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June 2, 2006
Beatty bails out of TV business
By Richard Stephens
For decades, the town has funded translators that broadcast the major network stations from Las Vegas to the community, but times have changed. The decision to discontinue the town's payment for TV signals came at the recommendation of the board's TV committee. Speaking for the committee, Mike Lasorsa said that the recommendation to discontinue the service was based on four factors. First was the cost of replacing the aging and failing translators at an estimated $35,000 apiece and the continuing expense of maintenance. Board member Bert Bertram commented that replacement translators would be obsolete in a few years anyway, when the national standard becomes digital. Second, Lasorsa reported, it has become extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find maintenance engineers willing to work on the town's equipment. Then there is the problem of poor signal. The signal quality has suffered periodically over the years but has deteriorated rapidly since the Nevada Test Site abandoned its participation in the translator relay system. The signal is relayed from a series of remote locations and has always been affected by storms, or simply by winds that can tweak a relaying dish out of alignment. Finally, Lasorsa noted the minimal response it received to its mailing asking for public input on the question of maintaining the service. The committee received only 17 replies, and of those, he said, only three were "bothered" by the possibility of service being discontinued. This is probably because most residents now receive their TV signal via satellite, he suggested. Jim Weeks and Lasorsa also spoke to the board about improvements the cemetery committee would like to make at the town cemetery. They include improving the sprinkling system by increasing the number of watering stations and tying some of the older plots that are watered separately into the system. The committee also wants to install row markers to help visitors locate the plots they are looking for. The trees at the cemetery will also be thinned, and those being removed will be offered to residents for transplanting. The board approved the cemetery committee's plans, with the projects being funded by the cemetery's line-item budget. The board also voted to take advantage of what Commissioner Joni Eastley referred to as a "great deal" to have the airport road paved by the contractor that has been working on the Death Valley Highway. The company has approached the county with an offer to pave the one-and-a-half-mile road for $240,000. This may sound like a lot of money, but Eastley said that the state Department of Transportation had estimated it would cost it $1.1 million to do the job. The contractor is offering the bargain price because it has an excess of high-grade material on-site that it would otherwise have to haul away when the Death Valley job is finished. The money will come out of the town's funds, but with the stipulation that Nye County be asked to reimburse the town half the cost out of the next round of PETT money. Eastley said that the PETT committee had already recommended the project as a priority, and that she was also going to see if NDOT would help with the cost. On another matter, the board did not take a vote in support of or in opposition to the proposal to raise the sales tax rate in the county to fund emergency services. Instead, Chairman Lamar Walters invited individual board members to voice their opinions. Bertram said that he did not feel that a sales tax was the appropriate method to raise taxes for emergency services, but that it should be done through property taxes, particularly since the community most in need of the money was not at its property tax cap as the other communities in the county were. Walters and Marty Brubaker joined Bertram in stating their opposition to the sales tax increase. Kay Handy was the lone supporter. Sarah Willis was not present. The board hit something of a snag in its plans to install antique street lamps downtown. Town secretary Janet Rogers said she had learned that the town would have to apply for an occupancy permit from NDOT, and that, although it is a short form, one of the requirements is for four copies of an engineering plan. The county has offered to help with the necessary mapping, but the town must find someone to help with the engineering. Since it is an electrical engineering project, they board is hoping Valley Electric might be of assistance. |
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