Custom home dwellers call for city services

Lisa Snedeker

Thursday, June 3, 1999 | 11:27 a.m.

Neighbors who have found themselves caught between the city of Henderson and Clark County have formed what they call the Rock Pile Alliance.

A petition signed by 117 of the 128 homeowners in the area bordered by Eastern Avenue, Pecos Road, Serene Avenue and Ivanpah Drive states they are being squeezed from all sides by new shopping centers on Eastern Avenue -- Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot -- as well as new homes, specifically the Southfork subdivision to the south, a 378-acre development of more than 1,300 houses.

The rural area commands some of the best views of the valley and the Las Vegas Strip. It began developing in the 1970s, when the city sold 5-acre lots for custom homes. At the time, the area was isolated and the custom home dwellers did not want to pay for city improvements so they built their own roads and drilled their own wells.

Now with the city closing in, they claim flooding is becoming a danger, that traffic is ruining their former idyllic lifestyles, and that they are entitled to city services, such as road repair and flood control.

The city and Clark County, however, say improvements are planned for the area in the coming years, but that if residents want such services now they must foot the bill.

About 20 residents -- some who live within Henderson's borders and some who live in the county -- turned out at the last City Council meeting to voice their concerns.

One of those residents was Don Booth, organizer and leader of the alliance, who moved into his custom-built home on a one-half-acre lot on Hardin Drive near Eastern Avenue a little more than two years ago.

"It's a real rock pile. That's how it (the alliance) got its name," he said, referring to the rock in the area that goes down 70 feet.

"The homes out here are worth $300,000 to $500,000 and we probably have the best location for freeway access, but civilization and developers are closing in like vultures. I just got back from a trip to Honduras and they've got better roads than we have here and that's after a hurricane. Henderson with all its prosperity should be able to do something for us."

Booth said he went to the city in April with some of his concerns, primarily road maintenance and flood control, and questioned where his tax dollars were being spent. After feeling he was brushed off, Booth said he sent a flier to his neighbors asking some questions and encouraging them to unite in order to make some changes.

"I got about 40 phone calls," he said, adding that a general neighborhood meeting was held May 16.

The day after the City Council meeting, city crews were sent out on graders to blade and scrape the dirt roads.

Henderson Public Works Director Mark Calhoun said, however, it was pure coincidence that the street crews were scheduled for maintenance in the area that day.

"I hadn't gotten together with anyone" after the meeting, he said, adding that since then he has had engineers and street crews go out to survey the area.

Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers and newly elected Councilman Steve Kirk are working with Booth and the city staff to come up with a solution.

"These people moved out where there was no development to buy into a rural lifestyle," Cyphers said. "There has been a lot of growth in Henderson and in the county around them. They are surrounded by cookie-cutter houses, Wal-Mart and Home Depot and they have concerns about how future development is going to impact their quality of life."

On road maintenance, Cyphers said there are a few options.

"They have been offered an LID (limited improvement district), which they are not interested in," she said. A limited improvement district would require the affected residents to share the costs of any improvements, which could be thousands of dollars per household.

There is, however, some interest in a county-sponsored paving program that would allow the roads to be paved at $5 a foot. But because it is a voluntary program, if any homeowner refuses to dedicate his right-of-way to the city, then the street can't be paved.

Cyphers said there is a misconception that the city paves roads. "We (Henderson) don't do paving, we maintain roads," she said.

Another of Booth's concerns is that Ivanpah ends at a traffic signal on Eastern. The route for it to go farther is blocked by a city waste water lift station.

Calhoun said that's because when Southfork was first being developed, plans called for the road to go through. Residents, however, balked because of traffic so the city cut it off on purpose.

"Because no one wanted it at the time, we couldn't force Southfork to build a bridge there," he said. "It could be put back, but someone would have to pay for a bridge."

Another big issue is Serene, a major thoroughfare that is shared -- literally split down the middle -- between the city and the county. Booth described a recent incident in which the city patched up several potholes in the road only to have the county come along right behind the city workers on their side and destroy the patches by grading on the county side.

Serene is on the Regional Transportation Commission's plan for widening and reconstructing for fiscal year 2002-3. But Booth and his neighbors say that is not soon enough and are worried someone will get killed in the meantime, because in many spots the road narrows to one lane. When it rains, portions of the road are transformed into mini-lakes.

Calhoun said he would have to get together with his county counterpart to see if funds could be moved around to do the work sooner, but the proposal would still have to be approved by the County Commission and City Council.

A meeting is scheduled for this week with Cyphers and Kirk, city staff and the residents to come up with reasonable solutions to some of the problems that have been created by development surrounding the area, Cyphers said.

Bobby Shelton, public information coordinator for county public works, said Clark County is in the process of working with contractors to widen Eastern Avenue to four lanes, which would alleviate some of the current traffic woes in the area. Construction is expected to begin within 45 days, he said.

"Everyone wants it done now," he said. "But we can only build them so fast because the pot of money is only so big."