Saturday, March 29, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
COUNTY and state leaders are in a frenzy over how best to pay for growth in Las Vegas.
Meetings are being held almost daily to try to reach consensus on a package of tax increases to pay for a 10-year, $3.8 billion plan to provide sufficient water and sewer facilities, mass transit and schools to keep pace with an annual 7-8 percent growth rate.
Most agree on the needs: The phenomenal growth in Clark County has put local officials in a crisis mode amid rising traffic congestion, air pollution, school overcrowding and crime.
Far fewer agree on how to pay for what's needed. The critics are targeting a proposed quarter-cent sales tax hike as the wrong method to pay for growth. Citizens are saying that the gaming and home-building industries, which benefit the most from growth, should chip in more.
To be fair, those two industries have "stepped up to the plate," to borrow an overused phrase in this ongoing dialogue. The casinos endorse a 1 percent room tax hike to raise $17 million a year, while the home builders have proposed a 60-cent increase for every $500 of value in the real estate transfer tax to raise $11 million per year.
The problem with those proposals, however, is they are "pass-through" taxes, meaning the tourists and home buyers will end up paying, not the businesses themselves.
So far, then, the citizens are carrying the load -- business as usual, I guess.
But regardless of the tax package that state and county officials settle on, there are two pieces missing from the puzzle -- and, amazingly, few working on the infrastructure plan seem much interested in talking about them.
First is the issue of better management of growth.
Don't misunderstand. I'm not talking about stopping growth or even cutting it in half.
That's important to point out, because local officials like to obfuscate such discussions by equating managing growth with killing the geese that lay the golden eggs.
It must come as no surprise to local leaders that citizens are wary of a sales tax hike to pay for water and sewer facilities. Frankly, most people won't notice the quarter-cent hit, but they are tired of the irresponsibility exhibited by local officials when it comes to dealing with growth.
How can city officials be taken seriously when the 20,000-home Summerlin West development is quickly approved at the same time that officials and citizens alike are complaining about daily traffic tie-ups on U.S. 95?
As fine a developer as Howard Hughes Corp. is, the approval of this massive project did not take into account the development's long-range effects on the rest of the valley.
And how do county officials expect to gain support for their plan to pay for growth when their Planning Commission last week quietly approved 13,800 new hotel rooms for Circus Circus Enterprises on the south Strip?
Circus Circus is a respected casino company, but did any public official consider the impact these 13,800 rooms are going to have on traffic or housing or schools?
These recent projects are just two of dozens of examples of a lack of foresight and common sense among local officials when it comes to managing growth.
Polls show that a majority of citizens think we are growing too fast. But most of them probably are voicing their feelings and haven't done a lot of research on the matter.
Peter Drucker has. The highly respected management professor at the Claremont Graduate School in Pomona, Calif., says cities run into problems when they grow more than 6 percent a year.
"If you go much above that, you create turbulence," Drucker, author of 26 books and thousands of articles, told the Los Angeles Times in February. "More than 6 percent ... strains your services."
Sounds like he's been to Las Vegas recently.
Still, growth doesn't necessarily have to slow down, but it needs to be of better quality. Planners need to ensure that parks and schools are provided for when developments come up for approval. Roads need to be ready to handle increases in traffic. Tough measures need to be implemented to deal with carbon monoxide and dust.
Growth should be managed on a regional basis instead of the piecemeal approach practiced today.
The second component missing from the county infrastructure plan is money for the public facilities that improve our quality of life. The plan does nothing for parks, ballfields, community centers, libraries, museums or fire stations.
County officials say they must focus on survival needs first, by which they can only mean accommodating new residents. That's fine, but water and sewer lines spreading to the edges of the valley don't matter much to the more than 1 million residents already here.
The problem with leaving out these amenities is that voters will be asked to fund them sooner or later. In three or four or five years, when the library system is taxed to the max and ballfields are even scarcer than they are today, bond issues will be put on the ballot.
Any suggestion that the county's infrastructure plan will allow taxpayers to rest easy for the next 10 years is ludicrous.
The county-state infrastructure plan will be molded over the next few months, and it likely will come to pass. But officials cannot expect residents to get excited about the plan unless ingredients missing now are added to the mix.
GEOFF SCHUMACHER is city editor of the Las Vegas SUN. He can be reached on the Internet at [email protected]
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