Guy W. Farmer: Former mayors question City Center Project

After Carson Nugget President Steve Neighbors accused me of basing my opposition to the Nugget Bailout Project (aka the City Center Project) on "conjecture and false innuendo" in last Tuesday's Nevada Appeal, I asked former mayors Ray Masayko and Marv Teixeira for their opinions on this dubious project. Both Masayko and Teixeira, who were political rivals in recent years, raised serious questions about the

$80 million project, which would put nearly $40 million tax dollars at risk during an economic recession and impose an additional one-eighth-cent sales tax.

"The imposition of an additional sales tax without a vote of the people is bad public policy," Masayko told me in an interview. "Not consulting the voters ... on such a major, controversial issue is flat wrong."

"I have lived 48 years in Carson City and cannot remember a more divisive and controversial project," Teixeira said in a separate interview. "If and when this is all sorted out this project should go to the ballot box ... as an advisory vote. Anything less would be an insult to the taxpayers of this fine community."

And speaking of insults, Neighbors, a self-described "outsider" from Idaho, insulted past and present civic leaders by expressing his disgust with the Carson City "power structure" before asserting that those of us who disagree with him base our opinions on "pretended expertise, false charges, deaf ears, or party slogans." Wow! That's quite an indictment of our community and its duly elected representatives.

Neighbors is the most visible face of a small, unelected group of people who think they know what's best for the majority of Carson City voters and taxpayers, which may be why they didn't put an advisory question on the 2012 ballot.

Masayko, Teixeira and I are in good company. Supervisor candidate Rob Joiner, a certified city planner, called the Nugget Project "one of the poorest designs for an urban center project I've ever seen," and veteran businessman Clark Russell, who owns the Carson Station, opined as follows: "As it has been described and presented to the city, it's the most ridiculous economic business project I've ever seen."

Some of us old-timers remember the late Nugget owners Hop and Howard Adams as nice guys who spent most of their time at home in Boise, Idaho. And no one had heard of Mae Adams' (Hop's widow) utopian "vision" for Carson City until Neighbors came to town.

To me, Neighbors sounds more and more like Prof. Harold Hill, the "Music Man" who tried to sell band instruments to all the kids in town even though he didn't know anything about music. Buyers beware.

• Guy W. Farmer has been a Carson City resident for nearly 50 years.