Committee focuses on sales tax to bolster Metro Police

By Jackie Valley

Thursday, July 28, 2016 | 4:18 p.m.

The quest to bolster police presence in tourist-heavy locations took a step forward today as the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee considered funding options and narrowed in on a sales tax.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo has proposed adding 82 officers, nine surveillance specialists and 20 cameras to boost security along the Strip and in downtown Las Vegas. The initial price tag would be roughly $13.8 million, he said, with continuing annual costs totaling $12 million.

How to pay for the increased police protection has been the sticking point. This month, Gov. Brian Sandoval issued an executive order directing the committee to make recommendations about police funding. The sheriff previously had approached the committee for more resources, but it wasn’t clear until Sandoval’s order whether the group had the authority to explore the issue.

“This conversation has obviously been going on long before our committee was started,” Chairman Steve Hill said, acknowledging the ongoing discussions by local government entities that, at times, have turned contentious.

Metro Police, which is responsible for patrolling the Strip and downtown Las Vegas, has been trying to rebuild its force since the recession, but property tax caps and a smaller-than-desired sales tax increase have made it challenging. As for why police are calling for a funding boost now, Lombardo pointed to a presentation slide listing mass-casualty violence across the globe, including in tourist destinations Orlando, Fla., and Paris.

Local analyst Jeremy Aguero, who has been working with Metro to identify funding sources, said the most viable options appear to be an employee head tax or a sales tax. Given the proposed NFL stadium and Las Vegas Convention Center expansion, the county room tax couldn’t serve as a standalone revenue option for police funding.

The employee head tax, which would charge an annual flat fee per employee for every business within the resort corridor, didn’t make it very far in the discussion. Aguero said that tax model could generate as much as $10.1 million yearly, depending on the cost of the per-employee fee and the cap on how much each business would pay.

But multiple members of the infrastructure committee, which includes representation from casino companies, opposed the employee head tax.

With that option essentially dismissed from contention, the committee focused on generating revenue from either a countywide sales tax or a sales tax district — and asked for more research about each option.

The so-called More Cops initiative, which involved a countywide sales tax increase, has been a controversial issue for some time. Last year, the Clark County Commission approved only a 0.05 percent increase, bringing the sales tax rate to 8.15 percent. The Legislature, however, had given authorization to increase the sales tax by as much as 0.15 percent.

The 0.05 percent sales tax increase is estimated to generate $14.3 million this fiscal year, which was used to hire 133 officers. Those hires helped increase the department’s officer-to-resident ratio, but at 1.8 officers per every 1,000 residents, it still falls below the national average.

The national average is 2.2 officers per every 1,000 residents. Lombardo has said he’s aiming for a ratio of 2 officers per every 1,000 residents. His request for an additional 82 officers to patrol the Strip and Fremont Street area would help achieve that ratio, he said.

Increasing the countywide sales tax again could be an option for police funding. The committee directed Metro to study how much revenue a 0.1 percent increase would bring the department.

The other option, Aguero said, is to create a sales tax district that encompasses the resort corridor and surrounding area. He proposed a district bound by U.S. 95 to the north, Sunset Road to the south, Valley View Boulevard to the west and Paradise Road to the east.

Within that district, each 0.1 percent increase to the sales tax rate would generate $6.8 million to $7.5 million additional revenue yearly, he said.

The committee also asked for more information about the sales tax district. It wants to know how much revenue could be produced if the boundaries were expanded to include the possible stadium sites as well as the results of such tax districts in other regions. For instance, did businesses leave the districts or try to game the system to avoid paying increased taxes?

The additional information will be presented at the next committee meeting, Aug. 25.