Now that Fernley has been a city for several years, I, as one of the poor, poor, pitiful poor taxpayers would like to ask those elected to represent us in local matters a question.
A while ago it came to my attention that several of our elected officials have made a habit of visiting other cities for the reason of "Fact Finding" and/or Lobbying our state and Federal officials for bennies for this fair city.
This is done on a fairly regular basis and is done at, I hesitate to say this, but I must, city taxpayer expense.
Now these may be legitimate trips and neccessary for the welfare of our city. But they could just as well be "Junkets" which our "leaders" take to go willy-nilly wherever they want on some pretext just because they can for all I know.
So my plaintiff cry to our leaders is this. Could you please, please, let us in on the amount of good these trips have given back to the taxpayers (ie. more water, more commerce, more money etc) with an itemized list of costs incurred to the taxpayers?
For instance, say a trip paid for the over 7 million dollars spent on the new city hall, while the trip total costs had only been $100,000 (this is just a number I threw in, I have no idea what the amount really is), it would be well worth it.
But if the costs were $100,000 (again, just a number) and we have only gotten back chump change or less in return, it may behoove us to re-examine the trips neccesity. And the motivation behind them.
I hope the answer is that we have gotten at least as much as we have spent shuttling our council members and mayors around the country, but regardless, we as taxpayers should know how our money is being spent.
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