Bonds planned for courthouse, police station

Mathis Winkler

Monday, Dec. 3, 2001 | 8:37 a.m.

City officials are likely to issue up to $35 million in bonds to pay for a new courthouse and a police station.

Before that can happen, the Clark County Debt Management Commission must approve the proposal. City Council members are expected to adopt a resolution Wednesday notifying the commission of their plan.

Mayor Michael Montandon said the plan to issue bonds to build a courthouse and a police station had been in the works for several years, adding that the city desperately needs both buildings.

"I think this is great," Montandon said. "It's been a long time coming."

Other council members said they also supported issuing the bonds, but said they were concerned about bringing the city too close to its debt limit.

"We need to be careful," Councilman William Robinson said. "There are so many needs."

But Vytas Vaitkus, the city's finance director, said North Las Vegas was nowhere near its current debt limit of about $400 million.

The city has about $60 million in outstanding bonds, Vaitkus said, adding that most of them paid for water and sewer lines as well as streets.

North Las Vegas is getting close to reaching its limit on voter-approved tax overrides to pay for public buildings, but that has nothing to do with the current proposal, Vaitkus said.

To cover the estimated annual payments of $2.8 million to repay the bonds over the next 20 years, city officials plan to pledge $500,000 from the general fund, $300,000 in court fees as well as $2 million in increased jail revenues.

The U.S. Marshals Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service don't have their own jails and will house an additional 100 inmates at the North Las Vegas jail once a 400-bed annex opens in January. The city receives $62 per inmate per day from the two agencies, which already have about 350 inmates at the jail.

The courthouse would be built on a 8.25-acre lot at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Civic Center Drive that's owned by the city. While Municipal Court Judge Warren VanLandschoot currently handles the city's entire court system, the new, $29.9 million building would include court rooms for two more judges.

City officials are still looking for a home for a $5.1 million police station to better serve the area of North Las Vegas that lies west of Interstate 15. One proposal is to use a 4.5-acre parcel on Alexander Road near the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard that's currently set aside for a library.

In exchange for the land, the North Las Vegas Library District would receive a site in a proposed master-planned community on 1,900 acres at the northern end of the city.

The Debt Management Commission is expected to discuss the bond proposal at a meeting in January. City officials would issue bonds in July at the earliest, Vaitkus said.