Chamber strongly opposes bill amending zoning law

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce “strongly opposes” Rep. Stanley Torres’ (Ind-Saipan) local bill seeking massive changes to Saipan’s zoning law, including changing designated “rural village” areas to “village commercial.”

Douglas Brennan, president of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce, which has some 150 members, said the Chamber is “diametrically opposed to House Local Bill 17-26, Substitute 1.”

“It’s not often the Saipan Chamber of Commerce gets an opportunity to comment on a piece of proposed legislation that goes so far out of its way to eliminate an original legislative initiative that has become public law because it was so badly needed in the first place,” Brennan said in a letter to the bill’s author.

The Chamber, the largest business organization in the CNMI, said the enactment of the original zoning law, the establishment of a zoning enforcement office and the improvements that have come as a result of slow and gradual changes brought about by the zoning law and its regulations “are essentially eliminated with H.L.B. 17-26.”

Brennan, who is also general manager of Microl Corp., said the Chamber agrees with those who oppose the bill, particularly former Zoning board chair Herminia M. Fusco, in that the Chamber has many members that have had to adjust to the changes brought about by a new way to conduct their business with respect to zoning requirements as they translate to costs associated with those requirements.

“It does not mean that we disagree with the current zoning law and its regulations to the extent this bill, and you as its sponsor, propose. Give the current law time to have the intended effect its original authors intended. SCC strongly opposes House Local Bill 17-26,” Brennan added.

Fusco had said that HLB 17-26 S1 will drastically change Saipan’s future landscape and has far-reaching ramifications affecting property values and the quality of life of all residents and visitors.

Section 3 of the bill, for example, rezones to “mixed commercial” all areas that border any and all major paved thoroughfares 600 feet from the centerlines on either side of such street that are not zoned “mixed commercial.”

Fusco said this one sentence will effectively rezone the neighborhoods of 90 percent of the residents of Saipan to “mixed commercial.”

Some permitted uses allowed in a mixed commercial zone will be auto shops, heavy equipment and machinery shops, gas stations, barracks, septic system services, retail construction material suppliers, pawnshops, farms, contractor’s offices and storage yards, manufacturing facilities, processing plants, and warehousing.