Land management office has a significant workload in the management of Guam’s resources

BY MAUREEN N. MARATITA
Journal Staff

Behind a quiet window at the Guam Department of Land Management in the ITC building in Tamuning, the Guam Land Use Commission’s Office of Planning is a hive of activity.

Celine L. Cruz, chief planner for the department, said of her office, “We are the technical reviewers of Guam land applications. We process and administrate in our office; we initial, accept and review for completement.” Applications are then run through the statutory requirement process before the commission makes decisions on them, she said.

The process has changed through the years, Cruz said.

Celine L. Cruz is the chief planner at the Guam Department of Land Management. Photo by Maureen N. Maratita

“In the past it was strictly applications that went to the Land Use Commission under a different program — called the Summary Zone Change program — where the director of Land Management had the authority to change a zone,” she said. Those applications were assigned an application number.

“But we had all these different application numbers and applications for Land Use Commission and applications for zone changes, and applications for zoning conformance…” Cruz said. Different systems tracked different applications, she said.
Cruz became chief planner in 2021 after her appointment in an acting capacity in 2020, and working as a planner before that.

She set about consolidation “of one spreadsheet that shows us the tracking of everything that’s going on for the fiscal year. We just needed to be a little bit more efficient and not bounce around between different matrices to track certain things,” she said. “We have one log where all the requests that come through — whether it be an application or a written request for a determination of zoning,” she said. All personnel were then able to access information, she said.

On average, before the changes, the planning office saw about 60 to 70 applications a year. (See Data Bank on Page 13.) According to Pinpoint Guam, from March 4, 2020 to July 24, 2025 the commission approved 124 applications. “Now that number is a bit higher, because we added application numbers to things like zone change through public law,” she said. Previously those zone changes were simply a request. “We wanted to have some reference to a file, so we pushed that in around 2022. In 2021 we started talking about it — renumerating some of our applications,” Cruz said.

The GLUC entertains several types of application. Cruz said these include zone changes, zone variances, and conditional uses. Zone variances can be for height, for setback, and subdivision variances, as well as applications for final certification.
Signage for applications have their own requirements.

“The sign has to say ‘Notice to Rezone,’ by law. The sign has to say, ‘Notice to Rezone,’ but it could be an application for a variance. There’s details on the sign that give that application description. … It’s prescribed. It has to be a white background, red letters. The part that says ‘Notice to Rezone, has to be 12 inches,” Cruz said. Not all parts of the sign have details on requirements, she said. Overall, Cruz said, “There’s a lot more activity in terms of conditional uses and variances than there are zone changes with the Land Use Commission.”

For conditional uses, every zone designation in Guam has a list of permitted uses and has conditional uses, Cruz said. Applicants would just have to identify the conditial use, she said. “But they’re very specific.” By example, she said, “You present your plan that says, ‘I want to put a feed store on my R-1 (residential) zone.’ … Then you just have to describe the dimension, what would be the ingress and the egress if you have a project.” What an applicant needs to address is listed in the zoning law, she said. Anything else that affects a project should be included, she said.

The variances that an applicant has to justify are very specific, Cruz said. These include that “the objectives are not contrary to the objectives of the[land use] master plan, that there’s undue hardship on the property owner, … that it doesn’t impact or injure the public’s right to untrammeled use of the beach area — a lot of times that’s applicable.” Variances include setbacks.

Conditional uses are linked to land variances, she said. “We see something that is not outright permitted or permitted conditionally for that particular zone. For instance, for a height variance, Cruz said, “The law on Guam says there’s no building on Guam – except for Agana – that can be more than three stories, 30 feet.” In Agana, a building can be up to 75 feet, six stories,” she said. “Most hotel properties need to get that height variance.”

Tumon has its own set of development rules, she said. “They operate under the hotel and resort rules and regulations, and their setbacks are a little different, their height requirements are a little different and their densities are different.”
There are still changes to be made, she said.

“There are gaps in enforcement. The planning division — we don’t do enforcement. Our enforcement arm would be the Department of Public Works.” If DPW receives a complaint that department contacts the planning division. “They ask us about the regulations; they ask us to clarify for them the regulations. In recent times, we’ve built up a stronger relationship with them so that we can help each other through this process.”

Cruz said the relationships across Government of Guam agencies also enables the planning division to contact an applicant, if relevant, to also assist the applicant before an application goes to a relevant agency.
The board of the land commission has also seen improvement.

Conchita Bathan is CEO of Core Tech International and was a commissioner. “Core Tech had a couple of applications,” Cruz said, which did therefore not make the agenda.

