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CPA to exhaust all ARPA funds by end of fiscal year
Agency seeks additional funding to sustain its operations
Kimberlyn King-Hinds
The Commonwealth Ports Authority says it needs supplemental funding to sustain operations because the agency will soon exhaust all its American Rescue Plan Act funds by the end of this fiscal year, greatly impacting airport operations.
This was learned soon after CPA board chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds met with Federal Aviation Administration partners at a conference in Honolulu last month, during which one of the topics of discussion was CPA’s impending need for supplemental funding.
“One of the topics of discussion was this impending ask that CPA is going to be making for the need for additional supplemental funding for operations. We were successful in raising and elevating the concerns of CPA when the pandemic first started and CPA was recognized for that. Now we’re doing the same thing and we’re making the argument that we are not Hawaii where they have droves of tourists that are coming in from the mainland. Even though they don’t have a robust Japanese market, you have folks from the mainland who continue to travel. That’s not the case here. We have a very limited marketing pool and our main markets like Japan and Korea are still recovering,” she said. “So when you’re looking at sustainability of the airports and being able to continue operating at a level that can accommodate additional arrivals, we’re going to need a little bit of help.”
Another topic of discussion was the $55 million that CPA has been allocated under the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and how CPA plans to use those funds, King-Hinds said.
“One of the priorities we have right now is finally addressing the rehabilitation of the runway. Just to recap, there’s issues with the runway, we’re currently in litigation with a construction company. We cannot wait until that litigation has been completed to begin addressing the rehabilitation of the runway because this is a very safety sensitive issue,” she said.
“Over the course of the last five years since I’ve been a board member, we have been trying to go out—whether it be [with the Commonwealth Development Authority] or [U.S. Department of Agriculture]—to take out a loan but the issue has always been the fact that we’re currently in litigation so what we’ve worked really hard to do and we’ve been successful in doing is convincing the FAA to give us the money and to be able to qualify this project under these new infrastructure entitlements,” she added.
Aside from the allocation, King-Hinds said she also brought up the need for funding for other projects in the CNMI like the pavement of the Saipan commuter road, which is estimated to cost around $2 million, and the need for funding to replace the Rota airport canopy.
