Concern over the state of the Incline Village General Improvement District has been brewing for years, so to say the November election to fill three open board seats is critical is not an exaggeration. There will be guaranteed new blood in the mix, as only one incumbent is choosing to go up for reelection.
The six candidates running have similar focuses on what needs to be addressed amid the turbulence, albeit different prioritization. The three who are sworn in come January could create a board majority and will set the direction for the district in coming years.
The split is down the middle, though no formal alliances have been made:
“I’m not into it for self-interest,” said Mark Case, security supervisor at the Crystal Bay Club Casino. “I’m into it to help the community. Because there are some financial issues that need to be resolved.”
“Within a year, I expect to get our finances in order,” said Harry Swenson, who retired in 2014 after 32 years at NASA.
And Frank Wright, former high school government and history teacher: “Our books are so screwed up, and the finances — you can’t follow the money because there’s no documentation for it.”
While finances are important to remaining candidates, more pressing is filling the staffing holes.
“The heavy lifting starts right after the election on how do we rebuild the staff?” said Mick Homan, retired chief accounting officer for Procter & Gamble Company. “That’s the number one priority. And then, it’s putting our financial house back in order.”
“We do have some financial issues that really needed to be looked at and they were found over the last 4 years and have been getting addressed,” said incumbent trustee Michaela Tonking, “but we need to move on past that … We need to hire a team of people. The board needs to hire a GM and the board also really needs to think what capital projects do they want to do in the next 10 years? What is the strategic plan of this district?”
Michelle Jezycki, former director of human resources in the U.S. Senate, urged, “Equal importance has to be given to the human capital, the financial capital, and our physical capital, meaning our amenities and our services. Having said that, you can’t have financial reporting, let alone accurate financial reporting, if you don’t have staff in seats.”
Tonking described the GID as being in its “rebuilding era.” Pain points continue to fester from IVGID’s expansion of duties over the years, from solely waste treatment to recreation facilities to sewage collection; a shift in accounting structure in 2016, then a new system in 2022; issues with capital spending and allegations of fraud (read Community Division Over the ‘Improvement’ of Incline’s General Improvement District); and a failed recall of two trustees in 2023.
More recently, IVGID saw the departure of its general manager, Bobby Magee, who’d initially been hired as an interim finance director in June 2023 before moving up to the helm this past March (and leaving the finance position empty). Magee resigned as GM 3 months after his appointment. As of press deadline, applications are open for finance director and general manager, while interims maintain the positions. On Oct. 9, a report on GM applicants was provided by IVGID staff.
Swenson sees the numerous staff departures as stemming from ineffective leadership. “My observation is morale can get low when your leaders aren’t leading and cannot make effective change,” he said.
Despite that viewpoint, he still considers financial transparency as most critical. If elected, he said he expects a fine-tuned budget report from staff each month: “How much you spent, how much did you plan to spend, where are you in your spending plan, what’s your variance, and be able to explain your variance from your budget in five words or less.”
Part of these frustrations come from Magee being unable to answer what Swenson described as basic budgetary questions during trustee meetings. “It was often that Bobby would say, ‘I have to get back to you on that,’ ‘oh, I have to get back to you on that,’ ‘I have to get back to you on that’ on questions that I would expect he had at least some knowledge.”
An early-August forensic audit review completed by RubinBrown identified “high risk of fraud and abuse within IVGID’s control environment given the aggregation of the internal control weaknesses identified at the transactional level all the way through the review and monitoring process of internal controls within the District. IVGID’s lack of internal controls around the financial reporting function makes it difficult for the organization to effectively detect or prevent inappropriate activity.”
Swenson, along with Case and Wright, pointed to a lack of control from a high number of staff procurement cards (essentially business credit cards intended to streamline routine purchasing), which was identified in the RubinBrown report. Trustee Ray Tulloch assured at the Aug. 28 meeting the card count has dropped from 93 to 43. This was the same meeting where now-interim finance director (then-senior accountant) Susan Griffith said staff is “struggling to weed out what we can pay, what we can’t pay in accounting and finance, and we have complete gridlock in the department.” On Sept. 11, the board approved a request to Washoe County to provide assistance in backfilling the empty positions in the finance department.
“There’s no internal controls, there’s no oversight committee,” Case echoed. “There’s an audit committee, but they just make recommendations. There’s no oversight; you do whatever you want.”
“I think all six of us are concerned with the RubinBrown report, some as though the sky’s falling,” Jezycki said. “I don’t fall into that camp. We’ve paid professionals $400,000 worth of providing recommendations and findings, and they gave us the laundry list … That’s what they’ve done three times over [in reference to two other audit reports: Moss Adams in 2021 and 2023]. We’ve had the same period reviewed, and they came up with the same or at least very similar findings and in each of those included, there is too much staff overturn. You have to be able to have consistency in staffing and training to get people on the same page.”
While he didn’t name specific candidates, Wright said of some, “I don’t think that these people are capable of doing the right thing and fixing this place. I think they would put this back where we don’t want to be.”
Of the current board majority — Tulloch, Matthew Dent, and Sara Schmitz (the latter two aren’t running again) — Wright was critical: “I don’t see any movement. I’m disappointed in the fact that they have the majority, and they have the intent. But I don’t see the movement, and I don’t see the people being held accountable. I don’t see the transparency. It’s gotten better, but it’s still a problem.”
Schmitz, who runs a nonprofit, Incline Village Crystal Bay Community 1st, posted on Oct. 1 a reminder that voters “are not required to vote for 3, and in fact not voting for 3 helps your preferred candidate(s) chances of succeeding. Do your research and vote for up to 3 individuals.”
A local political action committee, Positive Change for IVGID, is promoting Jezycki alongside Tonking and Homan, alleging the three will set the district in the right direction.
Beyond needed hiring for various positions, Tonking wants to look ahead strategically at capital improvements within IVGID, to “start doing a lot more of those town halls, but less town halls about asking board members questions and more town halls about hearing the community’s beliefs on different projects and ideas and strategies of the district. Because I think we’ve moved away from listening to the community’s voice.”
That last point proved a throughline from those who spoke with the Ink.
“I care about my community, your community, our community,” Wright said at a Sept. 30 candidate forum. “I want to see these things fixed.”
“There’s going to be some heavy lifting and I don’t know how long it’s going to take us — 6 months to a year, whatever, to put that team in place,” Homan said. “And then a little bit more time beyond that probably to help us fix the issues, optimize the issues, get smarter about how we do what we do. So, yeah. There’s going to be some heavy lifting. Sure. But then I think once we’ve got that done, the board can operate more like a board.”
Connect With the IVGID Board of Trustees Candidates
Mark Case: mfjcase@hotmail.com, (775) 233-0386
Mick Homan: homan4ivgid.com, homan4ivgid@gmail.com
Michelle Jezycki: jezycki4ivgid.com, jezycki4ivgid@gmail.com
Harry Swenson: harryswenson4ivgidtrustee.com, harryswenson4ivgidtrustee@gmail.com
Michaela Tonking: michaelatonking.com, michaelatonking4IVGID@gmail.com
Frank Wright: electfrank.us, electfrankwright@gmail.com
