Nevada board approves $2.75M settlement to Railroad Pass Casino

The Board of Examiners on Tuesday approved $2.75 million to settle a battle with one of Nevada’s oldest casinos.

According to Nevada Department of Transportation Director Rudy Malfabon, owners of the Railroad Pass Casino are losing frontage access and visibility to potential customers because of an intersection planned as part of the Boulder City Bypass project. They originally estimated the economic damage to their business at more than $8.6 million.

Outside Counsel Laura Fitzsimmons told the board Railroad Pass is “the oldest casino, I think, in Nevada — certainly in Southern Nevada.”

Under the deal she helped negotiate, engineers redesigned the intersection to improve things and the state agreed to pay the $2.75 million on top of the $2 million originally paid for a total of $4.79 million.

On top of that, the state’s share of miscellaneous construction for the new design work will be $422,765.

She said the state has to consider the impacts on business access from roadway projects.

“Everyone worked together on this,” Fitzsimmons said.

Malfabon said he anticipates the state will get a significant amount of the total reimbursed by the Federal Highway Fund.

In other business, the board consisting of the governor, secretary of state and attorney general made a small change in its administrative rules state agencies will appreciate. Director of Administration Julia Teska said from now on, agencies with regular items on the BoE agenda don’t have to show up and sit through the meetings unless they are asked to by her office in advance. That applies to contracts, master service agreements and leases, she said. It does not apply to other agenda items.

Agencies have long wanted that change so administrators and experts aren’t tied up for several hours each meeting just sitting and waiting to find out if there are questions for them.

The board approved buying $1.87 million worth of new vehicles. Nearly all of the purchases were budgeted. Teska said one, however, replaces a vehicle that was totaled in an accident.

The purchases include 44 fleet vehicles used by all state agencies. Another 21 are for the Wildlife Department, 12 for the Agriculture Department and one for Mineral Resources.

The total is 790 vehicles.

Jim Wells, head of the employee benefits program, told the board there are now 2,400 state workers signed up for the Nevada 150 fitness challenge. Participants have agreed to walk at least 5,000 steps every day for 60 days to get a certificate of fitness from the governor.

Wells said 87 percent of those participants are exceeding the 5,000 step goal at this point. The average is some 9,500 steps, which works out to about 4.3 miles a day.

Among the participates are Gov. Brian Sandoval and Secretary of State Ross Miller.