Community Update from Yerington’s Interim City Manager Jerry Bryant on March 6, 2026

Yerington NV – March 6, 2026

Good evening Yerington Community,

It’s a little late to be posting tonight, so if you don’t read this until Saturday morning, “Good morning Yerington Community!”

Now for some city business –

I’ll handle the bad news first. The sewer ponds – they stink. And they stink bad. We are aware of it and took steps several weeks ago to remedy it. Parts were ordered to repair surface aerators, this was a hefty investment. Those parts had to be ordered and should ship by Monday. We hope to have them installed immediately upon arrival and functioning to reduce odor. In the future we will work to stock parts like these to avoid a delay in ordering.

Yerington Police Department was able to participate in Career Day with the schools this week. What a wonderful way to have positive experiences with our youth. Unfortunately they were not allowed to perform a live taser demonstration for extra excitement, which after much thought, is probably for the best!

Regarding Public Works, I’d like to start by sharing that I’ve asked all of our staff to do everything they can to save us money. Every department has had to make sacrifices and I’ve asked them to “do more with less” in order to improve our city finances.

Our Public Works crew has taken this to heart and have been performing repairs on equipment that had been put away for years. By reviving this previously cast aside equipment with affordable repairs we are reducing our need to acquire new assets and ultimately saving considerable dollars.

Critical to this process of reviving our current assets are Mark Zimmerman and Tommy Gutierrez.These two have performed many repairs on city equipment. It’s impressive what they have done to save us money. Thank you to both of you for your work on this effort. It is noticed, both visually and financially!

You may have also seen our crew continuing work to prepare parks for spring. From batting cages, to sprinkler repairs, Frank Ruiz, Ron Durst, and Gustavo Haro-Reynaga have been very busy to prepare our parks for warmer weather.

There is a regular scheduled City Council meeting this coming Monday, March 9. As always, the agenda is on our website, at www.yerington.net. I won’t go into details but some of the items of note are a review of the special use activity for Southwest Critical Materials at the mine south of town. If you’ve been curious about the status of their activity this will be an informative item to watch.

Yerington City Council Agenda, Zoom link & Supplements for March 9, 2026 including Pumpkin Hollow Mine

Pumpkin Hollow Project: Comprehensive Overview of Southwest Critical Materials Operations

We have a few items for the court, including a request to enable an online payment system for paying fines.

There is also an item to seek grant funding to repair taxiways at our airport. These improvements are part of our existing five year improvement plan for the airport.

We also have a request to authorize the purchase of some equipment to improve control of our bulk water distribution system, commonly referred to as the J-stand, and there are also a few resolutions to review to support federal funding requests. Our goal here is to secure federal funding for larger improvements to our water, wastewater and public safety needs. This is an effort to seek large scale improvements without depleting our rainy day funds, taking on more debt or raising rates. We won’t know for several months if these requests are successful, and even if they are successful we won’t see funds for over a year, but we have to start trying for these opportunities if we hope to ever get them.

Before I wrap up, I’d also like to remind you that if you are interested in joining the city team, we are currently accepting applications for the position of Deputy Clerk. One of our Deputy Clerks accepted a new role within the city last week and created a vacant position. If you’re interested in applying, be sure to turn in your application at City Hall. We are accepting applications until 5 p.m. on Friday, March 13.

Again, this is a very small snapshot into a lot of activity happening around town. If you ever have any specific questions or concerns, I always welcome you to reach out to me directly. jerryb@yerington.net.

Have a great night!