BEATTY -- The Beatty Town Advisory Board managed to achieve unanimity on a number of issues at its April 22 meeting.

The board voted to hire a contractor to pour the cement pads and install the long-awaited park benches and trash containers that will complement the antique street lights.

Teresa Sullivan earlier raised the question whether the board had the authority to enter into a contract with Valley Electric Association regarding street lights, so that and the agreement to hire a contractor were approved pending a ruling from Nye County.

The same is true of the board's decision to hire Beatty Graphics SM Productions to develop and maintain a town Web site. They also wanted a ruling on whether they had to have another quote in the case of an unsolicited offer.

The board seemed well impressed with Suzy McCoy's work on the site, although Sullivan said she felt the town was "behind the times" in having a site.

Bert Bertram said he would sign over the beattynv.org domain name to the town to be used for the site.

Sullivan asked the board to approach the county commissioners about additional downtown beautification money. She said several residents had asked her about it.

Mike Lasorsa said the county was in tough economic times and was cutting back on employee medical benefits and other items, and it was not a good time to go asking for money.

Resident Jerry Hammes said it didn't hurt to ask, and former board member Joannie Jarvis said Commissioner Joni Eastley had told her there was PETT money set aside for such projects.

Lasorsa was concerned about the lack of progress on the town square. He said the town needs to get it moving and at least get the perimeter secured, as people are using it for parking and camping.

The board passed Sullivan's motion to approach the county for a matching grant of $10,000 for downtown beautification -- specifically for storefront beautification. Lasorsa did not want to exclude the town square from the request but was assured by Bertram it would be placed on the agenda in the future.

This and all the other motions passed 4-0, with member LaRene Younghans absent.

The only contention of the evening arose over the approval of vouchers from the Beatty Chamber of Commerce.

Town Secretary Janet Rogers originally suggested the chamber's vouchers be pulled because of missing signatures. Chamber representatives Debbie Baker and Ann Marchand rose to point out there were two signatures on the vouchers in question.

Lasorsa said he could not understand why Sullivan was comfortable signing these vouchers when she had been uncomfortable in the past signing his vouchers from the fire department. She explained that these had two signatures as she had requested.

Lasorsa also said he had been called to task for some vouchers that were three months old, and some of the ones in the chamber's packet were six months old. The Chamber representatives said they had to wait for enough bills to come in from their event to total the $6,500 previously approved by the board.

Lasorsa joined the unanimous vote to approve all vouchers but said, "It won't be done this way any more," to which Sullivan responded, "Then we need to have the procedures in writing so everyone knows what they have to do."

Board member Joe White said an agenda item with his name on it -- to discuss writing a letter of support to the Bureau of Land Management for the Reward Mine was a mistake.

White said he had written his own personal letter of support, but does not approve of the practice of the board writing letters of support for "special interests" and called the practice "dishonest." He said he would never sign such a letter for anything.