Rural residents oppose school

Thursday, Feb. 3, 2000 | 10:52 a.m.

County commissioners approved zoning for a new middle school Wednesday evening -- but did so over the vehement objections and threats of a lawsuit from nearby residents in a Rural Neighborhood Preservation Area.

Clark County School District officials said the new school in the southern Las Vegas Valley is needed as soon as possible to relieve severe overcrowding at Silvestri Middle School a few miles away.

Silvestri, with about 2,000 students, is about 700 students above capacity, said Dusty Dickens, director of the school district's realty department.

The new 191,000-square foot school would be on Spencer Street, between Wigwam and Ford avenues.

But about a dozen residents with nearby homes said that the new school would bring heavy traffic over dirt roads, raising clouds of dust; that the school would exacerbate flooding problems at homes in the rural preservation area; and that the state Rural Preservation Act of 1998 prohibited the school.

The site of the new school would be unsafe for students because of the dust and traffic, said Bruce Waggoner, a resident of Ford Avenue.

They charged that the school will be a "Trojan horse," leading the way for further development of the area. County staff members said the approval would not set a precedent for other forms of development in the rural preservation area.

Several speakers said they will test the law and the commissioners' zoning approval in court.

"See you in court," said nearby resident Joanie Weeks to Dickens following the approval. Weeks is a teacher at Silverado High School.

"We will try and tie it up in court as long as we can," she told Dickens.

The time issue is important because the school district needs the new school as soon as possible, Dickens told the commissioners. She said the school should open in fall 2001.

Many of the residents urged the district to put the new school on another site to the west of the Las Vegas Beltway. While the school would be to the east of the beltway, students from both sides of the highway would attend the new school.

Dickens said the alternate site would take years to acquire -- if the school district could ever get it. The district would have to negotiate with a dozen landowners to get the alternate site, she said.

The 20-acre site chosen by the district is Bureau of Land Management land, leased by the district over the last eight years. The BLM by policy turns over federal land within the valley to government agencies for public uses.

Commission Chairman Bruce Woodbury said he sympathized with the concerns of the neighbors and said he has tried to preserve rural areas in the past.

"But it is also an education issue," Woodbury said. Past experience has shown commissioners that seeking a new site will lead to lengthy delays, and ultimately the county will have to go back to the original site, he said.

"Wherever we put these schools, we know we'll have pretty much the same scenario, just a different set of citizens," he said.

"We cannot continue crowding schools into the densely populated parts of this county," Woodbury said. "We've got to make sure we spread these schools out.

"Everybody comes and says 'It's going to ruin our neighborhood,' " he said. "It is not going to ruin your neighborhood."

Commissioner Mary Kincaid said she also appreciated the concerns of school opponents but said resistance to proposed schools is an indictment of our society.

"It used to be a neighborhood consisted of schools, churches, parks," she said. Now, schools and churches always raise community opposition, Kincaid said.

"I don't know where we would put schools except in a neighborhood," she said. "It seems to me that this is the direction our society has moved."

Before reaching the County Commission, the new-school rezoning received a denial recommendation from the Paradise Town Board, which recommended that the school go on the west side of the beltway.

The rezoning narrowly received a recommendation of approval from the Clark County Planning Commission, on a 3-2 vote, Jan. 6.

Even if the issue doesn't go to court, the school site faces at least one more test. Woodbury said he spoke to state Sen. Jon Porter, R-Henderson, who has asked the state Legislative Counsel Bureau to review the Rural Preservation Act to find if it permits uses in those areas for public facilities such as schools.

The commissioners voted to support the necessary rezoning 5-0, but not before inserting a number of conditions, including requiring road work and traffic control devices be in place before the school opens, keeping lights off nearby homes and requiring the school district to work closely with the county's Public Works Department to design the traffic and flood control systems.