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Sablan questions adequacy of CHC’s cost saving measures
According to Commonwealth Utilities Corp. acting chief financial officer Joanne Paraiso, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. remains current in its monthly payment, not including its past arrears.
CUC board chair David J. Sablan, however, still questions CHC’s cost saving measures and wants a notice from CHC on the conservation measures they are currently implementing.
Sablan questioned the adequacy of CHC’s conservation plan, considering that the hospital corporation still manages to ring up a billing of close to $500,000 almost every month.
Sablan said that CHC is supposed to give CUC a concurrent plan that is due at the end of this month.
Sablan told CUC executive director Alan Fletcher that they need to notify the CHC management of the need to submit the concurrent plan because they need to discuss the hospital’s past due amount of $12 million.
Sablan said that CHC must bring its electricity consumption to a manageable level and not always half or close to a million dollars.
“Based on what CHC advised us in May, they can only afford $350,000 to $400,000, which means they have to come down to about $150,000 to $250,000 in their consumption, and that requires them to come up with a conservation development plan,” he said.
June’s billing was above $500,000, May’s billing was about $484,000 and April’s billing totaled about $411,000.
Sablan said the conservation plan would help CHC cover their monthly use of electricity.
“That will help us [CHC and CUC] sit down and come up with a plan on how CHC intends to pay the $12 million in past arrears, because we are giving them time to adjust to a level where they can afford to pay, but it doesn’t seem like they are conserving with their monthly bill of over or close to $500,000,” he said.
According to Paraiso, CHC’s July payment amounted to $466,000, and she expects CHC to make another payment this week.
“We’ve collected from CHC last week and we are expecting another payment at the end of the week,” Paraiso told CUC board members.
In a statement yesterday afternoon, CHC chief executive officer Esther Muna said that they already have the concurrent plan.
Sablan expects CHC to submit the concurrent plan before the end of this month.
