Columnist Ken McCall: Rampant growth may force debates on quality of life

Ken McCall

Friday, May 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

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THE STAGE WAS SET for some of the valley's top elected leaders.

The audience was filled with Southern Nevada public administrators and planners -- and a few other interested observers.

The subject of the workshop for public officials was policy issues involving growth and how to deal with them.

Instead of policy discussions, however, what transpired was a high-powered preview of an argument/discussion/debate/dialogue that will be repeated hundreds of times in the coming years.

The bone of contention: quality of life.

Clark County Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who served as moderator for the first session Thursday at UNLV, began by defending life in the valley.

"When I compare Clark County to other states and other cities and counties," she said, "I have to ask myself, has growth been so bad here that I would rather live somewhere else?"

Even though growth is running "out of control" and even though the mounting problems must be faced immediately, her answer is no.

"Overall I don't think Las Vegas is a bad place to live," Gates said. "The quality of life hasn't deteriorated."

Never one to bite his tongue, Las Vegas City Councilman Matthew Callister, who is running for re-election June 3, eloquently begged to differ. For a good 20 minutes.

"As a lifetime resident, born here 41 years ago," Callister said, "I think my quality of life is suffering. I think it's suffering every day."

Like many of his constituents, his first complaint is traffic.

A commute from his Ann Road home to his downtown office that used to take 15 minutes now takes 45. A 20-minute drive to the airport has turned into an hour-and-a-quarter ordeal.

As a lawyer who bills by the hour, he said, "somebody took that money from me."

"But even worse, they took the time that I can't spend with my girls."

He cited "bad air quality," 1,500 gravel trucks a day on Alexander Road, and "my 6-year-old coming home from half-day sessions at 6:30 at night on a bus."

"Don't tell me my quality of life isn't deteriorating."

Why?

Because there is no growth plan for the whole valley.

"You're participating today in the only regional dialogue that's occurring in this county," he said. "This is it!"

The valley is one metropolitan area, he said, but it is carved up arbitrarily into different jurisdictions that mean nothing to anyone who drives around town.

"When we look at a map, it clearly doesn't jibe with day-to-day reality," he said. "That is the single largest problem relating to growth."

Without a regional growth plan, he said, we'll continue to build jobs in one spot and houses miles away. We'll continue to have one city building casinos across the street from another city that doesn't want them there. Local governments will continue to bow to developers for fear of losing the tax income to a competing local government.

We're living in the fastest-growing urban area on the planet, he said. We're getting 6,000 new people a month and 50 more cars a day, yet we're still trying to do planning the same old way.

"How crazy is that?" he asked the audience. "This is something you as citizens ought to be angry about, and that you as planners ought to be screaming about. You should demand that your elected officials get together every month to talk about these things."

In fact, Gates said, elected officials in the valley soon may have no choice.

The commission chairwoman noted she was scheduled to testify today in Carson City in support of a bill by state Sen. Jon Porter that would require all the valley's governments and major organizations to sit down together for 18 months and figure out how to handle the growth.

While Gates opposes a stronger bill by Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani that would create a permanent regional planning agency, she thinks something is needed. Local leaders never seem to be able to stay at the table to work things out.

"The Legislature is forcing us to go and do it," she said, "and I think that's good because we never had the wherewithal to sit down and do it on our own."

And what will be item No. 1 on that eventual agenda?

Quality of life. What it is and how we keep it.

It's a discussion -- however predictable -- that's long overdue.