A look back: Barbee on his time as county manager

Note: This is the first part of a two-part article on the state of Churchill County. County Manager Jim Barbee is retiring in July, but he recently sat down with local media to discuss the issues affecting such topics as the Rafter 3C Arena, flood mitigation and the expansion of the Fallon Range Training Complex.

After seven years as Churchill County manager and before that director of the Nevada Department of Agriculture under former Gov. Brian Sandoval, Jim Barbee will be stepping away from his office and exploring other challenges in his career.

Barbee’s career at the NDA made him a right fit in 2018 when he succeeded the retiring Eleanor Lockwood. He brought a resume that commissioners liked: he had worked on policy issues with the Nevada State Board of Education and the Nevada Legislature, served on the National FFA Board of Directors and Foundation Board of Trustees and was a former secondary agriculture educator with a certificate as a Certified Public Manager.

Since 2018, Barbee has left his mark on Churchill County as both he and the county moved forward. Commissioners recently hired assistant county manager Chris Spross as the new county manager. Barbee said he will become a consultant by tapping into his decades of experience.

A Douglas High School graduate, Barbee has a master of agriculture science, agriculture education from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a bachelor of science in animal science from California State University at Chico. Barbee recently reviewed the highlights of his tenure in Churchill County that’s capped almost 30 years in the public sector.

In looking back at his career in Churchill County, he said his vision of the county moving forward to build the Rafter 3C Arena, which is providing an economic boom to the area, has been one of his greatest ventures. He said it will be difficult not being involved with the oversight of the arena.

“That’s probably the hardest part of even considering retirement, right? It’s been such a baby,” he said of the facility which has hosted rodeos, bull riding, the annual bull sale and in February, the high school wrestling state championships.

Although he’s retiring from his involvement with the county, Barbee said he will have an announcement near the end of July on his plans, especially with consulting.

“I've done a good job, I've moved forward, and then boom, you retire, go on to something else,” he said. “To me, I'm sure it's going to be a transition.”

Barbee said the first thing his family will be doing is taking a vacation in Europe this summer.

For now, though, Barbee wants to expand his conversation on the Rafter 3C and its impact on the community. Initially, his goal was to reach $5 million in economic impact, but he said the Rafter is nearing $13 million in terms of economic impact. Overall, he said the county has prospered.

Just this month, the county has seen an impact with a PRCA rodeo, barrel racing and team roping.

“I think our sales tax and that kind of revenue that are happening in the county are better than they would have been were it not for that development,” he said. “The folks are bringing money from outside of the community just like you're seeing last week because we started with the Saddle Bronc before the (Reno) rodeo three years ago. That was one of our first organized big events because we opened in our grand opening the first week of June 2022 and that (saddle bronc) was two weeks later.”

On the horizon may be holding more state wrestling tournaments in late February. The tournament, though, will go to Winnemucca next year, and Barbee hopes the tournament returns to Fallon for more than one year.

With more grant money coming into the area, Barbee said the county has more funding for new softball fields, building a new Dry Gulch totaling between 18,000 to 25,000 square feet near the rodeo arena and constructing a full cover over the arena.

At one time the county was interested in acquiring the University of Nevada’s Experiment Station’s Fallon Research Center, but the problems to enter into a 99-year lease were not resolved. Barbee said he hopes one of these days he will be in a position to engage with the federal government and the Natural Resources Conservation Services to work out an agreement.

Water in one form or another has been at the forefront of county planning. After mitigating a potential flooding disaster in 2017 when a weir was constructed on the V-line canal to allow water to flow into the desert and eventually to Stillwater, the county faced another similar situation in early 2023.

To mitigate any disaster, the Churchill County commissioners approved a precautionary emergency declaration that established an Emergency Operations Center in preparation for flood mitigation efforts. The flooding threat was caused by the elevated snowpack from the winter’s snowfall upstream on the Carson River.

As part of those efforts, the Truckee Carson Irrigation District began precautionary water releases from Lahontan Reservoir to make room for the high run-off.

The Big Dig infrastructure, including the emergency weir completed in 2017 to divert excess water around the city of Fallon and developed areas of Churchill County, remained in place and served the county again this year.

Outside of the Rafter 3C and mitigating flooding, Barbee said the next project of which he’s proud is the improvement for the CARES program. He said the program had 25 children enrolled when he first arrived, and it was located near the fairgrounds.

“It was so important to the community during COVID because that was the only one that was open and we basically utilized it for our staff and for school district staff because the requirement of those folks to work.

One thing led to another, and in an agreement with the city, both government entities oversaw the remodeling of one of the units at the former Cottage School. Eventually, the city and county traded some property, and now the county oversees the CARES program. Barbee said all three building on the campus have been remodeled.

After the teacher training facility and adult education moved from the Cottage campus, the Churchill County School District and Oats family transferred the property ownership in 2016 to the city of Fallon. Five years later, the city and country agreed to swap the Cottage Schools and the former senior citizen properties.

“And it struck me that's the perfect marriage. Yes, I mean, that's basically by the usage that they were intended for,” Barbee said. “And then we started year by year over a three-year period of remodeling one of the buildings and expanding. And I think there's now close to 150 kids.”

Barbee said the CARES program is a great benefit for the community.

NDAA

The U.S. Senate passed in December 2022 National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023 which allows for the modernization and expansion of the Fallon Range Training Complex. The $857.9 billion NDAA’s key component involved the FRTC, a project that took more than six years to come to fruition after numerous meetings, scoping sessions and presentations.

The FRTC added 558,535 acres for military training and designate more than 581,887 acres of conservation, wilderness and other protected areas. Approximately, 18,170 acres of land will be held in trust for the Walker River Paiute and Fallon Paiute Shoshone tribes and provide the tribes with funding to preserve their history, knowledge and culture. Additionally, the agreement will allow Churchill and Lander counties to access land for economic growth.

“We’re all in support of the Navy’s mission, and we’re all patriotic, and we want them to have the best training and everything that they possible need,” Barbee said. “But the removal of over 600,000 acres of public access makes a dent. That’s significant.”

So, too, is a proposal by Utah U.S. Sen. Mike Lee to sell off land administered by federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. Lee’s intent is for the government to sell the land to the private sector. When Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke blocked Nevada Congressman Mark Amodei’s land bill that involved Pershing and Clark Counties and Carson City, Barbee said the process shows it will face problems in Congress. Already, Lee’s proposal is facing backlash from sportsmen and hunters.

“I think you're going to have a hard time getting that by sportsmen,” Barbee said. “Like the sportsmen are going to be probably the biggest hammer on that. But I've been digging through the bill, and it's really specific. I mean, there's a lot of safeguards in there. A lot. But it's just wasting a lot of time. Mike Lee wants to do this, but then you got to go through all these processes, and it's going to cost money for lawyers, and so forth.”

Yet, Barbee said the checkerboard lands need to be resolved to make land usage more practical. In Northern Nevada, this unique pattern of alternating public and private land ownership is more noticeable along the Interstate 80 corridor. This checkerboard pattern stems from historical land grants to railroad companies in the 1860s, where every other section of land along the rail lines was given to the railroads, while the federal government retained the others.

Barbee said a checkerboard resolution has been proposed for Churchill County.

“And then at some point, it's going to come to the county for review,” he said. "But ultimately, it's an exchange process, right?”