Efforts to save children’s home fail

Friday, June 27, 1997 | 11:17 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- An 11th-hour attempt to save the Southern Nevada Children's Home, where thousands of children have been raised since 1969, failed today.

The Boulder City facility will be phased out during the next three months.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said there is no time to negotiate compromises since the $3 billion budget for the next two years must be completed today. His Senate Finance Committee will vote later today to agree with the Assembly Ways and Means Committee to shut down the facility.

Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, sought to delay a vote in an effort to convince Assembly Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee to compromise. But after a closed-door meeting, O'Donnell said they would not budge.

Raggio said the Finance Committee had no alternative but to follow the Assembly committee.

Earlier this morning the Finance Committee had scheduled a vote to close the home. But O'Donnell convinced Raggio to give him another hour to meet with the Assembly. After hurried conferences, O'Donnell said he could not get a compromise. "I'm disappointed," he said after admitting defeat.

The Assembly committee voted earlier this month to phase out the home and put the children in foster care or in group homes.

Sen. Jack Regan, D-North Las Vegas, made a motion to go along with the Assembly, saying its position is "in concrete." Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, seconded the motion.

Rawson stressed that closure of the home would not "mean we're turning them out on the street." They are going to other group homes, he said.

Closing the home will save $1.3 million over the next two years. Thirty-five children reside in the home run by Volunteers of America, which leases the facility from the state.

The state Division of Children and Family Services pays Volunteers of America $90 per day per child. But the seven cottages at the site in Boulder City have been allowed to deteriorate and it would take more than $400,000 to rehabilitate the facilities. The division will develop a plan on how the home should be used, possibly leasing it to Boulder City for $1 a day.

The Children's Home in Carson City was closed in the early 1990s because of budget problems.

Meanwhile, the Finance Committee agreed with its Assembly counterpart in approving Gov. Bob Miller's "Family to Family" program to help mothers with newborn babies with instruction or direction into programs to help children.

After criticism, Miller trimmed the program from $13.3 million to $9.3 million with $8.1 million of that coming from the state. The number of employees would be reduced from 58 to 14.

The Finance Committee also said the program would end in two years unless it was re-authorized by the Legislature.

The Family to Family project was the next-to-last item approved for the budget, which must be passed by Monday to provide money for government agencies in the new fiscal years.