FEFFMARK WAITE / PVT Members of the Shadow Mountain Community Players put on a Wild West melodrama "Headed South from the Great White North" at the Saddle West Banquet Room last Saturday, part of the festivities for the Wild West Extravaganza. The play parodied life in an Old West Canadian hotel. Advertisement

A plan to install emergency generators at the Pahrump Fire Station at Highway 160 and the Bob Ruud Community Center was tabled at the last Pahrump Town Board meeting.

The plan was originally proposed by Vice Chairman John McDonald after several power outages left Pahrumpians in the dark last winter.

McDonald pointed out at a meeting earlier this year that should there be a regionwide power loss, local residents would not be able to pump water from wells or even gasoline for their cars.

The vice chairman suggested installing a permanent generator at the fire station and a portable generator at the community center.

Board Member Dan Sprouse, liaison to the Emergency Management Homeland Security advisory board, agreed to take McDonald's suggestion to that board to research it's feasibility.

The cost of the idea, however, is daunting.

For both the generators, the engineering and design cost would be $82,000.

That could be cut in half, however, should the town decide to eliminate the community center generator. But that hefty price tag doesn't even include the future costs of construction (estimated to be approximately $80,000), purchasing the generators or the actual wiring of them.

The agreement would pay for WillDan to furnish plans, specifications, and a bid package.

Ironically, however, the main voice of contention against the agreement was McDonald's. He said he felt as though the town should go out to bid for an engineer.

"I am not an electrical engineer, or anything of the sort. However, $82,000 for the design of the installation of two standby generators strikes me as excessive," McDonald said.

Town Manager Dave Richards responded by reminding the board that the town had a general service agreement with WillDan so the town wouldn't have to go out to bid for every project that came up.

"We've already determined that WillDan is the engineering firm that we would like to do business with based on their qualification," Richards explained.

Chairman Laurayne Murray added that the agreement with WillDan was necessary because it was so difficult for the town to get any bids on its projects.

In the past, Murray explained, this had caused the town to lose payment equal to taxes, or PETT money, granted to the town from the county when projects budgeted remained uncompleted because no one came forward to place bids for them.

McDonald, however, remained unconvinced.

"I haven't read the contract with WillDan lately, but I don't think it includes giving them a blank check where they can charge whatever they want for the services that they're going to deliver," McDonald maintained.

He pointed out that if the cost was for designing a large building, it would be one thing, but he couldn't understand such a large fee just to design two generators next to already-existing structures.

Sprouse interjected that the cost was elevated by the power itself.

"Installing the generator is not the big bulk of the cost," Sprouse explained. "The big bulk of the cost is being able to transfer the power, when the power drops, from the existing power to the standby power source. That's where the money comes from."

He added that designing how exactly that power would be transferred would be no small feat.

Ironically, the question of going out to bid was not what ultimately tabled the idea.

When the question of how the cost of the project could be reduced again arose, Clerk Don Rust motioned to table the item until there was more clarification on how much it would cost to install generators at both locations as opposed to just the fire station.