Wednesday, March 19, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Clark County voters who approved a $120 million justice bond last fall may begin to feel like the victims of a bait-and-switch ploy.
First, the price tag for District Judge Nancy Becker's regional justice center went from an advertised $80 million to $122 million. And Sheriff Jerry Keller has told the County Commission the cost of adding 1,500 beds to the county jail will cost $78 million, not the $65 million advertised to voters last summer.
Now, the main selling point for the justice bond and the only constant -- $46 million to build new juvenile facilities for Family and Youth Services -- could be raided to pay the difference in the jail expansion costs.
County officials have devised a plan to ask the state for $10 million to rebuild Spring Mountain Youth Camp, freeing the $12 million worth of bond money identified for the detention facility for other needs.
Asked where the money would go, Assistant County Manager Randy Walker said, "Off the top of my head, it would go to cover the extra cost for the jail."
That would help Keller keep his promise to build 1,500 new beds.
Keller has defensively said he never gave a fixed figure for the expansion. But a news release distributed at the kickoff last April, with his name on it, identified the jail expansion price as $65 million.
Keller later said the 20 percent cost increase was due to inflation and rising construction costs spurred by the building boom on the Strip. He did not return a call for this story.
Walker said the money shift, if the County Commission approves it, is not being done to help Keller.
"We're looking at it as a total budget package, having to balance all the resources and the needs together," Walker said. "So it's not like we are taking it away from one to give to the other."
Family and Youth Services Director Kirby Burgess, who helped sell the bond issue on the strength of the need for extra juvenile facilities, said he doesn't care where the money comes from as long as his department gets its share.
If the state doesn't agree to the construction bill, then the county would wind up paying for the camp, Burgess said.
The $46 million from the bond was supposed to pay for a $20 million expansion of the main juvenile detention hall, a $12-15 million renovation of the Spring Mountain Youth Camp and $10 million in new construction for Child Haven.
But county managers have since decided the state should pay for Spring Mountain, Burgess said, because of the number of juvenile offenders the facility holds that would normally go to state facilities in Elko and Caliente.
Burgess said about half the 160 kids who go through Spring Mountain each year would have otherwise gone to a state facility.
"If Clark County didn't have a program then those kids would be in the state, or our detention center would be more overcrowded than it already is," Burgess said.
Also, the county's main detention center has about 70 kids on any given day awaiting placement with the state "who can't go there because there's no room," Burgess said.
The county receives about $350,000 a year from the state to help in operational costs.
The $46 million in the justice bond is already pared down from the $53 million architects said everything on the Family and Youth Services wish list would cost, Burgess said. With an additional $10 million, "we would have covered everything we wanted to do," he said.
The County Commission, still suffering sticker shock after it was told last December the price of the projects had gone from $190 million to $246 million, could be a tough sell.
"If they had done what I asked, to separate the bond, this never would have happened," commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates said.
The commission balked last December when it approved a tentative budget, and appointed Commissioners Lorraine Hunt and Myrna Williams to identify how to pay for the projects.
"The board will eventually set a final budget and that will tell us what we need to do on top of the $120 million," Walker said.
Originally, the county was looking at financing $70 million in additional costs. Finance officials estimated that $20 million could come from court fees and $50 million from county and city contributions.
But as the price of the projects went up, the revenue estimates decreased. Finance staff anticipates $2.6 million from court fees and $30 million from the governments.
Another $18 million could be raised from bond proceeds on administrative assessment fees, Walker said.
Gates encouraged getting money from the Legislature, since "we don't have enough money to build everything we promised voters in the first place."
But she warned that taking any bond money from Family and Youth Services would cause a battle, and hinted that other projects are more likely to fall under the ax.
"The top priority was always Family and Youth Services, and then the second priority was the jail," Gates said. "The courthouse was not a top priority."
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