In my opinion, right now my biggest concern is that certain council members want to all but shut down city hall with budget and staff cuts in an attempt to balance the general budget and absorb the Water Treatment Plant Bond Payments all in one big cut.  The truth is that the city had built up a huge cash reserve (OVER $12 Million) when times were good.  It was placed in a Local Government Investment Pool and has earned millions of dollars of interest.  It took us months to find that pool of money after the departure of our former Treasurer.  None of the former city council members that I have asked, including our former Mayor, knew that this much money was there.  It raises my eye brows, but none the less, I’m glad it is there.  There are still those who say it isn’t there and they are wrong and it is all being brought to light at this time, including showing where and when the money came from, which was during the time period that growth in this city was booming.  This proves the point that “good development” does pay for itself and then some.  Show me a city that isn’t growing and I’ll show you a city that is dying.  Fernley did grow and I’m glad that this money was salted away during that time to get us through what we are going through now.

            Right now through budget cuts our staff has presented a General Fund Tentative Budget that is balance but is not enough in the black, without further cuts.  Whereas, the Water Enterprise Fund is down to 2.3 Million in the red after making the Water Treatment Plant Bond payment, down from over 3.5 Million.  This means that we have some time before more drastic cuts have to be made if development does not return.  

            I’m not for doing nothing though, God knows that I’ve been working behind the scenes looking for ways to cover this deficit, because we can’t squander this fund on bond interest payments and then have it be gone.  We need to save this money for repairing infrastructure in the future.  We need to keep trying to find ways to solve the shortage in our bond payments.  We have assets like water rights that we are trying to find a way to lease, that alone could solve the biggest portion of our shortage.  We also want the Federal Government to back our bond with a letter of credit, since it was an Unfunded Federal Mandate that got us into this mess in the first place.

            The ONLY permanent solution to our debt problem is to remained dressed for success and be ready for when development starts up again.  And it WILL!  Fernley has got too much going for it not to.  I believe we will see some major announcements in the coming months that will mean good jobs, building permits and hook-up fees. 

            We can not close down or privatize our Community Development Department as was suggested last night by Councilmen Parsons and Chase.  That would be a critical error and would cripple the only department that can accommodate development and bring back prosperity to Fernley.  We have no chance of recovery if we turn out the lights and hide under the desk, as that will cause even further decline in revenues.