Sen. Arnold Palacios (R-Saipan) said acting Department of Public Works chief James Ada faces a stiff challenge, particularly on the department\u2019s budget spending.<\/p>\n
Ada, who was nominated to take the helm of the DPW, sat in front of lawmakers on Thursday on Capital Hill for a nomination hearing.<\/p>\n
Palacios said he was \u201cimpressed with the testimonials\u201d in Ada\u2019s favor but the department\u2019s budget \u201cmight be a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palacios said he has read a portion of DPW\u2019s proposed budget plan, which included an allocation of $1.7 million to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. for DPW\u2019s streetlights.<\/p>\n
The lawmaker said he is \u201cwondering if this amount can be used for other purposes,\u201d adding that DPW and CUC might be able to coordinate on these payments.<\/p>\n
He said DPW\u2019s delivery of services have been \u201csliding\u201d in the last few years, stressing that he is not \u201cpointing a finger\u201d at anyone, and that these concerns might be due to lack of resources or management issues.<\/p>\n
Aside from the utilities payments, Palacios also advised Ada to look into other projects such as solid waste management, which he says is a major issue.<\/p>\n
Ada, in an interview, confirmed the proposed payment to CUC, noting that payments for streetlights range from a low of $150,000 per month, to a high of $190,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we will work with the resources that we have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He did not disclose the actual budget proposal of the DPW, saying only that it is more or less the same budget in the previous year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Arnold Palacios (R-Saipan) said acting Department of Public Works chief James Ada faces a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,49,1114,1882],"class_list":["post-198853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-cuc","tag-dpw","tag-public-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198853","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}