TONOPAH -- Nevada JobConnect will have to move out of its offices on the Calvada Eye by March 31 after Nye County commissioners voted Monday to terminate their lease.

Nye County is eyeing the building to house county administration offices and the nuclear waste repository project office.

In a memo to commissioners, Nye County Manager Rick Osborne said the county would save $111,125 per year by not having to lease building space.

The county is paying $5,199 per month to lease office space from Wulfenstein Development Co. for the nuclear waste project office at 1210 E. Basin Ave.; $2,760 per month to lease space for the county administration offices from Provenza Realty at 401 S. Frontage Road; and $1,300 per month to lease property at 1231 E. Basin Ave. from Andy Jordan.

The county administration offices were recently moved from Basin Avenue to Frontage Road into the former natural resources department.

The Nevada JobConnect office opened in a manufactured building on the Calvada Eye in 2005. The Pahrump JobConnect office began operation with $400,000 in seed money from the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board.

Diane Lake, interim center manager of the Pahrump Nevada JobConnect office, said besides the state employment agency, the building houses offices for veterans services, Premier Labor, vocational rehabilitation, rural housing, Pahrump Alliance for Valley Economic Development (PAVED), the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Nevada Partners and the Greater New Jerusalem Family Life Center.

Lake said the lease termination doesn't mean Nevada JobConnect is leaving Pahrump.

"We're not going anywhere. It actually was already in the works to be out of here by June 30. It's just been moved up a few months," Lake said. "We already have some buildings we're looking at. We're going to try to be on 160 or 372, more on a main drag so it's easier for our clients to get here."

The Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce, sponsors of the JobConnect program, stated last summer they reimbursed the county for its $100,000 investment in the building with $145,950 in monthly rents paid from January 2005 through June 2008.

Last July, county commissioners voted to reduce the rent from $3,475 per month to $1 per year for a one-year period, providing there was an accounting of how much funding passes through the job service.

Commissioner Butch Borasky complained the veterans service office was being charged $1,350 per month for office space. Borasky said he was unable to get a reply to a questionnaire given to former Pahrump JobConnect director Victoria Balint inquiring how much money goes into JobConnect and goes through the system.

Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Lucy Ivins said she was informed last week by Commissioner Gary Hollis, the county's liaison to the Nevada Workforce Development Board, the county might terminate the lease.

"So it is not a surprise and we are prepared to keep JobConnect up and running with as little interruption as possible," Ivins said. "I told Gary Hollis his first priority is protecting the taxpayers of this county."

Osborne said under the terms of the lease the county only has to give 30 days notice.

"Commissioners have duties that they have to fulfill and one of them is taking care of the taxpayers' money. We're spending $10,000 per month on space, to me, when we have a building that could be used," Hollis said.

Nye County originally had plans to remodel the Spanish-style Calvada Eye building, formerly the offices of Preferred Equities Corp., and use it for the county administration offices while former apartment buildings nearby would house the nuclear waste repository office.

Those plans were scrapped when construction manager Charles Abbott and Associates suggested it would be cheaper to raze those two buildings since they were below flood level.