TINIAN\u2014\u201cAt last, everybody would be happy. My children and a lot of families on Tinian have been waiting for this homestead for years. They would have a place to call their own once it\u2019s done,\u201d 50-year-old Estevan Borja Jr. told Saipan Tribune as he gazed yesterday morning at the future site of a 189-lot village homestead in West San Jose.<\/p>\n
Borja\u2019s two daughters\u2014a 24-year-old with the U.S. Air Force and a 26-year-old employee at Northern Marianas College\u2014are among the 189 individuals who, months from now, could start getting their homestead permits and start building their own homes for their own families.<\/p>\n
Borja, a father of five, attended yesterday\u2019s groundbreaking for the West San Jose Village Homestead, five years since the drawing of lots and some 19 years since the project started.<\/p>\n
Once the access road and excavation of a ponding basin are completed within 180 days, individuals can start securing their homestead permits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe permits are ready for the 189 lot owners,\u201d said Ray Cing, Tinian director of the Department of Public Lands.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday, however, it\u2019s not clear where the funding for the homestead project\u2019s other basic infrastructure such as power and water lines would come from.<\/p>\n
Each homestead lot has a size of anywhere between 700 square meters and over 1,250 square meters.<\/p>\n
Gov. Eloy S. Inos and Lt. Gov. Jude U. Hofschneider, along with other officials, flew from Saipan to Tinian to take part in the 10am groundbreaking, the first in a number of years in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
The governor said he first became aware of Tinian\u2019s West San Jose Village Homestead project some five years ago when DPL, under a different administration, drew the lot numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that, it came to a standstill. It was plagued with many challenges like environmental and funding issues, and a lack of sense of priority,\u201d Inos told the crowd gathered on the NMC Tinian campus grounds.<\/p>\n
The latest challenge to the project, he said, was funding, when the House of Representatives removed $2 million from DPL\u2019s homestead program during the fiscal year 2014 budget process. When the bill reached the Senate, senators restored the funding to DPL.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the bill\u2019s passage, I told the DPL secretary, \u2018let\u2019s move it.\u2019 So we are here today,\u201d Inos added.<\/p>\n
The governor also called on agencies to work with each other to ensure the project gets completed.<\/p>\n
He also hopes that with the future completion of the homestead village, Tinian residents won\u2019t leave the island in search of a better place to live.<\/p>\n
Hofschneider, who has been instrumental in moving the homestead village project forward since he was senator, said he is thankful to DPL, the Legislature, permitting agencies and other entities that helped ensure the project will finally get off the ground.<\/p>\n
He said the administration is revisiting policies whether homestead funding can also be used to finance the installation of power and water infrastructure, among other things.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, the Legislature would have to appropriate funds, he said.<\/p>\n
Besides the governor and lieutenant governor, also in attendance were Attorney General Joey Patrick San Nicolas, Tinian Mayor Ramon Dela Cruz, Sen. Frank Cruz (R-Tinian), Sen. Frank Borja (Ind-Tinian), Sen. Jack Borja (Ind-Tinian), DPL Secretary Pete A. Tenorio, Department of Public Works Secretary Martin Sablan, members of the Tinian Municipal Council, representatives from DPL-Tinian and DPL-Saipan office including Planning Division director Patricia Rasa, other government personnel, former government officials and community members.<\/p>\n
\u2018Do your best\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The DPL secretary described the groundbreaking as an \u201cimportant milestone,\u201d considering that Tinian residents have waited long to finally have homesteads.<\/p>\n Tenorio urged homestead lot owners to \u201cdo your best\u201d in ensuring they begin construction of \u201cdecent\u201d houses for their families once they get their homestead permits.<\/p>\n \u201cLive in them, don\u2019t secretly rent them out,\u201d Tenorio said, as he also made special mention of the efforts of DPL\u2019s Rasa and DPL-Tinian\u2019s Cing.<\/p>\n The lieutenant governor echoed Tenorio\u2019s statement, saying that homestead lot owners should take their responsibility seriously as \u201cthere\u2019s not a lot of lands left on Tinian\u201d for homesteading.<\/p>\n Two-thirds of lands on Tinian are leased to the U.S. Department of Defense.<\/p>\n Other developments<\/strong><\/p>\n DPL Tinian\u2019s Cing said the original design for the West San Jose Village Homestead included 263 homestead lots but because of historic and cultural concerns in some areas, the number of lots available for distribution went down to 189.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to further delay the project so rather than come up with a new design, we just removed the other 70-plus, and they will be included in another homestead development project,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n As far as Cing remembers, the last homestead to open on Tinian was about 20 years ago.<\/p>\n He said DPL-Tinian\u2019s goal is to have a total of 493 homestead lots to be distributed, including those homestead villages that will be developed in Barangka, Marpo Valley, and Marpo Heights III.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is also a waiting list with 136 names or new applicants as of today,\u201d Cing added.<\/p>\n Yesterday\u2019s groundbreaking came weeks after the governor signed last year an over $656,000 contract for Pacific Cooperation Ltd. to start construction of an access road and ponding basin for the West San Jose Homestead Subdivision on Tinian. The 180-day work includes the grubbing, grading, and construction of approximately 11, 918 linear feet of road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TINIAN\u2014\u201cAt last, everybody would be happy. My children and a lot of families on Tinian…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,665],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-26913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-must-clicks","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}