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After nearly an hour of public comment, the Pahrump Town Board approved a resolution requesting Nye County commissioners put an advisory question of whether to incorporate on the November ballot.

The resolution passed on a 3 to 1 vote with board member Dan Sprouse voting against it. Board member Nicole Shupp was absent.

Sprouse, prior to the public comment, had also expressed misgivings about the lack of information.

"You want to know what are you getting out of it, and two, are my taxes going up," Sprouse said. "Based on the report that I have here, I don't really have a comprehensive idea. I have a model, but I don't have a comprehensive idea as to what that's going to entail."

"I guess to ask for a ballot question ... we have to inform the public as to here's your pros and here's your cons," he said. "We're really going to have to have some numbers and see is this feasible."

Board Member Don Rust strongly rebutted Sprouse's concerns.

"There have been five public meetings on this issue," Rust said. "Of course not everyone has every answer to every question.

"Are you going to get answers to specific amounts of money?" Rust said. "No. The incorporation ballot issue was whether or not we can go to the state assembly and say, 'Our voters want to incorporate.' Then the state assembly says, 'Fine, we'll work out the details.' That's all the ballot is."

Despite all the discussion, the county commissioners already are set to decide on a resolution putting the question on the ballot which was requested earlier this month by the Incorporate Pahrump Committee.

Although the question on the agenda only pertained to placing the non-binding question on the ballot, several people voiced their opinion on incorporation in general.

Bill Verbeck, of the Incorporation Advisory Board, first explained the findings and recommendations of the study to the large crowd.

"Whether we incorporate or not, this community is growing," Verbeck said. "The theme of incorporation is really the consolidation of municipal services."

He went on to explain that the study represented only the first part of a long and arduous process and the board was simply recommending continuing it by offering the advisory ballot question.

"As we got out to the community and had town halls, there were two questions that struck me," Verbeck said. "And one was, 'Are we ready for this?'

"I would have to say in a lot of regards, we are not," Verbeck said. "After nine months, we've learned just how little we know about incorporation. Have we answered a few questions? Absolutely."

The advisory board, he explained, was recommending incorporation by special charter, a document he said would require various people with specific expertise in several fields to be completed properly.

When it came down to the money, undoubtedly the foremost issue in the majority of attendees minds, Verbeck explained the preliminary budget (which gave the model city of Pahrump in the report an operating budget of about $24 million) included in the report was simply an estimation based on current town revenues and county allocations.

"I don't think you want to call this a budget, at best it's projected funds," Verbeck said. He qualified the projections were based on "an ideal world" where memorandums of understanding with the county would allocate funding from them for some public services.

"You can say the funds aren't there, well the funds are there," Verbeck said. "The question is how bad do we want this as a town and is the county or the town hall willing to work towards this objective."

Despite Verbeck's reiteration of this point several times throughout the meeting, many of the comments from the public expressed misgivings about money matters.

Harley Kulkin, a county commissioner candidate, advocated splitting the county in the interest of "fiscal responsibility."

"Where's the buildings? Some of this stuff you're going to have contract out," Kulkin said. "We need fiscal responsibility. This is not it."

However, Kulkin did say he supported putting the question on the ballot, although he added, "I guarantee it'll just fail again."

Dave Stevens, who admitted to being "100 percent against incorporation," summarized general concerns more succinctly: "I'm worried about the money in my pocket. You're going to take all my money away!"

Bob Little approached the podium and used Fernley (the last city to incorporate in Nevada) as a dire warning against the measure.

Little said the "proportionate share law" under which the county would give a new city of Pahrump funding for services, had been revoked in 1999 and pointed out the six-year-old city was fiscally strapped.

"I did support incorporation three times, but I can't support it anymore," Little said.

Although Little did not specify the NRS he was referring to, Warner Ambrose, budget analyst for the Department of Taxation's local government finance department, said in an e-mail the county is legally obligated to a limited degree to fund services it previously provided for the town.

Ambrose cited NRS 354.5987, which he said was enacted by the 1989 state legislature and last amended during the 1997 session. That law is still in effect.

According to Ambrose, the amount allocated by the county for services they previously funded for the town (hypothetically now a city) would have to be agreed upon by both parties and approved by the Department of Taxation.

There is no limit, upper or lower, to the amount allocated and it would only be for the first year in which the city provides the services.

Little, however, added that he felt the advisory board, which was formed under the auspices of being neutral on the question and simply gathering information about it, had in fact come to support incorporation.

"What I found when I attended one of the meetings was a group of people who were in favor of incorporation and trying to find ways to justify it," Little said.

Bill Garlough advocated voting on the issue, but said he doubted the county would be allocating the 75 percent of their budget cited in the study to a city of Pahrump's public safety and law enforcement.

"If I was on the county, it would be hard to get 15 percent out of me let alone 75 percent," Garlough said. "I say two years from now, form a commission, and then come to the people with all the facts."

Not everyone was convinced incorporation wasn't fiscally feasible.

Donald Cox explained he has lived in both Mesquite (one of the cities the advisory board studied) and Pahrump.

"I've heard Mesquite brought up here tonight," Cox said. "Mesquite's a thriving city because of incorporation."

"The money's there," he said. "I don't care what they say, the money's here. It can be done, just incorporate.

"This town isn't growing the way it should be growing after all this time," Cox said. "You go to Mesquite, you see responsible growth. You come to Pahrump, I don't see that. I blame everybody that lives here for that, including myself."

He added that the incorporation was about "self rule" and that Pahrump wouldn't have "to subsidize Tonopah anymore."

Charlie Gronda, former town board member who was involved in the 2000 effort to incorporate, also attempted to ease people's minds.

"Some of these people are putting the cart before the horse," Gronda said. "You still have five months to get all the figures and the facts. And some of the facts you won't know until it goes through the legislature."