According to a report on NPR, a school district in Nevada has raised needed funds by running a bar and renting out space to a brothel for a one-night event.
The Mustang Ranch Brothel sponsored the third annual “new year’s on the Comstock” program earlier this month, which was prostitution-free and helped raise a little money for the local school district. Ordinarily, the upstairs stage is booked every weekend for one community event or another, and the brothel had it rented out for the annual back-to-school night.
Piper’s Opera House, a 160-year-old landmark at the top of a steep hill, is our scene. It’s owned by the Storey County School District. A corner bar finds itself on the lower floor, while students use the stage upstairs for drama productions.
About $2 million is still required to renovate the building, a sizable sum that could come from the bar and other rental income.
District Superintendent Robert Slaby told NPR that buying the opera house was a good deal for students. He said he could’ve built a new arts facility but instead saved the historic opera house from bankruptcy, spending less than half of what a new facility would have cost.
“Kids can be on the same stage as some of the greatest actors of the turn of the century were on — literally use the same furniture, the same dressing room as they did,” he was quoted as saying. “And we just thought that was very unique.”
Total revenue from the bar and events on the stage is about $66,000 a year, whereas the Storey County government sends the school system only $13,000 a year for building operations.
“If schools were adequately funded, we wouldn’t have to do all these other things,” Mr Slaby was quoted as saying. “It’s the responsibility of government to serve the children. We have to have a better system of financing public education in our country. That’s what we need to do.”
One local official said she was a little uneasy about having a bar on school property.
Christy McGill, executive director of the Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Counties, said she would hate for school districts to say, “Hey, we’re economically stressed. Let’s go open a bar, you know.”
But the bar and brothel, she noted, aren’t contributing to underage drinking and that sort of economic activity is a reality in Nevada. But explaining the presence of a bar on school property to kids is — “not easy” — she said.