WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

WEDNESDAY

ECON 101?

The Clark County School District ... plans to "invest" $4 million of your tax dollars in rooftop solar panels for as many as 20 local schools. The hope is that the photovoltaic cells may save the district $190,000 per year on its electric bills for the next 20 years -- the expected lifetime of the panels.

Do the math. The savings (even if the optimistic estimates prove accurate) won't repay the set-up costs.

But wait! The school district expects to get $1.44 million in federal stimulus funds as a reward once the first five schools are outfitted. Then, the district has been promised $1.2 million in rebate checks from NV Energy, the local electric monopoly, also upon completion of the first five installations.

Why, the district could get up to $5 million in one-time rebate checks once all 20 schools hook up their electric systems. What a savings to taxpayers!

Or is it? Don't the federal "stimulus funds" come, in the end, from the same taxpayers? And the NV Energy "rebates" -- won't the same taxpayers end up covering those costs when they pay their own home electric bills? So how is this any different from the store manager promising to "subsidize" your purchase of an $8 gallon of milk with $4 that Shifty already picked out of your other pocket? ...

Then, ... the trainees are going to be paid more than $50 an hour? ...

With hundreds of thousands of Nevadans unemployed and looking for work, we're supposed to believe the school district couldn't have found trainees willing to learn how to install photovoltaic cells for less than $50 an hour? ...