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Wrong questions
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Posted on Sep 18 2011
It seems that the Northern Mariana Housing Corp. is asking the wrong question about the Liyo properties on Rota. What I thought important would be for the lone member of the board of the NMHC who is inquiring about the situation to probe into how that project was conceived when it was under review and assimilated at the drawing board of the time.
The user of these properties today are not the cause of why the dwellings are empty or have some unusual stigma living in these houses. The cause of the problems must be traced or backtracked in order to understand how it was put together and including logical data and justification to ensure the future use of these dwellings.
So, what did the planners and supposedly experts in NMHC or its predecessor saw at the time? Is this a case of the “predictably unpredictable” situation that most would fall back when things do not fit well to plans that played in building structures? And, this is not an isolated case either; just look at the huge gymnasiums on Tinian and Rota that hardly a soul uses and they are deteriorating so badly we could not even keep pace with simple preventive maintenance for these buildings and its fixtures.
Then we have this huge multimillion housing project in Chalan Pio under the watchful participation of NMHC that seems to be a foregone conclusion. Historically, the public has placed blind faith on the bureaucrats and on government involvement like this. I think it is time that NMHC put out a full disclosure of this project so that we could see what this project is all about. It would be too late to be asking “would have,” “should have,” “could have” questions 15 or 20 years later.
I don’t blame the neighboring property owners’ concern and they too should be included as integral players just in case the CNMI government decides to impose a tax on real properties in the future, hence, these property owners should know the consequences of predictable future events that may be so elusive today, but nonetheless something to think of for a change.
[B]Francisco R. Agulto[/B] [I]Chalan Kanoa, Saipan[/I]
