SENATE Floor Leader Corina L. Magofna on Wednesday prefiled Senate Local Bill 23-3, which would limit the scope, authority and applicability of the Nuisance Abatement and Blighted Property Maintenance Act of 2018.
Authored by then-Rep. Lorenzo Guerrero and signed by then-Gov. Ralph DLG Torres in June 2018, Saipan Local Law 20-25 requires real property owners to maintain — and to be held accountable for — vacant and blighted properties because they pose a risk to the safety of the community.
The law has yet to be enforced.
According to Magofna’s bill, the application of S.L.L. 20-25 to every building, public or private and to any tract of land, improved or unimproved along roadways, tourist and industrial areas is “problematic, unfair and inadequately defined in scope and authority.”
Her bill states that varmints and overgrown natural foliage pose health risks and affect property values, “but not to a degree warranting a greater burden to all landowners, building owners and leasehold owners.”
She wants S.L.L. 20-25 to apply “only to real properties located along primary roadways or highways, tourists and industrial areas and within the central area of Saipan…and the abandoned or vacated building or structure located on such properties, public or private inclusive and portion thereof, and appurtenance thereto, and the premises on which it is situated, used or intended to be used, whether for commercial, business, institutional, industrial, multi-family or residential.”
The bill defines an abandoned building or structure as a “premise, parcel or real property that maintains an appearance of neglect or evidence of neglect for six months or 180 days or significantly consumed by surrounding natural foliage and physical deterioration of the building or structural integrity necessitating significant monetary contribution or expense that exceeds $10,000 or its equivalence to inflation, for its rehabilitation or reconstruction.”
Blighting influence or blighting factor means “either that which endangers life or property by fire or other causes or that which substantially impairs or arrests property values or sound economic growth of the Commonwealth and is a menace to the public health, safety, morals or welfare in its present condition and use.”
As defined by S.L.B. 23-3, the “central area of Saipan” extends from American Memorial Park in Garapan to the Atkins Kroll intersection in San Jose.
The former La Fiesta Mall in San Roque, which shut down in 2004, is seen in this 2013 photo.
