Friday, April 26, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Las Vegas officials may direct an $800,000 budget surplus -- and perhaps some of a $40 million reserve -- to planning and neighborhood services to deal with growth and residents' complaints.
At a budget session Thursday, planning director Donna Kristaponis told three members of the City Council that there is no money to continue downtown planning and not enough to cover long-range planning, such as a revision of the city's master plan.
And Sharon Segerblom, acting director of the neighborhood services department, said her staff needs money to help associations of homeowners form and communicate with their members.
Mayor Jan Laverty Jones said she was willing to spend the extra money on areas that directly impact residents.
"If you don't fund the departments that deal directly with the public, then you're not doing your job," Jones said.
The neighborhood services department, especially, has the council's favor: It was created after leaders complained at a strategic planning session in January that bureaucrats were not moving fast enough to solve problems of trash, graffiti, abandoned cars and vagrants.
Overall, the $385.4 million budget, including $216 million in general-fund expenses, reduces the property tax rate by 1/2 cent for every $100 of assessed property value. The tax break was brought about through retired debt, not a decrease in spending.
In addition, the budget calls for paying about half the costs for 100 new Metro Police officers and 83 new city positions, including 20 new firefighters. Two new paramedic units will be deployed, one to the northwest and the other to downtown.
Several city officials also emphasized technology in their presentations to the council, more evidence of a push to create a "paperless" City Hall that is run by computer and accessible to residents via modems.
For example, City Attorney Brad Jerbic told members he was switching to law books on CD-ROM instead of paper, making it easier for attorneys to find statutes and cases. Kristaponis repeated an annual request for optical imaging equipment to ease the paper flow in her department and she asked for money to upgrade memory for map-generating computers to shorten wait times as more users come on the system.
Another budget workshop will be May 21 before a special council meeting is called for final approval.
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