{"id":386555,"date":"2023-03-03T06:03:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T20:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=386555"},"modified":"2023-03-03T06:03:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T20:03:53","slug":"cpa-to-exhaust-all-arpa-funds-by-end-of-fiscal-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cpa-to-exhaust-all-arpa-funds-by-end-of-fiscal-year\/","title":{"rendered":"CPA to exhaust all ARPA funds by end of fiscal year"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kimberlyn King-Hinds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Commonwealth Ports Authority says it needs supplemental funding to sustain operations because the agency will soon exhaust all its American Rescue Plan Act funds by the end of this fiscal year, greatly impacting airport operations.<\/p>\n

This was learned soon after CPA board chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds met with Federal Aviation Administration partners at a conference in Honolulu last month, during which one of the topics of discussion was CPA\u2019s impending need for supplemental funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the topics of discussion was this impending ask that CPA is going to be making for the need for additional supplemental funding for operations. We were successful in raising and elevating the concerns of CPA when the pandemic first started and CPA was recognized for that. Now we\u2019re doing the same thing and we\u2019re making the argument that we are not Hawaii where they have droves of tourists that are coming in from the mainland. Even though they don\u2019t have a robust Japanese market, you have folks from the mainland who continue to travel. That\u2019s not the case here. We have a very limited marketing pool and our main markets like Japan and Korea are still recovering,\u201d she said. \u201cSo when you\u2019re looking at sustainability of the airports and being able to continue operating at a level that can accommodate additional arrivals, we\u2019re going to need a little bit of help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another topic of discussion was the $55 million that CPA has been allocated under the Biden administration\u2019s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and how CPA plans to use those funds, King-Hinds said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the priorities we have right now is finally addressing the rehabilitation of the runway. Just to recap, there\u2019s issues with the runway, we\u2019re currently in litigation with a construction company. We cannot wait until that litigation has been completed to begin addressing the rehabilitation of the runway because this is a very safety sensitive issue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the course of the last five years since I\u2019ve been a board member, we have been trying to go out\u2014whether it be [with the Commonwealth Development Authority] or [U.S. Department of Agriculture]\u2014to take out a loan but the issue has always been the fact that we\u2019re currently in litigation so what we\u2019ve worked really hard to do and we\u2019ve been successful in doing is convincing the FAA to give us the money and to be able to qualify this project under these new infrastructure entitlements,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Aside from the allocation, King-Hinds said she also brought up the need for funding for other projects in the CNMI like the pavement of the Saipan commuter road, which is estimated to cost around $2 million, and the need for funding to replace the Rota airport canopy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Commonwealth Ports Authority says it needs supplemental funding to sustain operations because the agency…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":385963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-386555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-cpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386555","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=386555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}