Sunday, March 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
GEE WHIZ, did our infrastructure problems just happen since Clark County Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates and Commissioners Myrna Williams and Mary Kincaid became county officials? Hardly, the problems were being created and identified by some Nevadans for more than 20 years.
The problems finally became so burdensome that the present County Commission recognized action had to be taken before the city and surrounding area collapsed. Gates has four years on the commission and all of the other members, except Bruce Woodbury, have less than a full term. Lance Malone and Kincaid just entered office a couple of months ago.
So let's go back to 1981 when the Nevada Legislature passed the "tax shift." It didn't take long for wise Nevadans to identify it as the "tax shaft." Very simply, the law shifted much of the tax demand from the stable property tax system to an additional reliance upon the regressive and unstable sales tax. This, in turn, for the past 16 years, has allowed our rapid growth, development and infrastructure needs to proceed without a healthy growth of property taxes to meet the challenge.
The action in 1981 made an immediate adjustment in the taxable value of all land, homes, buildings and other improvements by application of factors that had the effect of approximately equalizing all property at the 1980-81 level. At the same time the sales tax shot up from 3.5 percent to 5.75 percent.
A few years later, the squeeze for new tax dollars became evident in a rapidly growing state. In 1988, then-Gov. Richard Bryan appointed a citizen's committee to review tax needs and a study compiled by Price Waterhouse and the Urban Institute.
In February 1989, Las Vegas businessman Irwin Molasky, a committee member, appeared before a legislative group to warn "Nevada must keep pace with growth. Right now we enjoy what I think is the best quality of life in America. We cannot allow shortsighted planning to leave us in a bind in the 1990s. If we prepare now, if we do what's right and fair, if we levy a general business tax that is not a burden but will keep our state healthy, then we can meet tomorrow's challenges head-on and leave our children a state that is vibrant and sound."
Molasky's testimony was in response to a corporate income tax recommended by Nevada teachers. Both Molasky and the teachers saw the problems that growth was creating. Both saw the need for a broader tax base to meet these demands which were growing faster than the tax money available.
That same year many citizens recognized the growing problems and formed Southern Nevadans for Sensible Growth. They weren't an anti-growth group but wanted to "work with the Clark County Commission and the various city councils to promote orderly growth and development throughout Southern Nevada in conformity with the establishment of published, regularly updated, detailed master plans which protect existing neighborhoods from incompatible development and ensure well-planned development of new residential and commercial areas throughout Southern Nevada."
Among the members of SNSG were stable citizens including Don Schlesinger, Judy Smith, Wayne Bunker, Jim Arrendale, Sen. Ann O'Connell, Bill Friedman, Helen Myers, Laura Past, Tic Segerblom and Ann Zorn. Later, Schlesinger became a county commissioner, but after four years of trying to control growth was rewarded by being voted out of office.
Today a new battle over a monorail system is brewing on the famous Strip. It was 23 years ago that popular Las Vegas engineer Bill Flangas told Clark County commissioners: "Obviously, as the community continues to grow, the choked auto traffic conditions on the Strip that take place during certain periods of the day will occur more and more often, and impose an ever-increasing strain on the available road space, as well as increasing the resultant pollution, traffic safety problems, etc.
"We are therefore proposing the construction of a subway tunnel from McCarran Airport, down the Strip, past City Hall, continued to North Las Vegas City Hall and east on Judson, to provide the means of rapid transportation, serve as a major conduit for passage of flood waters during a major storm, and also as a receptacle for underground utilities. ..."
No, county commissioners now working to turn a bad situation into something we can all live with aren't the creators of our problems. What they need now is the help and cooperation of everybody and a little less criticism. If anybody deserves criticism, it is the people who sat fat, dumb and happy, but making money, as they refused to hear the warnings of thoughtful Nevadans.
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