{"id":271463,"date":"2018-03-07T06:06:32","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T20:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=271463"},"modified":"2018-03-07T06:06:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T20:06:32","slug":"office-aging-hopes-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/office-aging-hopes-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Office on Aging hopes for more funding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Office on Aging director Walter Manglona was the Rotary Club of Saipan’s guest speaker at its weekly meeting yesterday at the Hyatt Regency Saipan. (Mark Rabago)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Office of Aging is not immune to inflation, with director Walter Manglona saying that higher prices have dented the agency\u2019s $480,000 budget for fiscal year 2018.<\/p>\n

Manglona hopes the administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and the Legislature would keep the man\u2019amko, the islands\u2019 elderly, in mind when it divvies up additional supplemental budget from the casino revenue tax. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration right now is extremely supportive of the man\u2019amko and they are able to provide us with enough funding to be able to continue our operations. However, what I find challenging right now is the fact that the indirect cost is\u2026skyrocketing. So that took a lot of money that we could\u2019ve been using for our services,\u201d said Manglona in an interview following a presentation at yesterday\u2019s Rotary Club of Saipan meeting at the Hyatt Regency Saipan.<\/p>\n

While unwilling to give a ballpark figure of how much more funding the center needs, Manglona hinted that he did ask for a budget of $1 million last fiscal year but only got a little less than half of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get it this time, but I\u2019m optimistic that the administration would not forget the man\u2019amko,\u201d he said alluding to the $24-million supplemental budget recently signed by Torres, half of which went to the Public School System.<\/p>\n

Areas of operations Manglona wants beefed up are the transportation and nutrition programs of the Office on Aging. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re going to get money, more of [it] would be used for our nutrition and transportation services. For a while, we wanted to improve our transportation services. We wanted to have new vans. We\u2019re still looking at acquiring new vans for Rota and Tinian and, of course, Saipan,\u201d he said. \u201c[We need] additional bus drivers as Tinian and Rota have no bus drivers and I want that included in my budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also needs more employees for his offices on Tinian and Rota for their nutritional programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Saipan, we have around 14 staff. I need and I\u2019m OK with five more and two more for Tinian and Rota,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Manglona said Tinian Mayor Joey Patrick San Nicolas and Rota Mayor Efraim Atalig are supportive of the Office on Aging\u2019s nutrition program. <\/p>\n

He said Tinian and Rota mayor staff help with cooking the meals of the man\u2019amko. Unlike Saipan where there are caterers, the Office on Aging still cooks the meals of their congregants on the two islands.<\/p>\n

Manglona said whatever extra funding his office gets from future supplemental budgets is all right with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever we get, I\u2019m still OK with it. I know the administration is always supportive of our man\u2019amko. I don\u2019t want to ask for more than I need. But if we can get more than we need, it just means more services for the people we provide it for.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Office on Aging currently serves 534 individuals in the CNMI, which includes the man\u2019amko and their caregivers. On Saipan alone, the man\u2019amko center is open to 90 congregants and serves some 200 homebound elderly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Office of Aging is not immune to inflation, with director Walter Manglona saying that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":271465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,233,309,5333],"class_list":["post-271463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-hyatt-regency-saipan","tag-ok","tag-walter-manglona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271463","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=271463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}