The Value Proposition

Rational Carsonites carefully deploy their finite personal capital for maximum value and tangible results. Conversely, our city's officials serially ignore the value proposition, favoring redundant, feel-good projects lacking objective analysis, justification and worthwhile benefits. Core civic services and infrastructure maintenance suffer.

The recent initiative to raise sales taxes, projected to saddle taxpayers with $15 million of additional long-term debt, is largely ($13 million) targeted for more indoor basketball courts and arterial street beautification projects.

Meanwhile, the street surfaces face an overwhelming backlog of deferred maintenance. Were there a genuine city/school district partnership, existing indoor gymnasiums would be opened to the public after school adjourns rather than building a duplicative, multi-million dollar facility.

One piece of skewed logic was recently offered by elected and appointed officials to justify this new tax. Since there is allegedly insufficient money to completely replace our long-ignored animal shelter or a problem-laden sewage treatment plant, we will spend on discretionary items instead. It is akin to spending the grocery money on lottery tickets.

Traffic circles, bike lanes, sidewalks and gyms will not attract new businesses to Carson City. Businesses do not risk capital opening new operations when there is no economic justification. We need manufacturing, research and development and professional services jobs for economic renaissance. New retail stores and restaurants generate few family-wage jobs.

The final portion of the proposed sales tax increase is imprudently intended to only partially fund ($2 million of $4 million needed) a complete replacement of the embarrassing city animal shelter. However, why should the well-meaning volunteers of CASI (Carson Animal Services Initiative) be required to raise the balance? We don't expect charitable contributions will fund the fire or sheriff's departments. One elected official publicly and absurdly questioned why the city should even operate an animal shelter, ignoring state statutes, community health, safety considerations, and humane treatment of creatures Man domesticated.

The doomed City Center project eerily parallels the proposed new animal shelter. With City Center, library mavens obstinately refused to objectively and rigorously research viable alternatives., e.g. co-locating/consolidation in the cavernous, underused Nevada State Library building or renovating an existing, vacant facility. A value case could not be made for tripling library space in an internet age of e-books and e-readers. Voters resoundingly defeated this frivolous project.

Similarly, the city cavalierly paid for a new animal shelter's architectural plans when it will take 10-15 years of fundraising at the current rate before the project could proceed, excluding interim inflation. In the meantime, abandoned/stressed/ill animals will continue to be imprisoned in substandard conditions unacceptable for foster children or even incarcerated felons. There is no plan to implement a widespread spay/neuter program, thereby minimizing the endless waves of unwanted animals at the source.

Carson City officials need to think strategically by cost effectively using existing resources.

Why not demolish the irretrievable dog kennel and establish a modular one on the existing site? Another modular facility could be brought in for office space and the existing one reconfigured to shelter more cats.

Why not recycle one of the existing, vacant buildings blighting Carson City as a replacement shelter?

Despite over three years of planning expenditures, city officials have failed to analyze viable alternatives to an extravagant new building, while also failing to make a convincing case to citizens that only a glitzy new shelter is appropriate.

Given the irrational uses planned for most of the sales tax increase, how could Carson City otherwise fund urgent animal shelter improvements?

The health and human services department has three division managers for disease prevention when one should suffice.

Our fire department has 15 management personnel for just 55 rank-and-file firefighters. Total annual compensation for those managers reaches up to $300,000 each; many even receive substantial overtime pay, something routinely denied managers elsewhere given their higher base salaries and the reasonable expectation that professionals will devote whatever time is necessary to accomplish their jobs.

Most city departments have deputy directors, appropriate in a much larger city, but of questionable value given Carson's relatively modest size.

No tangible value has been presented as justification for these partial examples of waste and inefficiency.

Close to 80% of Carson City's operating budget is consumed by personnel expense. What hasn't the Board of Supervisors performed a top to bottom analysis of city functions and carved out the waste? The upcoming annual budget process would be an opportune moment to question projects, staffing and priorities before routinely approving another year's spending. Let's get back to funding only core city services and stop trying to be all things to all people.

By exercising true leadership and creativity rather than perpetuating a dysfunctional status quo, our city officials can liberate money from existing revenues for neglected infrastructure and to re-establish reserve funds for the inevitable emergency. The longer Carson City dithers, the more expensive it will be for future generations to rectify past indifference.