In fiscal 2019, the Guam Land Use Commission had four meetings and three commissioners, she said. “You needed three commissioners for a quorum. A lot of the projects that were coming through, the commissioners either had to recuse themselves; they had some conflict, and the project couldn’t move forward.”

In fiscal 2020, the commission had five meetings with its three commissioners, and in fiscal 2021, 13 meetings with its then four commissioners. “This was the transition with the new Leon Guerrero Tenorio administration,” Cruz said. “We closed out (fiscal) 2025 with 13 meetings and five commissioners,” she said.

At present there are five commissioners. They are Chairwoman Anita Borja Enriquez, president of the University of Guam; Leilani R. Flores, Ronald C. Pangilinan, Gerald P. Yingling, and Joseph A. Rios, all serving terms until various dates in 2030.

In 2019, Cruz said, “One of our issues was there was a bottleneck here at Land Management. We were short of staff and most applications that went before the Land Use Commission required a public hearing. We had one person doing the research determining the property owners. We had a land agent supervisor that did that research, but he retired in 2022, and we hadn’t had that position filled.” That position is now filled.

Currently, the department has six planners, seven with Cruz and one administrative staff member. “We need more administrative help,” Cruz said, to ensure that reports are timely. “Our priority is meeting the timelines in these applications. The applications have statutory guidelines to them.” Cruz is happy with the staff. “I have a really great team. They share their knowledge and their information. We communicate very well among each other,” she said.

Applications come from both businesses and individuals, she said. The planning department also has a list of consultants and architects and engineers that have left their names with the department. “We put together this list to make it easy for people to find them,” she said. “We update it whenever we need to.” A lot of times landowners hire people to represent them through the entire process, she said.

From the initial acceptance of an application, there is a preliminary review. “We make sure that it meets all the requirements of the application before we even officially accept it,” Cruz said. “When we do accept it, we say, ‘Come in, pay the fees, provide 32 copies of that application.’” The first eight to 10 copies go to the first round of review of the application. “The Application Review Committee is made up mainly of infrastructure, permitting agencies in the Government of Guam — Guam Power Authority, Guam Waterworks Authority, Guam EPA, Department of Parks and Recreation, Department of Public Works, Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics and Plans. We meet every first and third Thursday of the month,” she said.

From that meeting, every member has 30 days to provide input, Cruz said. The 30 days is intertwined with a public meeting that Land Management calls according to law. “But we have to have all the official position statements from the members,” she said.
“Then we leave it with the mayor and the Municipal Planning Council. Public Law 33-129 amended the process that basically said that for each municipality that has a Guam Land Use application, you have to have two separate meetings and then you have to provide a Municipal Planning Council resolution,” Cruz said. These requirements were in accordance with the Open Government Law, she said.

In recent times, receiving the village resolution is where the delay has been, she said.

Cruz said she’s not completely happy with the process. “But I feel it’s something that we need to do,” she said.

Holding meetings virtually has helped, she said. “That has changed the game for a lot of meetings.” Some villages see more development and are more familiar with the process, she said. After the resolution is received, the department packages all documents, which go to the commission together with a staff report, so the commission can make a decision at the monthly public meetings.

“There are some changes that could happen easily to close those gaps,” Cruz said, since her department and GLUC are guided by legislation. “The Guam Land Commission is also the Guam Sea Shore Protection Commission; it’s also the Guam-Hybrid Land Use Commission. There are too many seashore protection commission applications.”

Unapproved structures can happen within the seashore reserve “not so much within the water, but the actual shoreline,” Cruz recognized. The area between the highwater mark and 35 feet inland from that is the seashore reserve on Guam public lands. “That would be the one thing that we need to help strengthen,” she said. “There’s no indicator of who the enforcer of the seashore violations would be.”

When the planning commission reviews an application, it’s members share their concerns. Cruz says, “If there’s an opportunity to put something in their that addresses these concerns, if the applicant hasn’t already …, “that’s when positive changes with a wider benefit can be made, she said.

As to planning councils in the village, Cruz said their inception is a positive development.

“One of the things I like to draw out is that homeowners are going to be impacted by this project.” Additionally, she said, as far as the continuous flooding in Guam, “Flooding will continue if everything stays the same.” New developments can help a village with such issues, she said — not as part of the planning process necessarily, but to help individuals and villages. “A lot of times when they come in, these developments are going to be good neighbors.” mbj

Land management office has a significant workload in the management of Guam’s resources