Nugget Project: It's about the money

There are enough nuggets buried inside the Nevada Appeal's follow-up story today on the Carson City Center Project — aka Nugget Project — to keep heads in this town spinning for a week.

The story (sorry, it's behind the wall) starts out talking about reaction to the news that Carson City Library Director Sara Jones is asking the Library Board to make a recommendation to the Carson City Board of Supervisors to put the issue on the ballot.

Today's story quotes Jones saying this:

“We want the public to tell us what they think (about placing the project on the ballot), but funding it is an area that's up to the supervisors.”

That's curious because the supervisors already decided how to fund the city's $23.8 million share of the project last September when it voted to move forward. The board decided then to use money coming from a hike in landfill fees to fund the project (along with the money coming into the redevelopment fund) instead of a 1/8 cent sales tax increase that had been proposed earlier. The rest of the project was slated to be paid for with private donations.

Further on in today's story, we get another clue, this time from Supervisor Shelly Aldean. Here is her quote:

“I'd rather see their recommendation in final form before commenting, but I suspect it would mean asking the voters for some sales tax as a funding source.”

The story then goes on to mention a 1/4 cent sales tax. Here is an indirect quote from Aldean:

If the City Center Project were to be put to a vote and approved with a 1/4-cent sales-tax funding mechanism, there would be a more money available to move ahead with construction, she said.

Whoa. We just went from a project that was half-funded by private sources and didn't require any tax increases, to one that may require double the sales tax request the board had turned down in September. In fact, it was Aldean who led the charge to NOT use sales tax to fund the project, saying it would be better for the city to keep that in reserve for other needs.

So what changed? I have been trying unsuccessfully for two weeks to contact the person in charge of the private fundraising for this project to get an update on how that effort it going. But it seems this latest development may be a clue as to that progress, that it's not going well. Certainly the petition drive didn't help that effort.

This development does shed some light on why project supporters like Jones and former supervisor Robin Williamson suddenly changed their minds on putting the project up for a vote. Here I thought it was just the political futility of trying to fight the petition effort that started up in February to put a question on the ballot to stop the public funding of the project.

The following is a quote from Williamson in yesterday's story:

“We'll need to make sure that if we go to the voters, we'll be able to meet the financial needs, but that's up to the Board of Supervisors."

That makes better sense now that we know what "financial needs" she is talking about.

It now looks like the ballot question project supporters are seeking has more to do with the funding than the politics surround the petition effort. I suspect next week's Library Board meeting may end up setting an attendance record from people eager to find out what's going on.