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December 2, 2005
FINANCIAL CATASTROPHE Senior center on its last legKUVER WILL ASK COUNTY TO INFUSE FUNDING DESPERATELY NEEDED TO FEED ELDERLY POOR
By PHILLIP GOMEZ
"It's several thousand dollars" that's needed, said a distraught Walt Kuver, who lately has been on the bridge steering the senior center into more hopeful, calmer currents. "We're quite a bit in debt - a lot in debt," Kuver corrected himself. "It's a $10,000 problem in immediate need," he then clarified. "At last it's coming out onto the table and into the public eye, and perhaps to some resolution," Kuver said at the end of a somber interview conducted on Tuesday at The Pahrump Valley Times offices. Kuver joined the Pahrump Senior Center's board of directors last August, just before its disintegration from attrition that left him the sole board member. While not wanting to sound alarmist, Kuver left no doubt that the situation was critical, even drastic, for Pahrump's poorer senior population - a large demographic in the town's makeup. The gritty details of the senior center's financial catastrophe only get worse: "Circumstances of (their) own making have put the Pahrump Senior Center deeply in debt (to) the amount of $328,000," begins Kuver's written report to the Board of Nye County Commissioners pleading the senior center's case for assistance. "To avoid closure of the center or (the) return of its assets and operating responsibility back to the county, Pahrump Senior Center Inc., the private nonprofit corporation operating the center, is requesting (that) Nye County ... rescue it financially and subsidize its operation as it reorganizes itself into a stable condition." Four specific actions are being requested of the county commissioners at Tuesday's board meeting in Tonopah. Kuver's report in the commissioners' backup material, available on the county's Web site, www.nyecounty.net, summarizes the financial impact to the county, the history of senior center operations leading to its debts and proposed strategies in a "recovery plan" for the senior center. The scope of the plan is sobering: € Approval of the sale of the land on which the building sits and its lease back to Pahrump Senior Center Inc., subject to a reverter clause; or, € Approval of $122,000 for payment of past-due bills ($62,000) for operational expenses and cash advances ($60,000) on an escrow fund. € Approval of up to $71,000 for payment in arrears to the architectural firm that in 2003-04 designed the now aborted state-of-the-art senior center building, once planned for property that was to be donated near The Pahrump Nugget Hotel and Gambling Hall. The county's proposed payment of the debt is to be subject to an accounting of senior center funds already paid to the architectural firm and potential negotiation of a debt settlement. € Approval of a temporary subsidy of $10,000 per month for operation of the senior center for a period of seven months, in order to give the non-profit time to recover under the terms of its plan. Kuver cited as an example of "the senior center's mismanagement" the nonpayment of payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service for three months. "I mean, holy cow, suppliers might cut off food supplies and gas for the buses - it's that bad," exclaimed Kuver. The county's options in dealing with Pahrump Senior Center Inc.'s financial difficulties include taking it back and placing it under the administrative wing of Paula King, who runs the county's other scattered senior centers elsewhere in Nye County. "I don't want it to close," Kuver said. The center provides Pahrump seniors with valued services, including weekday congregant and homebound meals and transportation for grocery shopping and trips to Las Vegas for medical visits. "It's a dial-a-ride service," he said. "You call the day before." The charge is $7 bus fare for local service calls and $17 for trips to Las Vegas. Some 250 seniors depend on the service for their transportation needs each week, Kuver said. "So we're running a restaurant and a bus company," he said flatly, "and the restaurant has home delivery." |
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