Gov. Juan N. Babauta signed House Bill 14-43 into law on Monday that appropriated another half a million dollars from the local poker license fees to fund infrastructure projects on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Now Saipan Local Law 14-31, the bill appropriates $350,000 from the poker funds to finance road improvement projects in Tanapag, San Roque, and Capitol Hill; $100,000 to fund a children\u2019s park in Dandan; and $50,000 for the Kannat Tabla quarry fence project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe administration supports these important projects. Accordingly, I have decided to sign this bill into law,\u201d Babauta said in his transmittal letter to Sen. Pete Reyes, chairman of the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reiterate, however, that the member of Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation are respectfully encouraged to refrain from appropriating any more funds from Saipan Local Law 11-2, as amended, until the projects identified in this measure and all prior financial obligations fund by [S.L.L.] 11-2, are fully paid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
SLL 11-2 established an annual local license fee of $2,000 for each poker machine licensed.<\/p>\n
Enacted in October last year, SLL 14-11 appropriated $5.15 million from these poker license funds various other programs and activities.<\/p>\n
The appropriations include $1 million for the CNMI Water Task Force; $1.2 million for the Saipan local scholarship account; $1 million for Precinct III emergency road paving, drainage and survey cost; $900,000 for Precinct I road paving and survey cost, as well as the construction of a walkway at the San Antonio Elementary School and paving of the Dandan kindergarten parking lot; and $500,000 for the construction of a Garapan Fishing Base Public Market.<\/p>\n
Other projects tap into these poker funds.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Babauta approved a House bill that appropriates $70,200 as matching fund on the architectural and engineering design of the 1.0MG Kanat Tabla Tank and Waterline project.<\/p>\n
House Bill 14-40, which became S.L.L. 14-30 also re-appropriates $200,000 in poker license funds to finance various road projects in Precinct IV and the purchase of air conditioners for the William S. Reyes Elementary School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Juan N. Babauta signed House Bill 14-43 into law on Monday that appropriated another half a million dollars from the local poker license fees to fund infrastructure projects on Saipan.<\/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-95835","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\/95835","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=95835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}