The Babauta administration is confident that it will manage to run the La Fiesta shopping complex without tapping into the CNMI government\u2019s revenues and funds from the federal government.<\/p>\n
The CNMI Executive Branch plans to pay its obligations involving La Fiesta and continue operating the mall using rental fees and other funding sources, Gov. Juan N. Babauta said yesterday as he and Northern Marianas College signed the final memorandum of agreement transferring the facility from NMC to the central government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe repayment plan for this is how we use the facility from hereon,\u201d Babauta said.<\/p>\n
He noted that there are potential tenants that can move into the facility. NMC, he added, is currently negotiating with a U.S.-based nursing company that may take one fourth of the facility. Further, the administration is looking into the possibility of having the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. move into La Fiesta and negotiating with CUC regarding the mall\u2019s utility expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are all kinds of possibilities. I\u2019m not really concerned about the funding source for the maintenance of La Fiesta,\u201d Babauta said.<\/p>\n
The governor also apologized yesterday for the long period it took for the agreement to be signed. He explained that the Attorney General\u2019s Office had to conduct a comprehensive legal review of the document before making it final.<\/p>\n
For her part, NMC Board of Regents chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds thanked the governor for supporting the La Fiesta project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have survived what we went through over the past year without that support,\u201d King-Hinds said.<\/p>\n
Earlier, King-Hinds said NMC will inform the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accrediting commission of the development immediately after the La Fiesta transfer becomes official.<\/p>\n
The WASC accrediting commission is set to meet this month. Part of the agenda is NMC\u2019s accreditation, which has been on warning status for a year now because of the financial problems caused by the La Fiesta purchase to the college.<\/p>\n
Also present at yesterday\u2019s signing ceremony were Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente, attorney general Pamela S. Brown, NMC president Tony Deleon Guerrero and other college officials, and representatives of La Fiesta\u2019s original sellers\u2014Hotel Nikko Saipan and Coco\u2019s Lagoon Development Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Babauta administration is confident that it will manage to run the La Fiesta shopping complex without tapping into the CNMI government\u2019s revenues and funds from the federal government.<\/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-87014","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\/87014","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=87014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}