Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels: A good day not just for Carson businesses

The Nevada Appeal’s Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels feature recognizes achievements from the capital region and, then warranted, points out other acts that missed the mark.

SILVER DOLLAR: Not one, but two Carson City businesses had their grand openings Thursday: Paradise Salon Spa Wellness, which formerly was Hair Studio and Spear Me, and Rue 21, a clothing store geared toward young people. The openings came one day after Lupita’s, a Mexican restaurant in the Carson Shopping Center, had its first day of business. They came four days before Monday’s soft opening for Sportsman’s Warehouse at the Carson Mall. The headline on Friday’s front page read, “A good day for Carson businesses.” It’s also good news for our city’s economy.

WOODEN NICKEL: Washoe County’s emergency manager, Aaron Kenneston, shared some unfortunate news this past week: federal flood insurance is about to become more expensive in Nevada and elsewhere. The prime culprits are Superstorm Sandy, which battered the East Coast in October 2012, and Hurricane Katrina, which hit the New Orleans area in August 2005. President Obama signed a bill that will offer some relief, but policyholders still face steep and repeated increases. We empathize with the regions hit by those natural disasters, but it’s unfortunate we have to feel financial pain from them here.

SILVER DOLLAR: The Enterprisers, a local high school robotics team, joined with teams from Portland, Ore., to take first place in the West Super-Regionals robot-performance competition in Sacramento recently. Team members, who hail from Virginia City and Reno, advanced to the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in St. Louis, set for April 23-26. They will face more than 120 other teams from around the world, and they’re part of the only team from Nevada to quality. The team is looking for sponsors for the trip; to help, email coach Patti Poston at pposton@mm.st.

WOODEN NICKEL: Surprise, surprise. Monthly fees to sustain the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange are set to increase next year partly because of low enrollment, marking the latest bit of discouraging news surrounding a blunder-laden rollout. The increase amount depends on projected enrollments for 2015, and given that only about 23,000 people have paid for coverage so far through the exchange, it’s a stretch to forecast a sudden uptick.