City accepts redevelopment plan

Supervisors approved a management plan for redevelopment Thursday night but also asked for more oversight after years of seeing it ran without an official policy.

The economic development office must get approval from the Carson City Board of Supervisors for incentives of more than $50,000 supporting business rent, land purchases start-up costs, building improvements and special projects under the plan requested by the board of supervisors and written by Joe McCarthy, city economic development manager.

The plan says incentives have to help improve the city while detailing how much the city can pay in incentives, usually not more than $100,000. This plan drops the previous unofficial and sometimes ignored requirement that an incentive be necessary for a project to happen.

The city had worked on a redevelopment plan for years but never had agreed on one before. This often made supervisors ask whether a incentive was appropriate.

McCarthy's plan, however, didn't go far enough in answering questions, some supervisors said.

Supervisor Pete Livermore said the economic development office needs to be more transparent with its spending.

City policy calls for all departments to get approval from supervisors on professional contracts of more than $25,000, but McCarthy acknowledged spending more than that several times without bringing the contracts to supervisors.

The economic development office, however, Livermore said, should have to follow the existing spending rules like other departments.

"This is not new," he said.

McCarthy's plan didn't say anything about retaining the businesses the city already has, either, Mayor Marv Teixeira said.

Supervisors added a redevelopment area on the south side of the city just for the purpose of retaining businesses, Supervisor Richard Staub said.

"You lose one Mervyn's," Teixeira said, "you have to bust your tail a long time to make up for the loss."

Both Teixeira and Staub also warned that large downtown and south side redevelopment areas could take money away from the city's general fund and hurt services. Money for redevelopment comes from part of the property taxes that property owners in redevelopment areas pay.

"I'm going to tell you, some of this stuff I'll tell you, does not make sense," Teixeira said.

• Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.