Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang is happy with the plan of the Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance to move this April to the Ladera Center, where the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office is also located.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a good decision because you don\u2019t want last-minute planning and it would be a better collaboration between SHEFA\u2019s staff and board and our staff as well,\u201d Apatang said.<\/p>\n
He requested SHEFA board members to start planning their move after attending one of the board\u2019s meetings in January.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 26, SHEFA board members agreed to move to the Ladera Center before the Northern Marianas Housing Corp. releases the property they currently occupy to a possible investor.<\/p>\n
In a separate interview, SHEFA administrator Merissa S. Rasa said that they are already in the planning stages of moving.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking at starting the process around April when it is not as busy here at SHEFA. This has been our office since 2004 and we were fortunate enough to be rent-free all these years with only an annual insurance fee of $300 to NMHC.<\/p>\n
SHEFA will now have to meet with the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation to request for additional funding. SHEFA is usually appropriated some $3 million, of which only about a $100,000 is used for operational and administrative costs.<\/p>\n
Rasa said they were given six months at the most to complete their move.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are set [at the] unit to the right of the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office. We are also hopeful SNILD will provide us additional funding now that we will have to pay for an office space,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She noted that they will possibly meet with SNILD this week.<\/p>\n
Upon SHEFA\u2019s relocation, Apatang said he will help the scholarship office in every way possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for now we are focusing first on the community projects that are ongoing and if SHEFA requests assistance, then we will do so,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang is happy with the plan of the Saipan Higher Education…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1120,1507,689,2738],"class_list":["post-193513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-nmhc","tag-saipan-mayor","tag-shefa","tag-snild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193513","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}