Residents balk at school site approval

Jeff Schweers

Thursday, June 20, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The Clark County Commission's narrow approval of zoning for a new middle school on Sunrise Mountain has reopened a can of worms over which public entity should plan future school sites.

Over the objections of some nearby residents, the board voted 3-2 Wednesday to give the Clark County School District a use permit to build the Dwayne Keller Middle School on 22 acres on the southwest corner of Fogg Street and Stewart Avenue.

"Everybody wants schools, but nobody wants them in their neighborhoods," Commissioner Paul Christensen said Wednesday as he chaired the county's zoning meeting. "I'm disappointed we wind up in these kinds of fights over school sites. If we took schools in and decided the locations of school sites, we'd have a much better school system."

The zoning decision illustrates problems the school district has in choosing sites, and the difficulties the commission faces when it sits as a zoning board that must consider variances that people most affected by the changes don't want.

On the one hand, schools are needed desperately in the growing Las Vegas Valley, Commissioner Myrna Williams said.

"The middle school is a feeder school, and therefore is supposed to accommodate people in the entire valley, not just one area," Williams said. "We have children right now traveling great distances to get to schools that can't accommodate them."

On the other hand, people should have some assurances their neighborhoods won't change radically overnight, said Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who voted against the use permit along with Commissioner Lorraine Hunt. Commissioners Jay Bingham and Yvonne Atkinson Gates did not attend the meeting.

"I understand the challenge of the school district and the definite need for a middle school in the general area," Woodbury said. "I have worked with this neighborhood and this board made a commitment not to make this a rural estate holding pattern, but have it developed as an actual rural estate neighborhood."

The new middle school, set to open in time for the 1997-98 school year, is designed to hold up to 2,080 students, said Dusty Dickens, real estate manager for the school district. Elementary schools feeding into Keller will be Adams, Rundle, Wingert, Mendoza and the new Goldfarb.

Woodbury asked if other sites weren't more appropriate, especially a location further south and closer to Las Vegas High School.

"I agree we need a middle school in that area, but weren't other sites considered?" Woodbury asked.

Dickens said several alternative sites were rejected -- one because it had contaminated soil, another because its soil wouldn't support a middle school, and another site that had power lines cutting through it.

"This is the only alternative we have left in the service area that's centrally located," Dickens said.

Several residents objected about the adverse impact the school would have on their neighborhood, especially the increase in traffic and noise from children playing in the school yard.

At Tuesday night's Planning Commission meeting, residents showed up to oppose a height variance for the school's gymnasium. The Planning Commission held that item for further study.