Funding for Fernley veterans cemetery expansion in jeopardy

The Public Works Board this week refused to let the Veterans Services Office hire a private manager for the project expanding the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley.

The decision could kill the project that would develop 900 burial spots for veterans and their spouses on four acres the cemetery owns.

Veterans Services Executive Director Tim Tetz said his only option is to raise the estimated $8,000 needed to pay Public Works to manage the badly needed project.

"We have literally run out of burial spots for single, underground vaults," he said.

He said the $655,000 estimated cost is 100 percent federally funded - including construction management services as long as those services are provided by a private company.

"The VA changed the rules in February," he told the board. "They will not pay the state money to manage a project."

He said CSA Engineering could manage the project if the board would approve the contract and that the government would pay for that, too.

Public Works Manager Gus Nunez, however, recommended denial of the request, saying it is his staff's responsibility to make sure the project is done properly no matter who manages it and that past decisions to delegate that authority have resulted in numerous problems.

He said because of the intense competition for the very few state projects, his staff is facing many more legal challenges charging violations in how contracts are awarded and managed, including numerous "prevailing wage" complaints.

Chairman Rene Ashleman said he doesn't like the precedent an exemption for the cemetery would create. And he said allowing a private company to manage construction instead of Public Works in the past has not worked.

Nunez said it would cost his staff about $8,000 to manage the construction, but Tetz said his budget doesn't have the money. Tetz said if he doesn't raise that much money or get board approval to use CSA Engineering, the cemetery will almost certainly lose the money and the project.

"They will put the money somewhere else and we go to the bottom of the list," he said.

"It seems unfair to the families of whose who have lost someone in service to their country," said board member Tito Tiberti.

Board member Tom Metcalf agreed, describing the situation as a Catch-22.

But they along with other members voted unanimously not to allow Tetz to hire CSA.

Asked what he planned to do after the vote, Tetz said: "I have to go raise money."