TONOPAH -- A request for a motion to place an advisory question on the incorporation of Pahrump on the ballot this November didn't even raise a response from Nye County commissioners Tuesday.

Instead, the sentiment among a gathering of several adamant opponents of the ballot question was clear: Study it some more and vote on it in 2010.

Nye County Manager Ron Williams said the county doesn't have the population where the county commission would be required to appoint committees to draft arguments for and against passage of incorporation.

The deadline is July 21 to get a question on the Nov. 4 ballot, Williams said.

The commissioners rejected a request by the Incorporate Pahrump Committee. The Pahrump Town Board also voted to ask the county commission to place an advisory question on the ballot, which wasn't considered Tuesday.

County Commissioner Joni Eastley said she was advised by Pahrump town board member Don Rust the ballot question would be "more of an opinion poll."

But Dan Schinhofen, a member of the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission, said it would be a vote to force incorporation. He said there are only three months to educate people about what incorporation would mean.

"Once it's voted on by the people, they're misled to believe this is just an advisory question," incorporation opponent Bill Garlough said. "Two years from now, let's get all the facts, let's get all the figures."

John Koenig said if the Pahrump voters approve the ballot question it will go to the state legislature, there would be no second vote by the residents.

"After I go vote, you can tell me if my taxes are going to go up or they're not going to go up. It's kind of like playing slot machines. I don't know what's going to come up on that reel. There's no way, you cannot insert an additional layer of government and not have it cost more," Koenig said.

He said there's no way Nye County is going to give the newly incorporated town of Pahrump 75 percent of their revenues for the sheriff's department and roads.

"The figures that have been put together are not factual. They do not represent what will actually happen," said former Commissioner Patricia Cox. "The true cost of incorporation has not been assessed."

Cox said there's no need to create an additional level of government when the residents can pick up the phone and call their county commissioner. The county doesn't have to subsidize an incorporated city and doesn't have to provide one dime out of the payment equal to taxes for Yucca Mountain, she said.

Sheriff Tony DeMeo said Pahrump isn't being neglected by county government.

"There's no streets paved of gold in Tonopah. Nye County is struggling with the economic situation it's left with because of what's happening around the country," DeMeo said. "The question I have is the fuzzy math or the voodoo math that takes place with the Nye County sheriff's department."

A Pahrump police department doesn't have a lot of duties assigned to the sheriff's office, like the county coroner, DeMeo said.

"Yet they take $9.4 million out of my budget by their math and think they can take that money out of Nye County and run their police department. They also have the assumption Nye County will give them buildings as well," he said.

Bob Little called the study "probably the greatest art of deception document I've ever seen."

Little said if he presented the feasibility study on incorporation to a major corporation, he'd be fired on the spot. "There's no facts, it's just contrived and assumptions," he said.

Little argued a proportionate share law, requiring the county to give Pahrump a share of the expenditures, went away and isn't viable for communities of less than 100,000 population.

Eastley said financial projections in difficult economic times are difficult, and some of the assumptions made were pretty presumptuous.

"I would never cast my vote in the affirmative to reduce the sheriff's budget by 75 percent or (public works director) Samson Yao's budget by 75 percent to provide those revenues to a new city when we still have an 18,000-square-mile county to take care of," Eastley said.

When the incorporation request stated it would allow for control of the community's destiny and resources, Eastley said the town of Pahrump already has a number of powers.

"Right now I don't see anything in the documentation that was provided to me that leads me to believe the town of Pahrump or its leaders are ready to move in that direction," she said.

Eastley suggested the town engage the services of University of Nevada, Reno, specialists Buddy Borden and Tom Harris to perform an independent study of incorporation.

The person who requested the agenda item, Tim Lockinger, didn't speak until after the subject of incorporation was thoroughly trashed. He said the state legislature would have to approve incorporation, it wouldn't be enacted with the ballot question. He offered to debate incorporation with opponents in a public forum in the coming months.

"The purpose of this application today is simply to allow that public debate to happen. It certainly is not up to me to start putting together documents for incorporation if there is not going to be a vote," Lockinger said. "We want the people to decide, not the five or six people who are in this room today."