Tinian Mayor Ramon Dela Cruz said yesterday the Department of Finance took $676,000.08 from his office\u2019s account to directly pay their bills to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. without consulting Tinian and leaving them with a negative account, especially ahead of the island\u2019s fiesta.
\nFinance Secretary Larrisa Larson said last night, though, that they paid CUC \u201cas directed by the expenditure authority.\u201d Finance also said the Tinian mayor\u2019s office\u2019s three-month utility bills exceeded its budget for six months.<\/p>\n
The Tinian mayor, however, believes that CUC\u2019s \u201cleaking pipes\u201d are to blame for this, saying they continue to see high utility bills despite power and water use cuts.<\/p>\n
For instance, the mayor said it is impossible for the Tinian gymnasium to \u201cuse\u201d $108,008.13 worth of CUC water in a month even after closure of certain portions of the gym to conserve water.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office is therefore dealing with two issues\u2014what it claims as Finance\u2019s taking of funds from their account without consulting them, and the leaking and \u201cantiquated\u201d CUC water pipes that result in loss of water and bloated water billings.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday, the mayor\u2019s office has yet to receive a response from CUC executive director Allan Fletcher about the mayor\u2019s request to send an engineer to check the water pipes and rectify the billings charged to the Tinian government.<\/p>\n
Dela Cruz said Finance \u201ctook it upon themselves\u201d to pay CUC the amount from the Tinian mayor\u2019s office account \u201cwithout rectifying accounts and leaving the mayor\u2019s office of Tinian account with a negative $339,996.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a phone interview, Dela Cruz said his office discovered the amount taken from his office\u2019s account on April 15 when they were about to pay for another service on Tinian.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoney was not available anymore. We found out Finance obligated it to CUC. The Legislature gave me expenditure authority but it seems someone else took that authority away from me,\u201d the mayor told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Larson, in response to questions posed by Saipan Tribune to press secretary Angel Demapan, said the Tinian mayor\u2019s office certified the bills that were submitted to her office for payment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe then paid as directed by the expenditure authority. \u2026We didn\u2019t take anyone\u2019s funds. We used the funds allotted for CUC and then covered the remaining balance with the \u2018all others\u2019 portion of the budget. Every agency was given advice on the need to reduce power bills during the budget talks, the mayors\u2019 council meeting and also after passage of the budget,\u201d Larson said.<\/p>\n
She said Finance pays CUC weekly, sometimes biweekly, depending on the bills submitted by agencies.<\/p>\n
Larson said the municipality of Tinian submitted requests for payment of power bills from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2013, during April 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe total amount for all three bills was greater than the budget allotted for the first two quarters of the fiscal year. We exhausted those funds and then had to use \u2018all others\u2019 to cover the shortfall. This language is included in the 2014 budget act and all departments and agencies were advised of this and encouraged to conserve power to prevent us from having to use their \u2018all others\u2019 budget to cover the shortfall,\u201d Larson said.<\/p>\n
The Finance secretary pointed out that the Tinian mayor\u2019s office \u201cis an exception\u201d and it \u201cwent over budget for utilities in a significant amount.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dela Cruz\u2019s office said that Finance\u2019s direct payment to CUC using Tinian funds was done without consulting Tinian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis could not have come at a worse time, immediately before the Tinian Fiesta. Of course, the Fiesta will go on, but it has definitely hampered our ability to do all the cleanup projects we had scheduled. We do not know if this has happened to any other government agencies. Ever since the 2014 budget was adopted, we have worked at reducing water and power consumption. The increase in power rates did not help. Our problem is there is no engineer at Tinian CUC or within the Tinian Municipal Government to help us identify underground water leaks, the only reason for these outrageous water billings,\u201d the Tinian mayor\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
Rep. Lorenzo Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan), chairman of the House Committee on Public Utilities, Transportation and Communications, said yesterday if it is indeed true that Finance \u201carbitrarily\u201d took out funds from the Tinian mayor\u2019s office account, that is \u201cvery questionable.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he said he has not heard whether other agencies or offices have had their funds used without their knowledge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like an adult taking a boy\u2019s candy,\u201d the lawmaker said.<\/p>\n
As for CUC\u2019s leaking pipes as the Tinian mayor\u2019s office claims, Deleon Guerrero hopes that CUC will send its engineer as the mayor requested, to help fix the problem and for the mayor\u2019s office to be charged only for the actual water they were able to use.<\/p>\n
Repeated requests to CUC<\/strong><\/p>\n The Tinian mayor, in an April 28 letter to CUC\u2019s Fletcher, said while most agencies on Tinian have been able to reduce power and water billings, they seem to be \u201ctrying to push water uphill with certain accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n The Tinian gymnasium, under the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, is just an example. In a January 2014 billing, Tinian gymnasium-DCCA had $108,008.13 for \u201cwater usage\u201d and $7,399.45 in water electric charge. Other Tinian offices had water usage of between 54 cents and $407.25 in January 2014.<\/p>\n For February 2014, Tinian gym-DCCA\u2019s water usage went down compared to the previous months but was still high at $21,122.70. For March 2014 billing, its water usage was $54,522.63.<\/p>\n Ana Marie C. San Nicolas, resident department head of DCCA-Tinian, told the Tinian mayor in an April 22 letter that they have followed instructions to cut utility costs.<\/p>\n \u201cI requested CUC personnel to shut down my water system since last year and to open when it\u2019s needed. Mayor, I just could not explain to you why I am still accumulating this much billing, but to simply say I probably have a major leakage underneath the gymnasium and cannot detect. I would like to work with Mr. Hall and have the CUC come in and locate exactly where the leaking area is at. I will continue to monitor my water billing and hopefully when funds are available, I would like to request for a major overhaul of my water pipes,\u201d San Nicolas told Dela Cruz.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee will be meeting this morning with the Finance secretary and other officials to discuss Gov. Eloy S. Inos\u2019 proposed $134-million budget for fiscal year 2015, as well as his planned fiscal year 2014 supplemental budget.<\/p>\n Some lawmakers are hoping that the governor\u2019s supplemental budget would also appropriate payments to CUC. The House PUTC chairman, for example, said $2 million to $3 million going to CUC would bring relief to CUC and its customers. But the governor said $5 million in the supplemental budget is for the retirement settlement trust fund and the rest is for the government\u2019s health insurance premium payment.<\/p>\n Some government agencies such as the Public School System and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. owe CUC a total of over $20 million but PSS and CHCC are now working with CUC to settle the obligations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tinian Mayor Ramon Dela Cruz said yesterday the Department of Finance took $676,000.08 from his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,50,40,41],"class_list":["post-33726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cuc","tag-power","tag-pss","tag-public-school-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33726","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=33726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}