Fletcher: CUC aims to beat EPA deadline

Alan Fletcher, the outgoing executive director of the Commonwealth Utility Corp., said they will meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s hard deadline for a plan on how to fill vacant senior manager positions that are critical to the utility.

One of these positions is Fletcher’s. The executive director is expected to leave before the month ends. The CUC board has chosen not to renew his contract past its July 14 expiration date.

“We have to meet that [30-day deadline] requirement,” Fletcher told reporters on Friday. “And two, we hope to beat the requirement.”

Right now, the deputy executive director, division manager for drinking water and wastewater, and the technical manager for oil positions are vacant despite recent national and internal recruitment efforts. The executive director position will soon join these long unfilled positions.

In a letter last Tuesday, EPA required CUC and the board to submit within 30 days a detailed status report on its plan to solicit and fill—both on a temporary and permanent basis—these positions with managers meeting the specified qualifications.

These are positions mandated by court stipulated orders.

But Fletcher says they have already been updating EPA on these positions through reports and the required stipulated order quarterly progress reports.

“I think this was sent because the executive director position is transiting, and the other [positions] aren’t filled. So it’s EPA saying” they are concerned, he said.

EPA has also asked for “a detailed explanation and rationale as to why CUC has been unable to fill these critical positions” in their letter last week.

The deputy director position has been vacant since July 15, 2013, when Fletcher was promoted to executive director. The division manager for drinking water and wastewater position has been vacant since September 2014, and the technical manager for oil has been vacant since January 2015.

All these positions were or are required to be filled within 150 days.

Fletcher said Friday they are working with human resource manager Frankie Cepeda on the data to show EPA what they have done in the past to fill these positions.

“We’ve been recruiting for all these positions right along. So we’ve had history. …We’ve just not been successful in hiring someone,” he said.

For the deputy director position, Fletcher said they have had interviews two separate times, and held three separate recruitment searches. “We get up to where we get someone to come out and visit, or to a contract stage and then for whatever reason they recede,” he said.

He said the last interviews for deputy director were at the end of 2014. Recruitment started up again this year, he said.

“We were down to the 11th hour in December. We thought we had a viable candidate but then we weren’t successful,” he said.

The applicant pools for these positions usually come from the U.S. mainland, Fletcher said.

He said CUC has to work within its budgets and within an established salary administration. “Could that limit our potential candidate pool because of the offered salary range? You bet it can. Positions here in the CNMI are typically lower than what you are going to find in the mainland. A utility of this size and complexity on the mainland, all your positions would be in a much different [salary] bracket—and I don’t mean down,” he said.

Responding to Saipan Tribune’s question about what could make it a tough “sell” for these applicants to work here, Fletcher said he could not speak for applicants but could only speculate.

He said living conditions, stability, and the “challenge” here could be what applicants look for.

In terms of livability, he said Saipan has “got it covered.”

But “financially, we’re tenuous right now,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it. We’re in straits. And that could be a disincentive. But we don’t know that until we get that new applicant,” he said.

Qualifications

In their letter, EPA stressed that CUC look at candidates that meet stipulated order required qualifications.

“These qualifications are requirements, not guidelines,” EPA Water Section 1 manager Ken Greenberg emphasized.

He also said it was their understanding that the CUC board may be contemplating temporarily filling the executive director position with an individual who does not meet the required qualifications.

While Greenberg did not name this individual, it was earlier reported that this was IT&E engineering manager Velma Palacios, who was reportedly a previous candidate for the job.

However, CUC board chair Adelina Roberto called this “very incorrect.”

“That was never considered,” she said. “We had it on the record that there was no consideration ever been done for anything that is a stipulated order position. No local. Unless they passed with EPA, it has not been considered,” she said.