By MARK WAITE

PVT

With the Nye County Sheriff’s Office color guard presenting the flag, county commissioners began a meeting for the first time in their new meeting room in the county administration building on the Calvada Eye.

The only other piece of pomp and circumstance was the cutting of a ribbon by Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis.

While county offices are still in the trailer next door, the county received a temporary certificate of occupancy to use the meeting room. The public notice of the agenda items was for a meeting at 2100 E. Walt Williams Drive.

The carpeting still had that new smell as interested visitors walked in the entrance way and peeked around the corner for the first time at the meeting room. People with business before the county commission relaxed in 202 auditorium-style chairs that elevated as a person walked back in the room, instead of the movable chairs at the Bob Ruud Community Center, the meeting place since the 1960s.

At first Commissioner Joni Eastley, who participated in the meeting by video conference from Tonopah with commissioner Lorinda Wichman, complained there was no audio in Tonopah. It was quickly rectified by technicians.

Eastley and Wichman were easily visible by members of the audience on two large, pull-down screens on both sides of the commissioners podium.

KPVM-TV owner Vern Van Winkle said he was telecasting the meeting live, but a couple of county commissioners’ microphones weren’t working.

When meeting gadfly Ed Fox got up to speak under public comment, he was told to back off from the microphone. It was no longer necessary for speakers to practically swallow the microphone as they did at the Bob Ruud Center.

After setting aside $2 million from the Payment Equal to Taxes for a new Pahrump county administration building, commissioners decided to raze the existing building on the Calvada Eye which was built as a sales office by Preferred Equities Corporation in the 1970s. They contracted with Pac-Van Inc. last August for modular buildings which were shipped and assembled on site. It was difficult to believe the buildings were modular.

Nye County Manager Rick Osborne thanked the various parties who played a role in the construction.: Pac-Van, Charles Abbott and Associates, which is contracted to run the county building and safety department, Public Works Director Dave Fanning and his department, the Nye County Planning Department and county administration staff.

Osborne said the county was able to hold the meeting in the new meeting room after an ad hoc committee on zoning suggested changes to the issuance of temporary certificates of occupancy.

“Our building we’re in was a recipient of a temporary certificate of occupancy, not the first one that we’ve issued, but among the first,” Osborne said.