With a budget it deems inadequate, the Zoning Office management, led by administrator Therese Ogumoro, is being encouraged by the board to explore federal grants to help sustain the agency\u2019s programs and operation.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune learned that the Zoning Office is appropriated only $128,000 for its personnel and all other expenses this fiscal year\u2014an amount described by the agency officials as not enough to continue performing the office\u2019s critical responsibilities. The office is currently manned by seven personnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur office continues to work hard in looking for any funding opportunities and we hope the governor and lawmakers continue to support our requests for a budget to maintain our zoning program\u2019s operations and personnel needs. Our staff of seven with minimum budget level for operations is very tight\u2014with each staff multitasking between the numerous responsibilities of this office as a regulatory agency tasked to oversee organized land uses and developments\u2026I hope that we get more support for a reasonable budget to sustain this program and its critical responsibilities,\u201d Ogumoro told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
At their Dec. 27 meeting, board members talked about exploring federal funds to supplement its operational needs. However, its first attempt to tap a federal grant failed, primarily due to lack of matching requirements.<\/p>\n
Ogumoro disclosed that Zoning applied for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development\u2019s \u201cCapacity Building for Sustainable Communities Initiatives Program\u201d but its application was disapproved due to deficiencies. Saipan Tribune learned that this program grant amounts to $2 million and requires a 20-percent match. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned that the reasons for not being awarded included insufficient justifications on criteria for threshold review. For instance, there was no matching funds identified and some required forms were not uploaded or were insufficient,\u201d said Ogumoro.<\/p>\n
She described a recent teleconference with the federal agency as \u201cvery informative\u201d and she assured that Zoning will continue to explore other opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Zoning Board chairman [Diego Blanco] continuously encourages the Zoning Office to search for grant opportunities to help our local budget fund our operations and personnel and this has been on top of our priorities. We had sought the help of our Grants Management Office as well as the office of U.S. Delegate Kilili but so far, based on report from my staff, the answer has been the same\u2026they\u2019ll help us and let us know once any opportunity relevant to our Zoning program is identified,\u201d Ogumoro said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With a budget it deems inadequate, the Zoning Office management, led by administrator Therese Ogumoro, is being encouraged by the board to explore federal grants to help sustain the agency\u2019s programs and operation.<\/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-175075","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\/175075","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=175075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}