Carson City Visitors Bureau may get back taxes from Ormsby House

Former Ormsby House owner Barry Silverton has offered to pay $3,000 in long-overdue room taxes he owes the Carson City Convention and Visitors' Bureau.

But Silverton owes $6,700 in room taxes for December 1996 and there's no guarantee the visitor bureau's directors will accept his settlement.

"If he's offering $3,000, he still owes us $3,700 in public money," said Don Quilici, the bureau's chairman. "I think we have a responsibility to pursue the remaining amount and legal costs."

It cost the bureau at least $1,500 in legal fees to track down Silverton in Los Angeles and serve him with a bill, said Candy Duncan, the bureau's executive director.

Duncan said she was leaning toward recommending that the bureau's board of directors accept the settlement when the board meets on Monday.

Quilici believes it's a bad precedent to let Silverton off with paying less than half of the total due.

"He's been hard to find," Quilici said. "Now that we have him, we have an interesting scenario shaping up."

Silverton bought the closed-down Ormsby House in February 1995 but defaulted on a loan in January 1997 and the next month sought bankruptcy protection. making it the second time the Ormsby House was in bankruptcy in four years. Silverton lost the hotel/casino to foreclosure in September 1997.

Silverton's failure to submit his monthly room taxes coincided with the loan default.

Most of the Visitors Bureau's budget comes from room tax. The Silverton amount is not large but giving up on it could give other lodging properties the idea not to pay their taxes, Quilici and Duncan said.

"The board felt they had an obligation to collect the funds because it's public money," Duncan said.

The last complete fiscal year, 1998-99, brought in $772,000 in room tax. This year may reach $800,000.

The Visitors Bureau board on Monday will also start discussing whether the bureau should staff the visitors center on weekends. The visitors center is operated by the Carson City Area Chamber of Commerce, which keeps the center closed on weekends.

"We have a different vision of what a visitors center should be," Duncan said.

The chamber and visitors bureau share the same building but have had years of touchy relations regarding the visitors center. For a while, the bureau paid the chamber to keep the center open on weekends.

"This time they seem to be willing to allow us to have the visitor center on Saturdays and Sundays and put our own staff in there and set our own hours," Duncan said. "If you're trying to be a tourism community, you need to have a facility to answer tourist questions when they are here. Our research shows that the majority of tourists are here on weekends."

Larry Osborne, the chamber's executive vice president, said his organization is willing to let the Visitors Bureau run the center on weekends as long as its staff is familiar with the chamber's relocation packets and willing to ring up sales from the gift shop.

"We told them if they are concerned that we are not open on weekends and they want to open it and put a staff person in there that's OK with us," Osborne said. "The always have been reluctant to fund (weekend visitor center hours)."

Duncan said she will propose using about half of the remaining $10,000 she has this fiscal year in the discretionary advertising fund. Future funding is undetermined.