By Nicole Barde
I am combining the two meetings since they were fairly short or were mostly procedural.
The Commissioners meeting is well summarized in County Manager Pat Whitten’s summary which you can find HERE. You can find the Agenda HERE.
The majority of the meeting was taken up with several recognition awards and surprisingly the announced retirements of Fire Chief Gary Hames and Community Development Director Dean Haymore in 2017. This is on the heels of Mike Nevin’s retirement at the end of this month. It was very emotional for those retiring as well as those honoring them throughout the meeting.
The recognitions ranged from Business of the year for Divide Fitness, Partner of the year for USDA and Storey County staff being recognized by USDA for their efforts. Todd Hess was introduced as the new Storey County School District Superintendent and Mike Nevin was recognized and thanked for his over 40 years of service to Storey County. He noted that he has been working for the county since he got out of High School and has served under 19 commissioners and a handful of DA’s during his tenure.
Congratulations to Mike on his retirement and to the other award recipients.
Each of the retirees talked about how the scope of their work had gone from primarily focusing on Virginia City and Gold Hill to a total county wide focus. They were very proud of how well the County has grown to meet the challenges that have come over the last several years. Mike Nevin commented on how it’s no longer about running a small town….that it’s “big business”.
YEP.
Under staff updates Mike Nevin reported that there is going to be a road audit done on all county roads which will be used to develop the capital improvement plan. He also said that the Miners part and VCH gazebo projects were completed.
Pat Whitten reported that the zip code issue passed its first hurdle by passing the House of Representatives. It still needs to pass the Senate. The zip code would be for all of Storey County. Commission Chair Marshall McBride also noted that the zip code change was actually introduced under a Utah bill. Let’s hope this makes it thru….we need the revenues.