Carson Street

Dear Jim,

    In regards to the narrowing of the downtown street.  First off I went to the night time meeting on this, and it was waayyyyy toooooo long..  The meeting went from 6.30 to over 10.30 pm.  The Mayor needs to put a time limit on the speakers and only allow them to talk once.  The lack of voting on the fences being ripped out, was also scary at best.  At approx.9pm or so  John McKenna said he did not like them, Karen A. said I don't like them either and in a blink of an eye the vote was done.  Im  not a politician but doesn't the whole board have to vote on that?  I listened  to both sides of the issue and this is my intake.

1.  Whatever the 20/20 people want to do, to get business downtown, can be done with 2 lanes as well as with 4 lanes.   Four  lanes will keep the people from complaining about bottle neck traffic.

2.  It is not the responsibility of the tax payers to make sure your downtown business is successful.  I asked Bully's what they were doing to accommodate this bad economy and they made a menu  where they slashed their prices in half .  They have a $6 menu that you can order off of from 11-6 everyday.  A lawyer spoke for the 20/20 and said he put $200,000 into his leased  building downtown.  Again my tax dollars should not have to pay for ignorance , on behalf of this lawyer.

3.  The naysayers brought up great points, that showed this would effect all of Carson City not just the 44 business's they are talking about.  Bob (from Shell), had facts on how the 8 or so gas stations bring in a lot of tax'a and how it would effect that tax money.  The Arby's owner had the best idea and mentioned for these business's to get together with the city and close off Curry when they needed a place to have a party.

4.  Most important, if you do not put this into a vote, you will have a lot of people that will purposely stay away from downtown just for spite.  Me included.  Remember when the Pro "Knowledge Center" people said that there was only a handful of naysayers on that issue.  Luckily you put it to a vote and there was a little bit more than handful.  Can you say 2/3 of the voters where against it!

The bottom line is that the city is going to side with the good ole boys's and this is already a done deal.  In my opinion you are shooting yourself in the foot, once again.     

Sunni Heinrichs