“WE would be kidding ourselves” if we believe it’s enough, Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang told House members last week, regarding the $1.99 million budget proposed by Gov. Ralph DLG Torres for the Saipan Mayor’s Office in fiscal year 2023.
During the House Ways and Means Committee’s budget hearing for his office, Apatang said he submitted a $4.2 million budget request so “we can continue performing and delivering the myriad of services to our residents that call Saipan home.”
He added, “Now if we compare our FY2023 budget to the budget the executive branch gave you, and you will see that the executive branch reduced our budget significantly by $2.2 million. Not only is the reduction a drastic cut — the executive branch zeroed out our operations budget.”
He said the FY2023 budget proposal that the governor submitted to the Legislature in the amount of $1.99 million “is only for our personnel.”
“You make your honest assessment whether keeping this island you call home could be as clean, safe and beautiful as it is today with an FY2023 budget of $1.9 million that the executive branch has determined would be sufficient for us. We would be kidding ourselves if we believed that notion,” Apatang told House members.
Apatang also quoted the governor saying that the mayor’s office should maximize its American Rescue Plan Act funds.
But according to the mayor: “What everyone needs to understand is that the use of the ARPA state and local fiscal recovery funds should benefit our island in the long-term by spending them on improving our badly deteriorated and deteriorating infrastructure and public facilities, like roads, social halls, sports facilities, public restrooms and others.”
The mayor urged House members to “work with us to make things better for our residents and visitors.”
He reiterated the need to maximize “our once-in-a-lifetime funding opportunity that the federal government has generously provided to fix and repair badly deteriorated infrastructure and public facilities.”
He said the CNMI might not have another shot in the future of spending millions of dollars to make those improvements, adding that “when we build improvements that would last a long time and we reap the benefits over those years, that is called maximizing our limited resources.”
