding for the 2012 Liberation Day or Fourth of July festivities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout funding for this important recurring, annual event, we do not know how to fund it or where to find the funds for it,\u201d Flores said in a Feb. 2 letter to Rep. Ramon A. Tebuteb (R-Saipan).<\/p>\n
Flores urged Tebuteb, chairman of the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation, to consider providing appropriation to cover expenses for the biggest community event in the CNMI by revising House Local Bill 17-68.<\/p>\n
The Fourth of July celebration\u2019s expenses totaled $69,281.51 in 2011, exceeding the budget by over $24,000.<\/p>\n
The biggest expense, $12,960, was for the rental of tents for the various food and non-food vendor booths.<\/p>\n
Other major expenses were emcee and entertainment for $8,774, stage and sound system at $7,900, raffle prizes at $6,000, and meal coupons at $5,250.<\/p>\n
The Saipan delegation had allocated $45,000 for the Fourth of July festivities. <\/p>\n
To cover the rest of the expenses, the Mayor\u2019s Office used concession booth fees in the amount of $13,940, ticket sales of Liberation Queen candidates at $11,850, balance from the previous Liberation Day festivities at $2,188.87, proceeds from Liberation rides at $1,168.35, donations, at $550, and raffle ticket sales at $426.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf and when funds are appropriated and made available to the Office of the Mayor of Saipan for this year\u2019s July Fourth celebration, we will take necessary steps to ensure that the total expenditures do not exceed that of last year\u2019s,\u201d promised Flores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan Mayor Donald G. Flores expressed concern over a local appropriations bill that does not contain any funding for the 2012 Liberation Day or Fourth of July festivities.<\/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-158884","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\/158884","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=158884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}