{"id":308827,"date":"2019-09-26T06:06:52","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T20:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=308827"},"modified":"2019-09-26T06:06:52","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T20:06:52","slug":"oleai-shutdown-imminent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/oleai-shutdown-imminent\/","title":{"rendered":"Oleai shutdown imminent"},"content":{"rendered":"
A man walks inside the Oleai Sports Complex yesterday to use of one its facilities. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Without fundingfrom the government, the Oleai Sports Complex is likely to shut down.<\/p>\n

Northern Marianas Sports Association executive director Tony Rogolifoi, in an interview yesterday, confirmed that without funding, NMSA will have no choice but to cease operation of the Oleai Sports Complex. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe (NMSA) take care of the facilities but the assets, the land itself, it belongs to the government, we\u2019re just running the facilities. Closing down, that\u2019s the plan because we cannot operate without that funding. If we were to close, who is going to handle the operations? We can do it temporarily, for free, but we cannot continue without funding because who is going to pay for the lights, for example,\u201d Rogolifoi said.<\/p>\n

Under Gov. Ralph DLG. Torres\u2019 budget proposal for the FY 2020, no funds are allocated for NMSA, as part of the administration\u2019s austerity measures. The House of Representatives will convene either today or tomorrow to act on the budget bill, as the new fiscal year approaches.<\/p>\n

Without the allocation for the sports complex, Rogolifoi estimates that less than $50,000 remains in NMSA\u2019s operations account and this would be enough to run the facilities for only about a month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am worried now, NMSA is worried. We don\u2019t even have $50,000 in the account, probably less. We don\u2019t have money in the government funding account to run the facilities\u2014maybe a month, but that\u2019s it. If by end of October we don\u2019t have money, NMSA will decide whether to continue operating the facility or close it down,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Rogolifoi added that one of his biggest concerns is the staff who are paid to maintain the facilities. Without funding, they will be left taking care of the facility without pay. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel good about closing down the facility, my No. 1 concern is my staff. They\u2019ll be out of payroll, where will they get money, do you think they can operate the gym for free? Maybe temporarily, until the programs are done. They\u2019ll go elsewhere and look for other opportunities,\u201d the NMSA official said.<\/p>\n

Rogolifoi admitted that time is not on NMSA\u2019s side, but still he is hopefully he will receive a positive response from Rep. John Paul Sablan (R-Saipan) within the next two weeks. Sablan is the chairman of the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation, which finds and allocates funding from other government resources. Rogolifoi said the lawmaker assured him that he will talk to Torres about NMSA\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re crossing our fingers that something good is going to happen. Rep. JP Sablan met with the governor at 2:30pm yesterday and he was going to bring the issue up,\u201d Rogolifoi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without fundingfrom the government, the Oleai Sports Complex is likely to shut down. Northern Marianas…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":308828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308827","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=308827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}