V&T Re-con Commission Delegates Operations to...

No. 21 -- VIRGINIA AND TRUCKEE RAILWAY -- Nevada Railroad Reconstruction Chronicles

V&T Re-con Commission Hand off Operations to the Tourism Board!

First a little summary. In the past the Gray's REAL Virginia and Truckee Railroad has come to an agreement with the Re-con folks to run their last train of the day on the new tracks as far as Overman Pit (and last year down to Scales in American Flat). The V&TRR also ran a couple special trains for the Commission as far as the Frehner Pit (Road and Highway Builders) in Mound House.

I have limited visibility into this years process, but after months of back and forth earlier this year, the V&TRR and the Commission's reps were unable to come to an agreement on a track use agreement for this year.

As of now, the V&TRR is not running on the Commission's track. The main hitch in the agreement, to my understanding, was that the Commission wanted to make the Gray's V&TRR responsible for ALL maintenance costs on the new track, including potential damage that the Gray's could never cause.

The real costs of inspecting and maintaining the track could reach over $100,000 per year, which the Grays understandably didn't want to pay just to run a few trains per year.

The Commission's reps, Project Head Ken Dorr and Attorney Michael Rowe, made possibly over $10,000 by drawing out the negotiations that failed.

NOW FOR THE PRESENT ....

More recently, Dwight Millard is now the Chairman of the V&T Commission AND the Chairman of the Carson City Convention and Visitor's (Polit)Buro (CCCVB). He has overseen the process where the Commission has delegated operational responsbility to the CCCVB. I will not take more than this sentence to say that the CCCVB has ZERO railroad operations experience. Commission Project Lackey Kevin Ray made a presentation in June to the CCCVB saying some interesting reasons why the Commission was handing off operations to the CCCVB.

Kevins main point was that the Commission has too many members to come to an agreement amongst themselves on what to do about operations. There is a long backstory behind this I won't get into here. What I will ask, if the Commission can agree to spend $40,000,000, why can't they agree on operations?

Having said that, what the CCCVB is going to do is strike an agreement with the V&TRR on track operations, leaving responsbility for maintenance and inspections with the Commission!!!

So while the Commission spent much moolah on Ken Dorr and Mike Rowe insisting that the Gray's pay for maintenance, only to fail to come up with an agreement, now the Commission has decided to pay for all maintenance costs so a third party (CCCVB) can interject themselves in the process and make a deal with the Grays so the Grays don't have to pay maintenance.

Everyone could have been saved a lot of trouble if this approach was tried directly by the Commission. But wait, the lawyers and the lackeys haven't quite made enough money on this yet. Now, as announced at the July 10 meeting of the Commission, attorney Mike Rowe is now hard at work again negotiating with the CCCVB's rep, who I assume is also an attorney!

Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians only begins to describe this boondoggle. On top of Ken Dorr, Mike Rowe and the CCCVB rep, the Carson City DA is also involved in writing this contract. This shows a point I've learned over the years, that private sector efforts are always more efficient than public sector efforts. A private company might retain an attorney to review an agreement, but in the public sector the Carson DA and possibly NDOT have to do their own layer of review. No wonder it takes forever to get anything done!

Oh, and by the way, the CCCVB just asked the V&T Commission for up to $25,000 to pay for a weekend of operations, including the booze train. The booze train is the VIP train that will run Friday, August 14, for all the special people who hardly lifted a finger to get this all done. What they did do is completely fail to convince the Carson City voters to provide further support for this project.

What they did do was rely on un-approved sales taxes, room taxes and federal funds to spend $40 million. That $40 million gets the project about halfway done, when the original project budget was a total of $20 million INCLUDING $10 million for a trainset and $10 million for total construction costs.

Harry Reid is proud!