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GM’s Corner: Spring means end of budget season for Incline Village General Improvement District (opinion)

Steve Pinkerton
GM’s Corner
Steve Pinkerton

On April 11, the Board of Trustees forwarded our draft final budget to the Nevada Department of Taxation for their review. On May 23, the board will be reviewing the budget one last time before submitting to the state.

For the ninth year in a row, our budget includes no increase in the recreation facility fee. This fee is assessed to each property in the district and ensures that we have the necessary resources to maintain all of our recreational assets. In addition, a portion of the fee supports the annual cost of operating our recreation programs.

Property owners receive significant discounts for our programming in exchange for paying this fee. At $830, this fee is far less than what is charged in similar communities. I wrote about this in great detail in a column several years ago.



As noted above, the vast majority of this fee goes towards the maintenance and replacement of our recreation assets. Each year, we update our five-year capital improvement plan to ensure that we have adequate resources to address all of our asset replacement needs in a timely manner.

By providing just in time replacement, we are able to save costs on maintenance, operations and replacement cost. We don’t replace assets before necessary, and we don’t allow assets to deteriorate to the point where they create burdens to the current operating fund or the capital budget.



In fact, when we compare our operating costs to peer agencies, our costs are often much lower due to our timely replacement of assets before they become a burden on the operating fund. There is a robust discussion of the Capital Improvement Plan and Policies in the March 28 agenda packet.

We expect to spend approximately $7 million on asset replacement/capital improvement projects at our recreation venues in the upcoming budget year. Our operating budget for the upcoming year for all of our recreation venues is approximately $18.8 million. The vast majority of the revenues supporting these operating funds come from user fees with the balance coming from a portion of the Recreational Facility Fee. You can go to page 194-196 of the last budget packet to get a great summary of our operating and capital budgets.

The board also approved our utility rates for the upcoming 12-month period on April 11 as well. For the typical household, our rates will be the lowest in the Lake Tahoe Basin! To learn more about our rates and our utility budget, click here.

If you are interested in the status of our current budget, all this information is regularly updated on the financial transparency section of our website. This webpage provides links to everything you would ever want to know about our district finances.

For example, if you want to see all of the checks we’ve issued in any week over the past three years, it is available at this location. If you want to see our annual audit or previous and current budgets, it is there as well. If you want status reports on our capital improvement projects, it is there.

In addition, if you’ like to do your own deep dive into our annual budget or the proposed budget, we’ve contracted with Opengov.com to provide you with a tool that allows you to view, filter and analyze financial data for all of our budgeted areas.

For example, if you want to drill down into how much we spent on services and supplies at our utility last month, Opengov.com gives you the ability to do that.

Here at IVGID, we want to make sure that our residents have every possible tool available to better understand how we allocate your resources. If you have any questions, you are always free to email me.

GM’s Corner is a monthly column from IVGID General Manager Steve Pinkerton, who discusses issues and offers updates regarding various district matters. He may be reached for comment at sjp@ivgid.org.


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