Q&A: Carson City leadership discusses water, roads (with video)

Carson City Mayor Bob Crowell and City Manager Nick Marano recently sat down with the Nevada Appeal to discuss two big issues for the city: water and streets.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. The entire video discussion is available online at www.nevavdaappeal.com

Q: We’ve had a wet winter, but the state is still in drought. Could you talk about the state of the water supply for Carson City?

Mayor Bob Crowell: First of all just let me say that Carson City, through some great planning that happened early on, has got sufficient water both in terms of its capacity and its availability to meet the benchmarks set forth in the growth management ordinance. Currently we use about 60 percent of the water that is allotted to us. If you add up all the developments that are out there, Lompa, (Vintage at Kings Canyon), everything approved or not approved, that’s about 3,500 units. We have more than sufficient water and delivery capability to meet that. It’s important, though, to remember that we have a growth management ordinance and that currently says that we can have 650 units for each of the next two years, 2016 and 2017. That ordinance is reviewed every year by the Planning Commission. So if you wanted to divide it out, even with the 3,500 residential units even remotely contemplated in this community, at 650 units a year, that’s eight years minimum to build that out.

Q: Can you explain the growth management ordinance?

Crowell: The ordinance is, I believe, based on a 3 percent growth rate each year, and it’s broken down between residential units and commercial units each year, what’s allotted.

City Manager Nick Marano: If you look at the two-year life of the growth management ordinance, the city staff during the review process takes everything into consideration, from the forecast from the state demographer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the federal level and we track them to come up with as accurate a forecast of growth as we can. But then city staff reviews what our existing capacity is in terms of fire, in terms of sheriff, in terms of water, in terms of sewer and that is where the numbers that the Mayor spoke about come from.

Q: Can you talk about the water supply?

Marano: Even in the driest year, last year for example, there’s sufficient water flow in the Carson River that recharges our ground-based water systems. So the amount of water that is available not only for current but for future growth in Carson City is more than adequate. The city has invested a lot of money in expanding our water system and increasing the capacity for us to deliver as well as produce potable water. The north-south inter-tie that connects Carson City with the town of Minden, that’s a great supply of water for us. It allows us to blend some of our ground-based wells. Many folks saw the work this winter on Washington Street. We basically have two systems right now, one on the west side, one on the east side, and that east-west connector that ran up Washington Street is going to connect the two systems. That will give the city much better capability to move water around, especially in drought years where we may have to shut wells down on the east side, for example, and move water from west to east or vice versa.

Crowell: When you talk about drought, I sometimes get, well, what are you doing, how come you’re asking us to conserve if we’ve got all this water and you’ve got all this development going on. Last year we asked to voluntarily conserve 10 percent, and I think we did the same thing the year before. My rationale for asking folks to conserve is that, yes, we have sufficient water rights and potable, clean water here in Carson City, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that water is a natural resource and it doesn’t hurt to conserve a natural resource no matter what it is.

Q: Are you going to be asking people to conserve again this summer?

Crowell: I haven’t had that drill with the city manager or staff. It’s a wet year and that’s great, but who knows how long this drought is going last. I get questions about why are you raising my rates if I’m conserving water, every time I conserve my water rate goes up. The answer to that is in this community, as far as I’m concerned, we’re not going to raise rates to take care of any revenue shortfall that may occur from conservation efforts. In 2013, we put the water rates together, we developed a five-year water rate plan that was designed to cover the capital improvements we believe were absolutely necessary for our system and for our community to have an excellent quality of life. Along with the capital improvements it has certain pay as you go build-up in a fund. If water revenues come in less than what we project, my suggestion is and I know our staff is looking at that as well, is to ease off on the aggressiveness on the timing of those. So rates will move under that five-year plan, but there will be no change to that five-year plan, at least in my opinion.

Q: It’s only the financial goals you would adjust, not the capital improvements or the rates?

Marano: There’s a total of five different categories of reserves, but each one has a target. At the end of that five-year rate plan, the city was supposed to have reached all those targets. I believe that’s where the policy decision could come in, where the board would extend the amount of time for us to reach each one of those required goals instead of raising rates. I want to make sure people understand, that (raising rates) is not on the table. We’re not considering or looking at that.

Q: Is the city still acquiring water rights?

Crowell: Not actively. Nick mentioned the north-south inter-tie. Sometimes I’m asked what do you think are one of the bigger things the city has done. My answer to that is it may not sound sexy, but the north-south inter-tie has been contemplated for years between Douglas County, Minden and Carson City and we never had the ability to do it for a lot of reasons, some of it was we had difficulties between counties because we had who was building where and who’s going to put car dealerships there. When I became mayor, and it’s not just because of me, we sat down with our surrounding counties and said we’ve got to stop competing on dollars, all we’re doing is putting dollars in developers’ pockets. We should compete on quality of growth, quality of life.

Q: What do you see the city’s role in not just the amount of growth but the type of growth?

Crowell: The fundamental part of that is the master plan and that was redone in 2006 with extensive community outreach about what kind of community did we want to have. Now we’ve turned this corner, and now we see development come back in this area. So, now we want to understand and know what our community told us with respect to our master plan. Landowners have a right to develop their property as long as they comply with the master plan and I personally believe they have an obligation to do quality work where it’s compatible with the area that surrounds the development.

Q: What will city do to deal with funding for streets?

Marano: We’re going to collect probably about $2.3 million this year in fuel tax revenue and most of that will go directly into street maintenance projects. We’ve got a couple new initiatives that we just started this month. We’ve contracted out to do a wide crack repair program. We’ve done parts of Arrowhead and we’re proceeding in the northern part of the city. We’ll be swinging into the Silver Oak area shortly. Some of the funding for that came from the board decision last year to put additional general fund revenue into streets maintenance. We’ve also contracted out the second part program, it’s a new street patching program. That’s underway as well. We’ve got a long way to go. There is a structural funding shortfall between what we do collect in terms of revenue from the gas tax and what it costs to maintain all the streets. If you look at your typical residential development it pays anywhere from 60 to 70 cents on the dollar of what it actually costs the city to maintain all the streets, sidewalks, curbs and gutters. We’re looking for creative methods to not only come up with a better system but to prioritize it. Clark County has what it calls TRAC, a traffic advisory council, that’s comprised of local residents and city staff. We’ve got a big database of all the streets in Carson City and every year we update the conditions of all the roads. The model will then look at what’s our available funding level and recommend what the priority should be in terms of doing street and road maintenance. We’re going to open that up as they have in Clark County for greater public involvement, public participation, greater public transparency. We’re going to call it Traffic, not to be cute. Patrick Pittenger, the city’s transportation director, is going to take an item to next month’s RTC, the Regional Transportation Commission, meeting where he’s going to look for their approval to put together a citizens forum so that as our model produces what the model thinks should be the priority of maintenance, we’re then going to have a panel of local residents go through and give us their thoughts and we’ll take their input.

Crowell: Are our streets good? No. Are they better than some of our surrounding counties? No. Our streets are average, they’re probably mediocre, but mediocre is not good enough. We want to be the showcase of the state of Nevada here, we’re the capital, we want to be the face of the state.