Carson City range work could take six months to complete

The work needed to reopen the Carson Rifle and Pistol Range may take six or more months to complete.

Carson City is now working with Lumos & Associates, which will engineer the needed changes and deliver plans in three or four months, Jennifer Budge, director, Parks, Recreation & Open Space, told the Range Task Force on Wednesday.

After that, the city can request bids or quotes for the work and award it, which would take four to six weeks.

Budge said she would work with the engineers to prioritize work so parts of the range, starting with the pistol bays, could be opened first and possibly sooner.

Also, if the work can be broken into smaller projects costing under $50,000, each one can be awarded to a contractor by the department rather go to the Board of Supervisors for approval, which adds more time to the process.

In the meantime, the city plans to open the range at least one evening a week starting in the next few weeks. The hours will start at 5:30 p.m., after the landfill next door closes, and one of the city’s park rangers will open and close the gates for public access. The city will announce the day or days and hours once they arrange the schedule.

At its next meeting in May, the task force will also take up a proposal by one of its members, Bob Blackwood, to open the range while work is being done on it. He introduced the plan, which would open the range Tuesday through Saturday by reservation only for clubs that would be required to have range safety officers and work with walk-in shooters who agree to follow their rules, and for commercial entities and law enforcement. In addition, shooters would pay a fee for day use or for an annual permit.

Also at its next meeting, the task force will consider a fee schedule for the facility.

The task force also voted to recommended to the Board of Supervisors a six-month agreement with the Carson Rifle and Pistol Club. The existing agreement expires this month and the task force last month agreed on a short-term agreement while the range operations are in flux.

The new agreement lets the club use half of the long range for four hours two Sundays a month as reciprocity for its service providing volunteer range safety officers.

At the previous meeting, the task force had voted to give the club one Sunday a month for its matches, but after discussion agreed to meet the club’s request for two days. The motion passed with two members, Nick Fontanez and Sean Giurlani, voting no.