Letter: Carson City’s Sidewalk to Nowhere
Submitted by editor on Wed, 11/06/2013 - 7:35am
With all the deferred infrastructure maintenance in our city, you would expect key projects to receive priority funding. Not so with the relatively new sidewalk in front of city public works facilities on the south side of Butti Way between Fairview and Airport.
This sidewalk serves virtually no one in a given day, probably cost taxpayers upwards of $200,000, and diverted funds from repairing crumbling sidewalks that serve many people.
Some of our city officials have no problem spending $60,000 for a compensation consultant, $25,000 for a golf course consultant and over $100,000 for a new community center sign.
All these seemingly small amounts add up to significant dollars in a fiscal year. At the very least we have city staff and departments that could have accomplished the consulting work internally. Why aren’t we using existing city staff for consulting projects beyond independent financial audits and work requiring highly specialized expertise?
On Thursday, November 7th, the Board of Supervisors considers spending yet more unnecessary consultant money to find a new city manager. The city already has a human resources function with an experienced director. Is this function not capable of conducting a city manager search and saving the taxpayers in the vicinity of $100,000?
Let’s not erect or acquire new public buildings, such as the multi-purpose athletic center (MAC) and the Fireside Lounge. Carson City can’t properly maintain existing infrastructure and has failed to research existing alternatives to the MAC, such as public school gymnasiums, the former Toyota dealership, the former Sak n Save, and in the case of the city library, co-locating with the State Library and Archives.
The next time city government complains ‘it has no money’ to fund essential, not esoteric, services and projects, please remind them about the wisdom of consciously and judiciously spending the money they already have rather than raising taxes and fees.
Fred Voltz
Carson City
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