INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — The Incline Village General Improvement District Board of Trustees moved forward with a contract for legal counsel with Best, Best & Krieger during Wednesday’s meeting.

With the district’s history of being involved with lawsuits and that some residents have questioned the job the previous attorney had done, getting a good contract with BB&K was important for the district.

Josh Nelson with BB&K has been providing legal counsel to the board over the last year on a short-term contract. The new contract extends that for three years.

During the board’s Dec. 9 meeting, the board asked the contract to be reviewed by outside legal counsel.

Actions taken by the previous district general manager left a bad taste in many people’s mouths, so one important topic of discussion was who the client actually is. While the district, as a whole, is the client, the board has top authority unless they are acting against the district’s best interests.

After discussing the contract over two meetings, Dec. 9 and a detailed discussion on Wednesday, Trustee Sara Schmitz brought up the Moss Adams report. The report, which reviewed the workings of the district and gave recommendations, stated they thought the district should go out to bid for more projects.

Schmitz said that if the board was going to ask staff to go out to bid more often, they should show leadership and do the same. So she recommended scrapping the contract and allowing legal firms to bid for the contract.

Trustee Kendra Wong expressed frustration that Schmitz brought this idea up after so much time and money was spent on this.

Schmitz rebutted, “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

Vice Chair Matthew Dent said going forward, the board should follow that recommendation but in this case, they should move forward with the contract in front of them. It passed 4-1, with Schmitz providing the no vote.

The board also received an update on the Ordinance 7 committee. The ordinance deals with beach access and punch cards and the committee has had eight meetings so far to help rewrite the ordinance.

While they have not made any final decisions or recommendations yet, some of the issues they’ve discussed is how many passes should households get and how many guest passes are they allowed to give out, as well as the best way to track guest passes. Other topics include district staff access to the beach and commercial use of the boat ramp.

The board and General Manager Indra Winquest said they’d like to see the ordinance done by summer but representatives of the committee said they still have a long way to go.

Finally, the board approved the 2019/2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. The board had held off on sending in the report to the state until the audit committee had a chance to review and approve it. Because they had not received the report in time of the due date, the district had to ask for an extension.

The audit committee met prior to Wednesday’s meeting and gave their approval, allowing the board to do the same.

The next meeting will be on Wednesday, Feb. 24, and it will be another budget workshop.