Wednesday, March 19, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
The County Commission has given staff two weeks to come up with a proposal on infrastructure that it can support and send to the Legislature -- but at least one commissioner wanted the focus limited to water, sewer and schools.
"We asked them to come back with some alternatives," Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said, expressing his opinion that more time is needed identifying Southern Nevada's needs and funding sources for the 1999 session.
"This whole question of infrastructure is very complex as anybody who's tackled it ought to know," Woodbury said. "A public process needs to be explored."
Woodbury gave as an example the citizens' committee that spent several months last year figuring out the best way to pay for a $1.7 billion water system without raising water rates and connection charges to astronomical levels.
"They made a recommendation, we ought to follow through with that because it's a good way to offset substantial increases in rates and charges," Woodbury said.
Woodbury commended the work Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates and Commissioners Myrna Williams and Mary Kincaid put into identifying a basic list of needs for the next 10 years. But he said the commission just couldn't take those numbers to the Legislature and ask it to help out.
Gates said that was the purpose of putting the infrastructure item on the agenda, to discuss how to fund the outstanding needs and ask the Legislature to consider the county's recommendation.
"Let's let the experts at the Legislature look at the needs and come up with a solution," Williams said.
Originally, county staff pulled data from other entities to come up with a $2.4 billion list of unfunded water, sewer, transit and school needs from now to 2006. Assistant County Manager Randy Walker said that amount comes to $3.86 billion when pushed out a year and adjusted for inflation at a rate of 5 percent a year.
After calculating the revenue that could be raised from some of the tax increase suggestions on the table, Walker said the county is facing a $300 million shortage of basic infrastructure needs.
Walker recommended those revenue sources or "streams" be pooled into a trust fund, and have specific percentages designated for the water and sewer portions, with the remainder for schools, transit and other needs.
Williams said such a plan would be similar to the Question 10 revenue sources pooled for transportation. But Woodbury said the difference there was that Question 10 doesn't have different entities "draining from a single pool," then contradicted himself moments later when he said the county takes some of that revenue for road projects, the Regional Transportation takes a share and each of the various entities take a portion of the taxes.
"I'm not saying that it's not worthy of consideration," Woodbury said of pooling resources. "I just have some concerns."
Close to $200 million a year could be raised if all the tax and fee increases on the table are approved. They include a quarter-cent sales tax increase for water facilities, a 1-percent room tax increase being targeted for schools, a 60-cent increase in real estate transfer taxes and a freeze of the school bond debt rate.
Commissioner Erin Kenny suggested that several more millions could be raised by eliminating a $1,000 cap on the construction tax that goes to parks.
Woodbury acknowledged that the county could be going back in 1999 to ask for an additional quarter-cent sales tax increase for transportation, but that depends on the completion of a major investment study and what kind of federal funding the county can get for a monorail system.
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