ST. CROIX — In a one-hour interview with The Virgin Islands Consortium conducted last Friday, Governor Kenneth Mapp spoke on a myriad of subjects and answered a variety of questions posed by Ernice Gilbert, and The Consortium’s website and Facebook users.
The governor broke news as well, including a new complex to be built here that would house the Supreme Court and Legislature. He made known that come Tuesday, he would start the process of announcing pay increases to some government employees, and said that the partnership between the Virgin Islands Police Department and the New York Police Department would soon start bearing fruit.
The chief executive also said that while the 1,000 job campaign promise hadn’t been fully kept, over 800 job vacancies were made available during the fiscal year 2015-16 budget, and stated that his administration would begin an ad campaign to make sure the openings were publicized and filled.
Looking back on his first year in office, the governor said he had no regrets. Not for the Estate Nazareth mansion scandal and living at the Ritz-Carlton; decisions that costed the government hundreds of thousands of dollars, or credit card spending that was heavily criticized as lavish at a time when the government was in dire need of finances.
Mr. Mapp highlighted the ArcLight/GVI agreement to reopen HOVENSA as an oil storage facility, providing residents with tax refunds that they were owed for multiple years, the approval of the GARVEE bonds that will see a great portion of the territory’s roads being reconstructed, and working diligently to receive over $30 million in federal dollars as high marks for his administration in its first year in office.
And looking ahead, the governor told us that the best is yet to come. Below, the full interview.
Tags: governor kennneth mapp, interview
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