Officials from 5 area counties evince can-do spirit

Carson City Manager Nancy Paulson addresses the audience during the NNDA’s State of the Counties event in Carson City on Jan. 30, 2025.

Carson City Manager Nancy Paulson addresses the audience during the NNDA’s State of the Counties event in Carson City on Jan. 30, 2025.
Photo by Scott Neuffer.

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What united five leaders from rural Nevada during an event at Casino Fandango on Thursday was affection for their respective communities and a willingness to meet challenges head-on.

The event was the annual State of the Counties hosted by the Northern Nevada Development Authority and sponsored by a host of local businesses and organizations. It included government leaders from Storey, Douglas, Lyon and Mineral counties and Carson City.

“And what I did also find out, going to every single county several times,” said Nevada Lt. Gov. Anthony Stavros, who made a surprise appearance, “is our county commissioners are a huge part of making Nevada a great place to live. We have some great county commissioners and county managers that really focus on local government.

“I used to be on the Las Vegas City Council for 13 years, and I know how important local government is because they are the closest to the people, and they really know what they need in their communities.”

Each county represented Thursday had different needs. Storey County Manager Austin Osborne, for instance, described the “life and death” difference the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center made to the county over the last decade. He pointed to an estimated $15 million in recent tax revenue from the Tesla Gigafactory.

“What does it mean to a county that has a $30 million budget and the capital improvement deferments that we have? It’s life and death,” he said. “It is absolutely essential and critical for our organization.”

Capital improvement needs for the small county include a $25 million jail replacement and $20 million to fix roads, Osborne said. Updating the county’s water system and creating more housing opportunities are also priorities.

“Storey County is more affordable,” he said. “Every time we do a code update, it’s deregulate. We allow tiny houses. We allow small houses… We allow zero setbacks, so you know, in some cities, people complain about you can look through the windows and see your neighbors. In our county, you can climb through the window and see your neighbors.”

Jokes aside, Osborne said the point of a deregulatory environment is to drive down costs and make housing more affordable in the future. Following Osborne, Douglas County Manager Jenifer Davidson said Douglas officials are working on updating the county’s own development code.

“Much like what Austin’s doing. We’re not deregulating to the extent that Austin is. We do have minor setbacks. We’re not climbing through windows here,” she said to laughter. “It’s a long list. It’s a heavy lift, and it's underway right now. I cannot wait to bring it back to the county commission for additional direction and conversation. This is going to be a big one, bigger even, I would say, than a Master Plan update.”

Davidson said Douglas County is also streamlining its permitting process.

“We recently purchased some new software,” she said. “One of the pieces of customer service feedback is it’s not easy to do business in Douglas County. Our permitting process can be cumbersome, and our technology is way behind the times. We heard you, we’re listening, we’re making adjustments — thank you for that feedback.”

Davidson noted some challenges for the county. Like neighboring counties, Douglas needs more money for road maintenance. One slide Davidson shared said the county needs “to identify $6 million per year in additional annual funding to maintain county roads at their current level … and begin to address $50 million in road maintenance backlogs.”

Davidson noted a crisis of confidence people currently have when viewing government’s ability to solve problems.

“In addition, what we’re seeing increasingly in our field is what I’m going to refer to as the paradox of government. Every single one of the issues that is coming to us have two sides of a coin to them. Two complex often opposite perspectives that butt up against each other and create large amounts of conflict for individuals in our field,” she said.

Davidson advised, “But we have to push through this complexity. We have to push through these difficult conversations. Because if we don’t, it can create what they're describing in our field — in public administration — as the calcification of government. It can cause government to fear and to take no action and to remain stagnant and to do nothing. And frankly, that is not an answer.”

Lyon County Manager Andrew Haskin shared information about the county’s many departments and employees that together, across a large landscape, make a functioning local government. The Lyon County library system, for example, has five branches throughout the county, less than 10 full-time employees and 285 volunteers.

“They had over 200,000 visitors this last year,” he said.

Haskin also lauded the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office, with 84 sworn deputies. One slide he shared said the mission of the sheriff’s office is, in part, “protecting our communities against those who choose a life of crime over our quality of life.”

“They (LCSO) were able to decrease their priority one response times for calls by as much as 76 percent,” he said, referring to the Fernley and Silver Springs areas.

Carson City Manager Nancy Paulson touched on the cost of public safety.

“Keeping Carson City safe takes up 63 percent of General Fund expenditures, so $58 million out of the $92 million that we had in expenses for (fiscal year 2024),” she said, adding the costs of the capital’s court system to fire and police costs.

Paulson touted the city’s financial transparency via its Finance at a Glance online portal: carsoncity.finance.socrata.com/#!/dashboard.

“We have heard a lot, especially during the election cycle, that government needs to be more transparent,” she said. “Well, I can tell you that Carson City is literally an open book… You can view in real time every single transaction that goes out of this city including all of our payments to vendors and also our employees and all of their benefits. And we have had this for 10 years. I think we were a pioneer in getting that going. I want to thank the mayor (Lori Bagwell). She was the driving force behind this, and I think she’s probably the biggest user.”

Paulson also mentioned ongoing projects including 210 apartments downtown — a project known as “Altair” — and a nearly $15 million federal grant for various improvements at Mills Park, a space she referred to as Carson’s Central Park.

Kyle Isom, recreation and community development director for Mineral County, was excited about projects in the Hawthorne area as well. He described how tourism is crucial to the small community, exhibiting a can-do spirit between county leaders, residents and partners in the state.

Isom said Mineral County recently hosted its first rodeo in over 30 years, put on a successful festival at Walker Lake and formed the Hawthorne Main Street program. The latter received a grant from the Nevada Governor’s Office on Economic Development that will be used for a new park.

“We’re taking this old, abandoned dirt lot that’s been there for probably 20 years, and we’re going to kind of turn it into a community living room,” he said. “You know, there’s no spot for anyone to kind of hang out on Main Street. We’re just trying to change that.”

Explaining his affection for Mineral County, Isom shared a picture of a rainbow he and his father took “coming back from Fallon one day.”

“To me, this is what represents Mineral County. Anytime I think of it, this is what I imagine. It’s freedom,” he said. “It’s hundreds of miles of OHV trail. It’s barefoot skiing on the lake, launching a boat…”

For information on preserving Walker Lake and restoring its fishery, visit walkerbasin.org.