Zoning Board chair Diego Blanco is urging the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation to adopt the 2012 Saipan Zoning Law without any additional floor amendments.<\/p>\n
Blanco, in a Feb. 23 letter to delegation chair Rep. Ramon A. Tebuteb (R-Saipan) about House Local Bill 17-26, said that the Zoning board is \u201cstrongly in favor\u201d of amending the Saipan Zoning Law of 2008 to make it \u201cmore workable\u201d for the island.<\/p>\n
However, Blanco said they \u201ccannot endorse the haphazard and destructive process of zoning\u201d by adopting the floor amendments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel that the additional floor amendments would rezone much of the island of Saipan without sufficient consideration of the public\u2019s concerns or the principles of zoning,\u201d Blanco said.<\/p>\n
He reminded Tebuteb and the delegation that the Zoning board and office conducted about nine hearings in 2011 in addition to the \u201cmany\u201d public hearings from 2009 to 2010 \u201cat the request of the Legislature on a proposed amendment that was substantially similar to the current floor amendments to the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Zoning board and office, Blanco said, ended their efforts to gather public comments on June 30, 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt found that, generally, public reaction to rezoning most of the paved roads as \u201cmixed commercial\u201d was highly unfavorable and that public turnout for the hearing on this issue was significant,\u201d said Blanco.<\/p>\n
On July 7, 2011, the Zoning board unanimously voted to recommend to the delegation the disapproval of the wholesale rezoning of paved roads to mixed commercial after considering the public comments and the staff\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n
Blanco noted, though, that they did consider other aspects of the current floor amendments.<\/p>\n
According to Blanco, the Zoning board\u2019s recommendations were incorporated in the revised zoning map and the new proposed zoning law that is \u201cthe culmination of many years of work.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, all of the board\u2019s and office\u2019s efforts were dismantled by the ill-considered adoption of several pages of floor amendments without adequate consideration,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zoning Board chair Diego Blanco is urging the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation to adopt the 2012 Saipan Zoning Law without any additional floor amendments.<\/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-159258","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\/159258","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=159258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}