Carson City has created a task force to reopen the range. This is great news and I am personally very grateful to the city and the people that have accepted the appointed positions on the task force. The first meeting was yesterday at 13:00 in the Ormsby room of SO. There are many city employees on this task force as well as individuals from the community. I can safely say that most of the community individuals have the public's best interest in mind and want to get the range reopened as soon as possible.
The task force chair person is Supervisor Laurie Bagwell. The Vice Chair is Nick Fontanez the owner of Cipriani's downtown barber shop. Nick is an avid outdoors-man, offroader and shooter. He has already proven to the community that he has our best interest in mind. A member of the Carson Rifle and Pistol Club is also on the task force and when he tried to gain the position of head of operations. Nick was able to swiftly stop him and was able to get a much better individual from the task force to be appointed as head of operations. I do not wish to spell any of the other names incorrectly and will update when I have a list of names available. I can tell you that Brad Bonkowski (City Supervisor) is on the task force and Jennifer Budge (Parks Director) is representing parks.
The city personnel on the task force said in the meeting that their current short term goal is to get the shooting bays reopened within 2 weeks and available to the public!! This is incredible and I certainly hope that they are able to follow through with their proposed timeline.
Everyone should know that our range will never be the same as it was. There will be upgrades made to it, which are long overdo. It is not known at this time but the range will likely become a paid for range. This to me is not a problem. I will gladly pay a nominal per use fee or a yearly membership fee.
As a community I think we need to stress to the city, board members and task force. That we want the CRAPC to no longer be in any type of management position of the range. That club has created more issues then they have helped solve. In my opinion I would also like to see businesses that use the range for profit, have to pay a higher fee and use the already in place parks scheduling program and not the clubs system that is obviously full of favoritism. Have you ever scheduled a birthday party or other event at one of the parks? If so, you have already used the parks scheduling system and it works.
This is a public park that is meant for the use of the community. Regardless of anything else, I hope everyone remembers that this all started because of the Landfill encroaching on our range. Had the landfill used a different area none of this would be and issue.
Thank you and keep fighting the good fight!