Guest Column by Concerned Hotelier of Carson City
Prior to the Carson City Convention and Visitors Bureau board voting last Monday to continue running the V&T Railway for an additional three years, Project Coordinator Kevin Ray said this:
“When the commission was put in place, it was never about ticket sales so, I think some people actually look at this a little differently. The train project, No One, No One, would spend forty million dollars if we thought the forty million dollars would be generated by ticket sales, so the commission that put this train in place, the reason the state commission also is very happy to subsidize this train is because the train was only put in place to create tourism to Northern Nevada. So, you’re not looking at this as this can have the ticket sales to cover themselves. We did learn with Polar Express however that we would have been able to cover ourselves if we had that extra car, if we ran that extra weekend. But again, this project is about creating tourism to Northern Nevada, it isn’t about selling tickets, so… The answer is the project does cover, what the project was meant to do. And that is to bring tourism to Northern Nevada and that is why the project was created.”
This is the reason why the local hoteliers are up in arms over this, 4% out of 10% of our transient occupancy tax dollars are forced to directly fund the V&T Railroads Bonds. 1/8 Percent Carson City sales tax also covers other V&T Railroad bonds, which recently had come up short for the June Payment which the CCCVB had to fund. The V&T Railroad Foundation through donations and license plate sales funds the V&T Railroad commission. The Commission then directly funds the V&T Enterprise fund yearly to make the operation break even. The V&T Railroad Foundation is currently not looking to fund the Commission anymore due to some mishandling of funds allocated to a certain use for the commission, but the commission used them for something else.
So now the CCCVB has just approved to run an operation that has yet to break even with subsidized help, and now their subsidized help has run out and Carson City and the CCCVB will be forced to choose yet again in the near future whether or not to hold up the V&T Railroad once more and should we keep putting money into this idea that doesn’t have financial aptitude. Even by the Directors point of view.
