Oh, one more thing, Randy. You said a sales tax on the "involved counties."

The involved counties are Washoe, Carson City, Storey, Lyon and Douglas. Only Carson City and Storey are funding the project with sales taxes. The other three counties DO NOT have sales or room taxes funding the project.

In fact, to the best of my knowledge, only Washoe has ponied up $250,000. Aside from some permit waivers, Lyon has given nothing, and Douglas has given nothing.

Perhaps if the Commission followed the state law that triggers county funding they would see more from Washoe, Douglas and Lyon. As it is, the Commission ignores the "proportional benefit" clause in state law, thereby avoiding a trigger that would "force" funding.

Thanks,

Jim Lohse

To me a couple of things are being missed in this.

I plan on riding the V&T someday. I bet many of the people hear do as well.

Most of the people who will ride the V&T will be from out of state. Well if people from all over the US are going to ride it, having a bit of federal tax dollars going to it does not seem a bad deal.

It would, in the end, come down to, no Fed dollars, no V&T.

The other thing that I feel is overlooked is the big picture.

This is such a small part of the federal budget that it comes down to tiddly winks.

All of the earmarks are less then 1 percent of the federal budget.

Lets look at the other end of the picture. After Social Security (the third rail of American politics). The Defense budget (which the conservative party is always trying to add to) and interest on the federal debt. Everything else is less than 15% of the budget.

That 15% includes the FAA and all the money they spend on airports and air traffic control. The FRA, the FDA, the interstate highways, the USDA, NASA, Amtrak, NOAA.

I hope you get the picture.

A couple of million here and there is not going to change the big picture. It will not amount to a whole cent in your weekly paycheck.

So why do you care?

If this is just because "Government Should not be doing this kind of thing", well....History shows that governments have always done just this kind of thing.

If it bugs you that much move someplace where there are lower taxes then the US. Oh yea, that would mean moving to a third world country.

If you are going to come ride the V&T, wouldn't it be nice if your ticket price paid back the bond that was sold to build the railroad?

I was just putting a few facts up to correct the statement that the lions share of money came from locals.

I certainly did not expect a general rant saying "why should I care." Generally this board avoids politics altogether. I am sorry you chose to take it to such a simplified level, where up till now the conversation was very specific to the issue.

So my only response, as someone who pays mostly corporate income tax, is that I could go to ANY other country, in Europe, in Asia, anywhere in the developed and undeveloped world, and wind up paying lower taxes.

Let's try to keep this board above the simplistic "conservative vs. liberal" we can find elsewhere, like on TO.

Thanks for your comments,

Jim

PS I added the following, it might break the rules, but here goes. The reason I felt compelled to correct Randy Gustafson's false claims that the bulk of V&T money comes from locals?

He's a V&T project consultant who has benefitted from federal project funds over the last fifteen years. Why would someone who directly benefits from project monies wish to mis-characterize their source? He has to know better.

Now that I have said such a controversial thing, I will leave the board and I expect this comment to be deleted.

I must have missed the liberal / conservative thing somewhere. Perhaps I'm just reading what was written as stated without imposing a personal slant.

Seems to me the reconstruction financing should be somewhere in the public record, and available for all to see. Possibly even one of the professional accountants or attorneys on this board could translate it into English for the rest of us.

Bonds aren't always repaid, nor do all stocks increase in value. Local business will reap the rewards of economic development projects in their locality, so why shouldn't they also contribute to their creation? Seems to me that there's an opportunity now to finish the construction at lower recession-time cost, only to reap higher rewards after the economy rebounds, IF the management and tourism development folks play their cards right - and card playing is the basis of the local economy, so hopefully there are real experts working on this. Could be wrong, only looking on from a distance.

I'd much rather see an initiative to building something like this in my backyard than a lot of what is being done. Each to their own.

Disclosure: I have no dog in this fight and have NEVER worked for the reconstruction project in any way, shape or form. I did one small mechanical steam consultation job for Tom Gray once, but that's a completely different entity. So there.

BTW, I have known Randy and the formerly Stone Consulting people now for not quite 20 years and have occasionally crossed paths with them professionally, but more often unofficially at conventions, etc and NEVER found them other than forthright and accurate as they knew how to be in their statements.

dave

We've worked on and off for the Commission over the last 15 years or so on various specific detail items. But the project itself went over to local control a long time ago, and I have no quarrel with that. The project engineering and management has been locally controlled since about 1997. Dealing with the local property owners on the original ROW has been an unenviable task, and you certainly don't have to be an 'insider' to read about it.

So as whatever federal grants involved are going to construction, and we've never been in that part. We've helped them find material & contract resources on request, but that's as close to the source as that gets. I don't take offense and see no reason for deletion, Jim, but I'll also explain how I see the math, and I'm sure you'll correct me! This is a very legitimate discussion and strikes at the very heart of this thread - and the problem - that is being discussed.

I did some more research myself (as anyone can online) and found that apparent grant discussed back in 2005 along with the bond issue money, but the minutes of the meetings reflect that they weren't sure how much it would actually work out to be in the end - and if you've ever worked with TEA-21 money, particularly on a construction project, that's not always that easy to answer. Unless you see the agreement and what it's covering and if it ever actually got reimbusements charged to it, you don't really know what they 'got' and how long the agreement is in force. I also won't argue that sometimes trying to follow the money yourself can be maddening, but every grant I've worked with is equally maddening by regulations, audit trails, and accountability. TEA-21 in most states is just painful to do.

I think most people are also stunned how long these things take to actually pay out anything and the length of time involved. The TIP through 2012 (publicly posted) has (had?) them budgeted for $8.5 m out of what looks like $250M budget, and NN is in there as well.

Here in our own state, a very publicized TEA-21 grant that we helped secure for the EBT several years ago came very much unglued later over the valuation of the match and never happened. Just a caution on the differences between the 'credit' that politicians will take for securing a grant and what actually happens to real money later. The last I worked with the Commission on that several years ago, the flows were being financed almost exclusively from the bonding of the sales tax revenue - I think at that time it was $15M and was 'real'. By the time it is finally done the sales tax bonding vs. eventual grant totals may come out differently. I do know that more grants were always being pursued and still are and they need to address how they are actually going to finish it. When you are building anything and you start measuring it in years into decades, it never gets cheaper.

I'll also agree that Nevada is one of the toughest anti-tax states I've ever seen. When the first referendum was put out, I remember that there were two others on the ballot with it - one for a local initiative on an animal shelter and something else to do with services for the elderly. The railroad actually came out slightly better on the vote than animals or old people, but not much better, and was narrowly defeated in Carson, passed in Storey. That speaks to the public mood on everything, not just the railroad.

The Commission is a public agency, and meetings is covered by the paper and minutes (warts and all) are out there for everybody to admire on the web. I think very few such projects are as open as this one has been, or as regularly covered in the press. That's where I follow it.

The very best part of the railroad is the lower canyon - and that's the part not finished. Because of development pressure over the last 15 years (to say nothing of the relocation of the I395 highway around Carson City) the depot location that was closer to town was simply no longer available. But like all difficult decisions in this project as it has evolved, in the end it is still a local decision on how to keep going. At the same time that I'll say that in all the states I've worked in, very few take tourism as seriously as Nevada, have any better databases for visitation, tax revenue or impacts. It's way, way more evolved than most due to decades and decades of the gaming industry. Because of that, they consider spending on tourism as legitimate a government-funded activity as most states would consider promoting heavy industry. That particular attitude certainly varies from state to state, but in Nevada that is at the root of it. And not everybody agrees with that for sure.