Letters to the editor

New pool would be better use of capital funds

When did we start using land sales to refurbish our utilities? We have always used the Utility Fund to do this until now. Our utility rate structure should take care of infrastructure needs for the city’s utility. That, by definition, is what an enterprise fund does.

Mixing funds, as is being suggested, is going to have the city forgoing other capital improvements that would normally come from the capital improvement fund. My favorite is the new swimming pool. We have awaited its arrival for decades. It will bring thousands of people during competitive swimming events in the future.

Those people will keep our town and its merchants alive and provide our children with the opportunity to receive scholarships to colleges in America. We are all concerned about what will happen when an interstate highway bypasses our city. Wake up to the possibility of a new pool.

We get no economic activity from spending capital improvement monies on our utilities. The utility fund should have a reserve close to $6 million in it, as it did when I left the City Council in 1997. What happened to that $6 million that was part of the utility fund in 1997?

A pool will have lasting benefits for Boulder City for years to come. Let’s build a pool instead.

Land sales proceeds are required by charter to be used for capital improvements. A strict definition of the charter would never include using them for the utility improvements that are being suggested in Question No. 1. I wonder about this interpretation of the charter as I read Boulder City ballot Question 1.

Eric Lundgaard

Questions 1, 2 deserve residents’ support

Fellow Boulder City residents and business owners, by the time this goes to print many of you will have already voted at an early voting site, and that is good. As I reviewed the details of the 2014 Boulder City ballot Questions 1 and 2, I remembered some lyrics to an old tune “… go together like the horse and carriage, … you can’t have one without the other.”

I feel that we can’t pass Question 1 without passing Question 2 and vice versa. If either is defeated, we, the residents and businesses of Boulder City, may be putting the reliability of our citywide electrical delivery system in jeopardy. Therefore, as you will see on the circulars, I chose to add my name to the supporters of both Boulder City questions.

Voters please educate yourselves regarding all Nov. 4 ballot questions and then vote your conscience. If you have already voted, thank you, but if you have not, please vote yes on Boulder City Questions 1 and 2.

Harold Begley, 41-year resident

Passing ballot questions will prevent power woes

Boulder City residents have the opportunity to go to the polls and vote yes on ballot Questions 1 and 2. Passage is needed to fund much-needed repairs for our city’s utility infrastructure while helping maintain low utility rates.

We have been very fortunate not to have more outages and problems with our outdated utility system. I’m not willing to take a chance and have it fail during the heat of the summer nor cold of the winter. Are you?

Please vote yes on ballot Questions 1 and 2.

Sylvia Harber

Council needs to remove city attorney from job

It is time for the City Council to suck it up and do its job. There is no one on the council who has not served for at least three years. If any one of them did not know what the job required when they were appointed, they should have figured it out by now.

We hear a lot about the city charter when it authorizes something the council wants to do. When the charter imposes a duty the council wishes to avoid, we hear nothing. Under the charter the council is responsible for appointing, supervising and, when necessary, removing the city attorney from office.

City Attorney Dave Olsen has betrayed the public trust and disgraced both himself and his office. Olsen entered into a stipulated agreement with the Nevada Ethics Commission, or, to put it in plain words, he copped a plea. Part of the deal was for Olsen to admit what he had done. That admission is now a public record.

Olsen knowingly and willfully used his position as city attorney, and information available to him through his office, which was not available to the general public, to aid his son in filing a lawsuit against Henderson and Boulder City, and certain of their employees.

If a city officer or employee acts in furtherance of a conflict of interest it violates Section 1-7-5(A) of the Boulder City code. This is a criminal offense and punishable as a misdemeanor by a fine and/or incarceration.

Section 1-7-6(D) of the Boulder City code further requires that the offending party be removed from office.

There is additionally clear and compelling evidence that Olsen violated the terms and conditions of his employment contract with the city, and particularly, the prohibitions against involving himself in a conflict of interest and taking on a legal matter outside the scope of his work for the city.

It is an outrage that the residents of Boulder City are still paying Olsen’s salary. There is no question as to what Olsen has done, and that raises an even more serious question: Why is it that the City Council has once again done nothing?

Dick Farmer

Nation’s president is a joke

Congratulations to the new president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo.

I thought that was the name of our president.

O.T. Neal