Coyote TV - High Desert Advocate

         Despite phone calls, petitions and a resolution from the West Wendover City Council the decision to close the local branch of Nevada Bank and Trust will stand, said President Gordon Wadsworth.
    “We did not make the decision (to close the West Wendover branch) lightly and unfortunately there is simply not enough business there,” Wadsworth said Wednesday.
    The closure of the Wendover branch was announced
       The closure of the branch was announced the Monday before Thanksgiving and appeared to contradict assurances given two month before that the branch would stay open despite losing the West Wendover City’s accounts earlier this year.
    “I think the branch’s fate was sealed the moment it lost the city’s accounts,” said anti-closure petition organized Jaime Christie. “there was probably no way they could make up for the lost business.”
    The petition drive itself was less than a success. According to Christie the drive collected fewer than 180 signatures.
    “At first we had petitions in the break rooms at the casinos but then we were told to remove them,” Christie explained. “We also had one at the bank but removed it because it caused confusion.”
    The city council’s entrance into the fray was also too little too late to change the mind of the bank’s board of directors. More than two months after the closure announcement was made the council passed a resolution asking the Caliente headquartered bank to reconsider its decision to close the Wendover branch only two weeks ago.
    Earlier last summer Key Bank announced the closure of its Wendover, Utah branch Wendover oldest and at one time only bank. According to the press release the branch was closed effective November 1st due primarily a lack of business.
    The loss of Key Bank and now NB&T means that access to banking services has been severely curtailed in Wendover with only Nevada State Bank located in the local Smith’s Store and the Nevada Credit Union still in operation.
    The announcement of the closure especially during Thanksgiving week caught both the West Wendover’s branch customers and bank employees off guard. Perhaps the most outraged were those new clients NB&T gained from Key Bank.
    “I know there were quite a few people who transferred all their personnel and business accounts from Key Bank to NB&T and they asked before they did if the branch would stay open,” said a Wendover Utah businesswoman. “And they were told that the NB&T branch would be here forever. Now they have to do all that paper work over again, like transferring direct deposits and direct payments? Besides how is a business going to explain that for the third time in less than year they changed three banks?”
    Yet even with with the city’s support chances the decision will be overturned are slim.
    “We are a business and we have to make sound business decisions,” Wadsworth said late last year. “Frankly there is not enough business in Wendover to justify the branch remaining open.”
    For the residents and business in Wendover there is a stark choice of transferring there accounts to either Nevada State Bank operated in the local Smith’s or Nevada Credit Union or moving their accounts to one of the two next closest NB&T Branches in Ely or Elko.
    Wadsworth did give assurances however that any long time customer of NB&T could be assured that  NB&T would not be closing either of those two branches and that on the whole the company was on solid financial footing.
    “We are well capitalized,” Wadsworth said. “And will continue.”
    But while NB&T’s future is about as secure as any small bank in Nevada, the tellers at the Wendover branch will soon be without a job.
    “We were hoping we could make a deal with Nevada State Bank,” Wadsworth added. “But that fell through.”
    The Wendover branch employed five people some of whom had been working there since the bank opened over 20 years ago.