New arrivals get the facts fast

Of the some 7,000 residents moving to the Las Vegas Valley each month, about 1,200 are calling Henderson home.

Henderson's population is nearing 160,000 which is comparable to Lansing, Mich., Pasadena, Calif., and Tallahassee, Fla.

"As America's fastest-growing city, we have residents who are brand new to Southern Nevada," Mayor Jim Gibson said. "Even people relocating from other parts of the valley are unfamiliar with many of the unique attributes of our city."

That's why the city has published a guide for new residents.

"This new resident guide is designed to answer many of the questions residents moving into a new area have, and we believe it will be helpful," Gibson said.

Answers to questions ranging from how to register children for school to how to get the cable hooked up can be found in the new residents guide -- the first of its kind to be published by a municipality in the valley.

Vicki Taylor, spokeswoman for Henderson, said this is the first time the city has published a guide for those migrating to the community that a decade ago had a population of less than 50,000.

Future editions will be published annually beginning in January 1999, Taylor said.

The guide is available at Henderson City Hall, Henderson Convention Center, the Green Valley utility office and the Henderson Chamber of Commerce. But the majority of new residents will receive their guide to the community when they sign up for city utilities.

Put together and published by the city, Taylor said only 4,000 copies of the guide were printed so they could be fine tuned and revised by January when 10,000 more will go to press. The cost is about $1 each.

Taylor said the idea blossomed out of an annual internal city audit.

"We discovered that a lot of questions were coming from new residents -- people moving in from out of state or Northern Nevada or people moving in from the county that didn't know we had our own fire and police departments," she said.

The city first began putting new resident information on its Internet web site, which Taylor said is second in popularity only to the the city's event site.

Las Vegas newcomers also are sent to their city's web site for information, according to city spokeswoman Nadia Wiggins.

"We don't publish anything like (a newcomer's guide)," she said. "But I think it's a good idea."

Although the city of North Las Vegas is not providing such a service either, spokeswoman Kimberly McDonald, agreed it is a good idea.

So does Tom Warden, spokesman for Clark County, who said a newcomers guide is a great service.

Warden said that while the county publishes a user's guide -- which includes phone numbers of county officials and offices, what district residents live in and how to license their pet -- it is not an actual newcomers guide.

"Unincorporated Clark County is the biggest city in the valley and we try to make the distinction between the urban services that are provided to unincorporated county residents and county-wide services," he said.

The county also has a web site residents can visit for more information.

Warden said he liked the notion of mailing the county's users guide to new citizens along with introductory letter once the current guide is revised.

"The newer version certainly will have more information," he said, adding it is expected to be published early next year.

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