BEATTY -- The Beatty Town Advisory Board meeting of Sept. 24 was dedicated to ongoing work on the town's area and master plans.

One of the matters discussed was the lack of certainty about the town boundaries. Bert Bertram said he had been unable to find any official establishment of the boundaries. He also pointed out the existing map excluded parts of what he considers downtown Beatty and also had contiguity problems.

Bertram said that it was important to have accurate and official boundaries that can be referenced in the master plan.

Shirley Harlan said when she was a member of the town advisory council in the 1970s, it found even the community center was not in the town boundaries. She said the boundaries were enlarged to include parcels of land owned by people who signed letters of consent to have their property included. She believed the boundaries were revised in the 1980s.

Teresa Sullivan moved the board approach the Nye County Commission to ask the town boundaries be made the same as the taxing district so there would not be any confusion from having two maps.

Some residents wanted to know what the positive and negative impacts of such a move might be; some were concerned it might affect emergency services.

However, Mike Lasorsa said the town's emergency services has agreements with other entities and regularly responds to calls outside the town boundaries.

The board agreed to approach the commissioners about the change and also ask that they be reimbursed if they had to seek outside legal council in the event the district attorney's office were as slow as it has been on other matters.

The board also agreed not to refer to the 2002 Amargosa River Adaptive Management Plan (ARAMP) in their area plan. ARAMP was never adopted by any agency, and Bertram was afraid referring to it in their plan might give it some sort of legitimacy.

David Spicer read a prepared statement about ARAMP, calling it "a massive bureaucratic model" and a "monster." He said it would "create a bureaucracy we can't manage, that is unnecessary, and that we cannot afford."

Spicer said cooperative agreements and actions have modified the situation from what it was when the BLM was talking of creating an 'area of critical concern.'

"We have no need to emergency manage ourselves," he said. He called the plan a "selfish use of an innocent creature" to go after federal money and grants.

Shirley Harlan said, although the plan itself had flaws and no one had ever adopted it, there was useful information in it. The board said they could use the information without referencing the plan.

The remainder of the meeting consisted of a review of planning maps by the board and audience.