L.J. Castro, the newly installed chairman of the 14th Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council, said that one of the concerns he wants to address during his two-year term is how to improve the Neighborhood Watch program.<\/p>\n
The program unites community members within a village in protecting their homes, families, and neighbors by being the \u201ceyes\u201d of the village and looking out for potential criminal activities.<\/p>\n
Castro, who is also a press officer at the Office of the Governor, said he knows first hand the importance of a Neighborhood Watch program, having been a victim of a burglary last November.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Neighborhood Watch\u2026can definitely make matters a little bit easier in the community,\u201d he said after being sworn in Monday at the Kiosku Roundhouse in Chalan Kanoa. <\/p>\n
Robbers stole $2,000 worth of items during the Nov. 28 burglary at Castro\u2019s house in Finasisu. <\/p>\n
Weeks before his inauguration, Castro said he and fellow councilman Diego Kaipat already discussed ways to improve the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have talked about it and looked at ways to make it stronger. It was enacted a few years ago and it had a lot of promise. Even though we have a very able police force that does its best to address crime and public safety in the villages, there\u2019s still a lot more that can be done and the municipal council hopes to make it a stronger program,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Castro and Kaipat would also fulfill some of the plans that were left unfinished by the previous municipal council.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that come about when a new term usually starts is old business doesn\u2019t die when the last term passes on. There\u2019s a handful of issues the 13th municipal council wanted us to look at and try to touch bases. Councilman Kaipat and I are definitely looking at those particular issues. Of course, we have events lined up and one event in July that we\u2019re hoping to stage is the conference in Pagan,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The \u201cKonferencian Dinana Islas Marianas\u201d was originally set last year; it was postponed because delegates from Guam were busy with preparations for the Festival of Pacific Arts and the Guam\u2019s Liberation festivities. It would have gathered delegates from all the islands of the Marianas archipelago for a forum in Pagan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
L.J. Castro, the newly installed chairman of the 14th Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15072,15071,51,2167],"class_list":["post-244221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-councilman-kaipat","tag-diego-kaipat","tag-guam","tag-neighborhood-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244221","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}