![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/yumul-peavey.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cI do question why DPW was targeted amongst all the other governmental customers of CUC,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last week, Yumul issued a final notification to CUC over its alleged repeated violation of not restoring roads that it had cut up or dug up for its projects.<\/p>\n
As press time, Saipan Tribune was still awaiting comments from Mu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n
With respect to CHCC, Peavey told Mu\u00f1a that CUC has continuously communicated with the agency about its outstanding arrears that continue to grow and the importance of making timely payments for services rendered to CHCC.<\/p>\n
Peavey said it is not in either organization\u2019s best interest that CHCC continues to disregard its outstanding arrears, which will end up significantly jeopardizing the health and safety of the community when utility services interruption begin to impact the entire islands for even a short period of time as a result of CHCC\u2019s continued delinquent status.<\/p>\n
He noted that Mu\u00f1a had proposed a payment plan in June 2015 for CHCC to pay an initial $250,000, followed by monthly payments of $150,000.<\/p>\n
Peavey said that CUC received the initial payment but the monthly payments did not follow as promised.<\/p>\n
He said CUC and CHCC then entered into a Net Metering Intergovernmental Cooperative Agreement in December 2015 that was intended to eventually cause to lessen the cost of power and utility services for CHCC and the financial impact on CUC from liquidity challenges of CHCC, among other benefits and requirements for CHCC.<\/p>\n
Shortly following the agreement, CHCC failed to make its payments as agreed in the NMICA, Peavey said, breaching the agreement that rendered it null and void with all payments due and owing to CUC.<\/p>\n
Since then, he said, numerous correspondences and meetings transpired in attempts to collect and coordinate payment arrangements with CHCC.<\/p>\n
In August 2020, CUC issued a disconnection notice to CHCC. Consequently, on Sept. 8, 2020, CUC shut off power to the hospital grounds after CHCC failed to meet CUC\u2019s demand. That disconnection pressured the CNMI government and CHCC to enter into a payment agreement to pay CUC for CHCC\u2019s utility billings, Peavey said.<\/p>\n
He said CHCC paid a minimal share of $69,000 monthly while the CNMI government paid the bulk of the share of $150,000 monthly, for a combined total monthly payment of $219,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat agreement expired in September 2021,\u201d said Peavey, adding that the arrears, however, continued to accumulate month after month.<\/p>\n
After the agreement expired, CHCC then requested for a six-month extension of the agreement, but the government did not agree to the extension. Thus, Peavey said, CUC denied CHCC\u2019s request for an extension.<\/p>\n
Despite CUC\u2019s disapproval of the extension, CHCC continued to pay a significantly understated amount of $69,000 monthly, he said.<\/p>\n
Peavey said the huge disparity between the monthly payment and the amount actually being billed to CHCC for its consumption on a monthly basis adds to the already extraordinarily large receivable from CHCC.<\/p>\n
CUC records show that CHCC has an accumulated outstanding balance in the amount of $53,686,518 over several CHCC accounts as of March 31, 2023.<\/p>\n
Regarding the notice to DPW, Peavey said CUC has continuously informed DPW as well as the Department of Finance of the outstanding arrears and the importance of making timely payments to CUC.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of today, there have not been regular payments or commitments to settle the arrears,\u201d Peavey told Yumul.<\/p>\n
According to CUC records, DPW has an accumulated outstanding balance in the amount of $1,122,565 over several DPW accounts as of March 31, 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. served notices of disconnection to the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and Department…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":389970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[666,924,1114],"class_list":["post-389954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-chcc","tag-disconnection","tag-dpw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389954","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}