County acts to aid growth of parks

Jeff Schweers

Thursday, April 16, 1998 | 9:56 a.m.

Clark County has created a new land acquisitions division to fast-track the development of parks and other public facilities to meet the demands of a growing population.

The county has a surplus of $54 million in park development funds that have gone unspent, much to the dissatisfaction of county commissioners trying to get services for their constituents.

But the new department also is supposed to speed up the purchase of land and construction of other county facilities.

"Commissioners have been less than happy with the development process for our own facilities in general," General Services Director Earl Hawkes said.

"It's not just for parks development," Hawkes said, "although it is one area where we need to speed up development."

The reorganization will cost the county an extra $362,962 for new positions and capital, but most of the positions and costs already are budgeted.

The reorganization will put all the people who currently work on land acquisition, park design and facilities planning on one floor.

"We are marshalling existing resources in a new direction," County Manager Dale Askew said. "When the County Commission approves the new budget it will be with this new alignment of resources in this department."

The new department is already up and running, Askew said.

"This is just putting together a group of people who are working in separate departments now into one department with some direction and accountability," said Hawkes, who will oversee the new department.

Hawkes met with a team of employees over two months to review current procedures for obtaining land and developing county projects which in turn led to an examination of the county's land inventory and leased properties.

What Hawkes found is that the people handling those functions are all over the organizational chart, resulting in lost time, redundant functions and poor planning efforts.

The new division pulls all those people under one roof, with an assistant director paid $61,340 who will report to Hawkes.

"We will recruit for a position shortly," he said.

The division will include a bond project management team of five whose salaries will come from bond proceeds, a real property/capital development planning team, the current architectural and engineering division, and clerical and administrative support.

"The fact of the matter is by putting everybody together we should be more efficient," Hawkes said.

Before the reorganization, the Community Development division under the Department of Finance was responsible for land acquisition and dealing with the Bureau of Land Management, Parks Director Glenn Trowbridge said.

"This puts that function under general services," he said.

Parks and Recreation will continue to identify where future parks are needed and design what types of facilities need to be built there, Trowbridge said. That information will be given to the new land acquisition bureau to get the land and send out the actual construction bids.

"We are reducing redundancy," Hawkes said. "We also can report more accurately on progress of the project to the commissioners."