The Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation and the Northern Marianas College met Thursday to discuss updates to repairs to a college campus devastated from last year\u2019s Typhoon Soudelor and the funding that the delegation had provided to help in these repairs last year.<\/p>\n
That $1.2 million appropriated by the local delegation last October has not yet been turned over to the college by the administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and his Finance department.<\/p>\n
NMC board of regent chair Frank Rabauliman said, during discussion on the issue, that all the delays in transferring of money was unfortunate but indicated this was based on \u201cmiscommunications.\u201d<\/p>\n
NMC acting president David Attao, for his part, said \u201cthey heard they needed things\u201d from Office of Management and Budget and Finance on steps to get the funding transferred over to them.<\/p>\n
Rep. Antonio Sablan (Ind-Saipan) appeared disappointed by the slow transfer of funds as did other lawmakers. He stressed that the local public law last year was \u201cvery basic\u201d in who the funds would be transferred to and who would be expenditure authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really curious to find out why it is so difficult to make this money available to college,\u201d Sablan said, noting that appropriations made from other local laws after the NMC funding was appropriated had \u201cbeen made available and has been expended\u201d and that for these \u201cmoney has already been tapped.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there is anything in this public law that would make this funding so difficult to be available to the college\u2026The law is very basic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sen. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan) noted that it\u2019s been seven months since the local law appropriated the funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are talking about an urgent situation,\u201d he said, noting that materials exposed to rain and sun may cost more to repair.<\/p>\n
Sen. Arnold Palacios (R-Saipan) hoped that in the next day or so NMC got the $1.2 million that delegation appropriated in days deliberation last year. \u201cI am a little bit dismayed but we need to move forward. I hope the secretary of Finance covers over the funds to the college.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawmakers and college also discussed ways to improve the decades-old campus in As Terlaje.<\/p>\n
The discussion included topics of debt financing inclusive of charging additional fees to college students to help the college build a new facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe college has been working very carefully with the delegation and the government and we are trying our best since last year to build the facility so the students can have somewhere safer and better to attend. And we can run our college the normally way we do,\u201d Attao told reporters after the meeting. \u201cFortunately, SNILD has supported us with $1.2 million in funds that we haven\u2019t yet been able to access but now the secretary of Finance and we are in communication on how exactly to approach that. And we are hoping to get that soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attao said the $4.5 million for repairs is what the college has worked with is the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the governor to help pay for the expenses on a reimbursement basis for facilities that were damaged by Typhoon Soudelor. <\/p>\n
The NMC board in their last meeting voted to go into an \u201cAlternative Pilot\u201d project, Attao said, where he said they could \u201crepair small things and save up the rest up of the money towards a [new] facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are going to repair what we can the small parts and take the rest of the money and try to build a new facility for the students, which is roughly 14 new classrooms, a student center, and student cafeteria\u2026But in order to do that we have funds upfront to pay for that. And we don\u2019t have that right now so that\u2019s the reasons why we are trying to develop the mechanisms that we\u2019ve been researching to do so,\u201d he said, acknowledging that one of them was debt service, when asked.<\/p>\n
He said one, they\u2019d need authorization from the Legislature to go into debt, and secondly, find funding to serve as collateral, and third, find a mechanism to pay for that.<\/p>\n
Asked to clarify a statement he made about first implementing a \u201cfee this Fall [semester]\u201d to \u201ccollect $200,000 a year and take a loan in that amount\u201d during the discussion with SNILD, Attao said he just gave that number as an example.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be $10, it could be $1,000, it\u2019s not set in stone, and it\u2019s what we can afford. We are not trying to spend anymore than we can afford. And we don\u2019t want to burden the students in the long run too. <\/p>\n
\u201cMinimum. Not too much,\u201d he also said when asked about the rates charged on student fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for their benefit and it\u2019s for the future of the CNMI\u2026 The students and the community really deserve new facilities at NMC. We deserve that as a whole because that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been pushing for the longest time\u2014people before me, regents before us. We are the group that is making it happen now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation and the Northern Marianas College met Thursday to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[69,133,2738,6333],"class_list":["post-228782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-nmc","tag-run","tag-snild","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228782","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}