It is unfortunate that our small island community is being swayed toward the whims of outsiders and certain short-sighted local officials who depend on “outside” opinions from the Attorney General’s Office, instead of listening to the property owners, local residents and business people who are continually asking for the Legislature’s help regarding a dictatorial zoning board.
Why is it that you resort to not one, but two assistant attorneys general and seem to leave out the input of the zoning administrator, who seems to be just another token administrator on an unfortunate list of past zoning administrators from the outside, who keep getting sent back to the “outside” after short stays with the Zoning Board?
Why is it that local residents and business people are subject to a zoning office that seems to be lacking in business experience? I ask you, Ms. Fusco, what is your business background?
You make the statement that House Local Bill 17-26 may help certain individuals and their business interests.
Well, those certain individuals and their businesses pay a significant slice of taxes. It’s the business community that helps pay your office’s budget. So why can’t you be pro-business and help the business community, instead of building bureaucratic obstacles.
You further make statements that certain locations are identified by local family names and their businesses, and you come up with a new insinuation regarding illegal “spot zoning.”
This insinuation could only come from an outsider, who doesn’t know that many locations on Saipan are identified by family names and longtime establishments, and not by newly placed street signs that have been subjected to removal and confusion. You would probably fault the city fathers of Anaheim if they mentioned an area in their city that is adjacent to the Disneyland Park, saying that the Anaheim officials are trying to personally benefit Walt Disney or his family.
Frankly, your AAG-reaching objections to House Local Bill 17-26 border on the absurd sometimes, and I do invite Mr. Wyatt to visit our legislative offices before you zap him and he has to abruptly leave our beautiful island. Why not let Mr. Wyatt give us the numbers and information the Zoning Board would like to see in its reports? But for now, we will stick with “Lifoifoi’s Piggery,” “Abaros” and “Chandee.”
It seems that you and a small band of zoned-out outsiders who live here want to turn our island lifestyle into a sterile, over-zoned mainland, with every street, house and lawn — usually cut by illegal gardeners — looking the same and stagnant. Most real island people don’t want the over-zoned look, and they sure don’t want a few self-anointed judges of good taste to force their mainland styles on us. There are places on the mainland, like Vermont that you like so much that is over-zoned. But I prefer New Hampshire, whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” and this ideal of personal choice, not overly planned choice, is what made America the greatest place to live in the past. Zoning the way you see it will only make the future of our islands more stagnant and anything but “democratic and free.”
My constituents don’t want what you’re offering. I will continue to support what they want. We will work to see that “zoning” is put on hold, until a rewritten zoning act is in place to fit our island lifestyle and those businesses that support this type of island living. We won’t stop until we have what the people want, and we will fight for H.L.B.. 17-26, as it is the right thing to do.
By virtue of this letter, I will certainly ask the governor to support House Local Bill 17-26, “To amend the Zoning Law of 2008,” which became Saipan Local Law 17-2.
REP. STANLEY T.
MCGINNIS TORRES
17th CNMI Legislature
