Puerto Rico Oversight Board to Hold First Island Meeting Far From the Crowds

The Puerto Rico Oversight Board's first island meeting will be far from population centers and be invitation only.

The board announced its first island meeting would be at 8:30 a.m. Atlantic Standard Time, Friday on the northeast tip of Puerto Rico, about an hour's drive from capital city San Juan. In the colder months of the year Puerto Rico is an hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

The meeting will be at the El Conquistador Business Meeting Facilities at 1000 El Conquistador Ave., Fajardo. While it has a Fajardo address, the spot is four miles from downtown Fajardo, a city of 37,000. The facility is part of a Waldorf-Astoria Resort and is next to a golf course and the Atlantic Ocean.

Attendance is by invitation only, according to a statement from the board. The meeting will be streamed online at www.oversightboard.pr.gov. A press conference will follow the meeting.

The board, created under the Puerto Rico Enforcement, Management and Economic Stability Act to oversee the local government's efforts to improve the island's economy and to restructure the debt, was originally expected to meet on Monday. The board has been working on security with the island's police force, according to a spokesman for the force.

On Aug. 31 demonstrators in Puerto Rico managed a disrupt a conference on PROMESA in San Juan. Though the conference's sessions were held, most of the attendees were blocked from entering by demonstrators who had surrounded the conference hotel. Protesters vandalized police vans and threw rocks. Protestors have also frequently demonstrated in front of the federal courthouse in San Juan against the federal imposition of an oversight board.

The board met twice in New York City, with both meetings interrupted repeatedly by audience protests.

Among the topics on the agenda are: a presentation by Conway MacKenzie Inc. on the government's liquidity; a presentation by the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority; public testimony on Puerto Rico's proposed fiscal plan; and the creation of procedures to approve transactions of the board's "covered entities."

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Puerto Rico
MORE FROM BOND BUYER