{"id":98322,"date":"2006-02-24T04:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-24T04:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a65e79f8-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"2006-02-24T04:49:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-24T04:49:00","slug":"a65e7a09-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/a65e7a09-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"Jones declines NMC BOR nomination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Local businessman Jay Jones has declined Gov. Benigno R. Fitial&#8217;s nomination to the Northern Marianas College Board of Regents.<\/p>\n<p>Fitial announced Jones&#8217; decision to the media during his weekly news briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>He said the Triple J Motors general manager met with him earlier this week and regretfully told him that he is currently busy managing his businesses and cannot serve the BOR wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n<p>The governor said that, much as he regretted the decision of Jones, he would still want a businessman to fill the vacated post. <\/p>\n<p>He said he believes it would be ideal to have someone who has solid business acumen running the community college.<\/p>\n<p>In lieu of Jones, Fitial has nominated current Saipan Chamber of Commerce and Pacific Trading Co. president Charles Cepeda to the seat.<\/p>\n<p>Cepeda, who was present during the meeting yesterday, said he is humbled by the nomination but told the governor that he could not immediately make a decision on the appointment.<\/p>\n<p>Although he wants to focus more on the Chamber, Cepeda said he is not entirely closing the doors to accepting the nomination. &#8220;I will have to think matters carefully,&#8221; he said, adding that he would make his decision by Monday.<\/p>\n<p>NMC president Tony V. Deleon Guerrero recently welcomed the new members of the BOR, which had its first meeting yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Along with Jones, other new BOR members are Agnes McPhetres, former Commissioner of Education Rita H. Inos, and Linsa F. Lizama.<\/p>\n<p>Deleon Guerrero said that the NMC community is grateful and appreciative to the Fitial administration&#8217;s prompt action to fill the vacant slots at the NMC BOR. He said he is looking forward to working &#8220;collaboratively with them [new regents], along with our three ongoing regents.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The NMC president expressed that he would like to cultivate a cooperative working relationship with its BOR members, NMC Foundation, and the internal NMC stakeholders. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We enjoin the new BOR members in developing a shared vision of excellence, expanding and increasing our institutional resources, and building college-wide commitment and engagement in meeting WASC accreditation standards,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>With the new team members onboard, Deleon Guerrero is hoping to explore new ideas and strategies in enhancing NMC, especially its role as a community resource center for the Commonwealth, and improve its overall institutional effectiveness. (Marconi Calindas)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Local businessman Jay Jones has declined Gov. Benigno R. Fitial&#8217;s nomination to the Northern Marianas College Board of Regents.<\/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-98322","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\/98322","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=98322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}