Francisco Q. Guerrero called for unity within the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s board of directors, which re-installed him as CUC chair on a 3-1 vote yesterday.<\/p>\n
Guerrero got the post back from outgoing chair Herman P. Sablan, after he beat director Velma Ann Palacios by two votes. Guerrero had served as chair in 2002-2003 and vice chair in 2003-2004.<\/p>\n
During yesterday\u2019s election, Guerrero got the votes of outgoing chair Sablan and directors Allen Perez and Rufina Miles.<\/p>\n
Joe Torres voted for Palacios, while the two nominees abstained.<\/p>\n
Sablan was elected vice chair, Miles as secretary, and Perez as treasurer.<\/p>\n
In his acceptance statement, Guerrero thanked the board members \u201cfor giving me your confidence.\u201d He also asked directors to \u201creconcile our opinions and together, assist the CUC management.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll we have to do is put aside our differences and work together in supporting the management,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n
He added that he will be meeting with the board members in the next few days to lay out his agenda for the coming year and to appoint officers to the corporation\u2019s standing committees.<\/p>\n
Power generation, he noted, will be CUC\u2019s main priority under his leadership, followed by improvements to the sewer system and the provision of 24-hour water to Saipan.<\/p>\n
CUC is working toward the privatization of the CNMI\u2019s power system. It recently put out a request for proposals from independent power producers to provide electricity to CUC.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, they can provide power at a less kilowatt-per-hour rate than it is costing CUC now,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
Director Torres, for his part, remains skeptical about the new leadership, saying he was not satisfied by how Guerrero had run the corporation two terms ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I believe is things have to be done right in terms of management operations. I\u2019ll see if things will change from his first chairmanship to the upcoming one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also expressed belief that Palacios could better lead CUC, considering her previous experience as the utility\u2019s former deputy director.<\/p>\n
Torres also noted that Palacios had numerous accomplishments over the past year as chair of the human resources committee.<\/p>\n
Despite his reservations, the director said the board will just have to \u201cmove on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the first time [that we elected new officers.] It\u2019s the same. As usual, politics has to kick in, but that\u2019s always been the system. We\u2019ll just move on,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Francisco Q. Guerrero called for unity within the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s board of directors, which re-installed him as CUC chair on a 3-1 vote yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82568","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}