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April 3: Detective Vivianne Newton is appointed Deputy Chief of Police for St. John.
April 3: U.S. District Court Judge Curtis Gomez rules that the V.I. government must pay the Government Employeesâ Retirement System $63,143,506 â including more than $3 million in interest alone â for nearly two decades worth of unpaid employer contributions.
April 4: The territory records its first death related to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
April 5: St. Croix native Tim Duncan is named for induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
April 6: Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. expands his order closing beach bars and restaurants to include the beaches as well.
The V.I. Police Department has been awarded more than $17 million in federal funds to reimburse emergency work performed after hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
The $17,451,154 award comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agencyâs Public Assistance Program, according to a statement from the V.I. Office of Disaster Recovery.
âWith this reimbursement, the men and women of the Virgin Islands Police Department can continue its business of protecting and serving our community,â said V.I. Police Commissioner Trevor Velinor in the statement. âWe are grateful for this resource and will continue to protect and serve.â
After the storms, V.I. police officers led patrols and participated in search and rescue, conducted traffic and crowd control and monitored curfews in an effort to reduce immediate threats to life, public health, security and safety, according to the statement.
In order for the territory to remove itself from a federal mandate that requires it to seek an approval every time it draws down recovery funds, the V.I. government must first rectify a bevy of payment errors made by local agencies shortly after hurricanes Irma and Maria.
If left unfixed, the errors could cost the territory millions.
The errors were discovered by a federal audit that examined the territoryâs recovery project payments in fiscal year 2018. When released in October 2019, the findings showed a sweeping lack of supporting documentation for various transactions.
Collectively, this accumulated to roughly $519 million in âpotential debtâ owed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.