{"id":5847,"date":"2010-07-19T11:53:16","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T18:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/2010\/07\/19\/consolidation-consideration-in-washoe-county\/"},"modified":"2010-07-28T10:07:27","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T17:07:27","slug":"consolidation-consideration-in-washoe-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/consolidation-consideration-in-washoe-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Consolidation Consideration in Washoe County"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Jim Clark)<\/em> – Last week Washoe County issued a press release announcing an advisory ballot question for the November election asking county voters if they would support consolidation of Washoe County and the City of Reno if the merger could be shown to improve services or reduce costs.<\/p>\n

Local media reported that the Sparks City Council had previously voted not to participate in any such merger. The proposal was championed by Incline\u2019s Commissioner John Breternetz and at first appeared headed for defeat. Commissioner Kitty Jung opposed the motion because Sparks excluded itself from consideration and Commissioner Bonnie Weber said she opposes consolidation because her constituents are opposed to it. <\/p>\n

As the colloquy dragged on both Jung and Weber did a turn-about and ended up voting for it as did Commissioner Bob Larkin. Commission Chair David Humke voted against the motion saying that he favors merging specific functions but opposes a full merger because it is opposed by his constituents. The measure passed 4 to 1.<\/p>\n

The news brought back memories of Reno\u2019s proposal in 2002 to unincorporate and add their 7 council members to the Washoe Board of County Commissioners. Then as now Sparks wanted no part of it. <\/p>\n

One Reno city councilperson was heard to say that Incline property taxes would immediately be increased to the statutory maximum. Locals reactivated the Independent Incline Committee to oppose the plot and it began to lose steam. However, just when we thought it was dead, the following year when the legislature convened the City of Reno surreptitiously requested a bill which would permit it to annex non-contiguous areas (such as, in most locals\u2019 view, Incline\/Crystal Bay which hold 13% of the county\u2019s assessed valuation but only 2% of its voters).<\/p>\n

So is this latest proposal a revival of earlier Anschluss attempts by Reno or is this to open the door to real economies and efficiencies in government? <\/p>\n

Incline\u2019s former Commissioner, Jim Galloway, called to express an opinion that this proposal could make the Incline Tax Revolt look like chump change. He said that the appropriate way to do this would be for Reno to first file for municipal bankruptcy to deal with its crushing $619 million debt load and to restructure some overly generous public employee contracts. . . otherwise the entire county will inherit Reno\u2019s financial woes. <\/p>\n

Then, he suggested, voters in the unincorporated county and Sparks should insist that any new additional county commissioners represent specific districts instead of being elected at large. He said that if possible the ballot question should require independent approvals by voters of Sparks, Reno and county areas. <\/p>\n

Proponent John Breternitz advises that the legislature strongly favors consolidation and that the advisory vote would let legislators know what the electorate thinks. He added that there is an agreement concerning Reno\u2019s debt in a working draft of the detailed plans being formulated. With respect to the charge that the ballot question language would give a blank check to Reno if it passes he responded that voters should be given the most direct and comprehensible language possible when the county asks them to express their wishes on the subject.<\/p>\n

The City of Sparks may exclude itself from being merged but Sparks taxpayers could still be impacted as much as unincorporated county taxpayers since they are still in Washoe County. <\/p>\n

Only 100 or so days to the election. Inline\/Crystal Bay voters should watch developments carefully. <\/p>\n

(Jim Clark is President of Republican Advocates, a vice chair of the Washoe County GOP and a member of the Nevada GOP Central Committee. He can be reached at tahoesbjc@aol.com)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Jim Clark) – Last week Washoe County issued a press release announcing an advisory ballot question for the November election asking county voters if they would support consolidation of Washoe County and the City of Reno if the merger could be shown to improve services or reduce costs. Local media reported that the Sparks City […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5856,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847\/revisions\/5856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}