{"id":307716,"date":"2019-09-10T06:04:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=307716"},"modified":"2019-09-10T06:04:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T20:04:00","slug":"grant-available-for-restoration-of-track-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/grant-available-for-restoration-of-track-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"Grant available for restoration of track lights"},"content":{"rendered":"
Lights at the Oleai Sports Complex\u2019s track and field will be restored through a block grant. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lights between the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office and the Oleai Sports Complex track and field facility will be repaired through the Community Development Block Grant Program. <\/p>\n

During the Northern Marianas Sports Association regular board meeting last Thursday, NMSA president Michael White shared that the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office has informed the board that CDBG would allocate funds to restore the lights that were destroyed after super typhoons Soudelor and Yutu slammed the island. NMSA is the caretaker of the track and other facilities at the complex.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [Saipan] Mayor\u2019s Office has advised us that we\u2019re going to get a block grant to restore the lights at the track and it\u2019s not going to interfere with our FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) repairs,\u201d White said. <\/p>\n

According to Oleai Sports Complex program coordinator Elias Rangamar, the grant allocated $200,000 for the lights project and this is separate from the FEMA funding that would cover other repair work at the track facility. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s like $200,000 and they need to use it so I guess they wrote to NMSA. The Mayor is just going to build a few new poles and renovate the existing poles that are not part of the sports complex for lights. They\u2019re not going to touch the ones considered as part of the track because that might affect our FEMA funding\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Rangamar added that they are working on trying to get some of the track surface repaired as part of the mayor\u2019s project. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to see if we can include some of the surface that was damaged during the typhoon (Yutu) and I guess they\u2019re checking contractors to get quotations,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In terms of FEMA renovations, Rangamar said \u201cIt looks like it\u2019s not going to start until sometime next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repair work at the Oleai Sports Complex is needed, as Saipan will be hosting the 2021 Pacific Mini Games. The facility was originally scheduled to undergo renovation last year after sustaining damage from Soudelor in 2015. However, just months before the renovation started, Yutu came, causing more destruction to the complex.<\/p>\n

Besides the track facility, the Francisco \u201cTan Ko\u201d Palacios Ballfield, the Miguel \u201cTan Ge\u201d Basa Pangelinan Ballfield, the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium, restroom, weight room, and fence will undergo improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lights between the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office and the Oleai Sports Complex track and field…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":307717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[493,1162,490,1507],"class_list":["post-307716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-fema","tag-nmsa","tag-oleai-sports-complex","tag-saipan-mayor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307716","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}