By Selwyn Harris

Newly sworn Pahrump Town Board member Bill Dolan is not wasting any time on setting his agenda and conveying his thoughts to fellow board members on town matters.

The board held its first meeting of the new year on Tuesday evening where Dolan told his colleagues he had serious concerns about several consent agenda items, which were approved by board members last month.

The items pertain to a three-year renewal agreement with the company Tritech.com” he queried.

Dolan also said he had issues with what he suggested would be an unnecessary duplication of services as a result of the town’s action.

“The Town of Pahrump wants Gateway Inc., to handle electronic billing and collections. If you review the website for Tritech.com who are listed for items 7 F and H, Tritech.com can do that service as well. Just go to their website and you can see they have been doing this service for many years. I ask for this to come under reconsideration to see if by combining these three contracts into one contract with one company instead of two. There just might be some cost savings for the town of Pahrump and the money saved can be used for other projects under the ambulance fund,” he noted.

Kohbarger, meanwhile, said the issue has been discussed among the board and town staff for quite some time and he believes that local emergency crews need a better system to work with while running calls throughout the valley.

“We have been talking about that for a long time helping out the firefighters with their report writing and making it easier for them to just be able to fill in stuff without using longhand. Anything we can acquire to make people’s jobs run smoother, I will be pushing hard for it and we all think it’s a great idea.”

The town manager also talked about his desire to have the board make a transition from working with paper documents in favor of going entirely electronic in an effort to save the town money in the long run.

“We’d like to also get iPads especially for town board members so they can come to the meetings with all of their stuff right there and that would eliminate paper which would save tons of money. With just myself, Mrs. Parker and Mr. Darby, for the last two years of just going paperless because Mr. Darby never required paper, I don’t and Mrs. Parker didn’t. We saved just over $4,000 a year so we are trying to get everybody to go paperless. If we need to purchase some iPads then I’m all for it,” he said.

Though the software and billing issues were chief items on the town’s agenda, board members had other pressing matters to consider.

The first order of business on Tuesday demanded the selection of the board’s new officers.

Kohbarger said the board was tasked with electing a chair, vice-chair and town clerk as per town board policy.

“The town board throws out nominations between themselves about who they think should hold those positions. It is voted on and discussed to see who will be the chair, vice-chair, and clerk. That is all between themselves. Staff has no input in that whatsoever,” he said.

Town board procedures dictate that if the chair, for whatever reason steps down, the vice-chair will automatically assume the position as “Acting-Chair” until the board decides as a whole to endorse that person for the remainder of the calendar year.

That process continues down the line until the board fills all of the officer positions.

Kohbarger also noted that the town did not have any policies in place to officially name new officers when a vacancy occurs.

The last time board members were forced to elect new town board officers was Feb. 2012, when then Chair Mike Darby resigned his leadership role to pursue a run for the Nevada Assembly District 36 seat.

Former board member Vicky Parker assumed the duties of chair in the wake of Darby’s resignation.

Darby who was elected to the board in Nov. 2008, dropped his name from contention roughly a month later.

Due to time restraints, the results of the board’s action items will appear in Friday’s edition of the Pahrump Valley Times.