Controversial wall lands on agenda

Erin Neff

Thursday, Jan. 4, 2001 | 10:42 a.m.

More than seven months after construction began on a block security wall, residents of Bonanza Village are still faced with torn-up back yards, shoddy temporary fencing and permanent neighborhood rifts.

And until the Nevada Supreme Court resolves a legal challenge to the wall, brought by a resident, no one can provide any answers or relief.

"I think the problem for many of the residents is that they need some concrete answers, and they want some security for their homes," Councilman Lawrence Weekly said Wednesday as the City Council, for the first time, placed the issue on its agenda for discussion.

Prior to Wednesday, resident Dan Contreras made repeated pleas to the council during each citizen's participation portion of the meeting. Finally the board agreed to formally discuss the issue, but admitted in doing so that it had little power to change anything.

In 1998 a majority of Bonanza Village residents presented the council with a petition asking that a Special Improvement District be levied on their West Las Vegas neighborhood to build a security wall. Each of the 168 property owners would be assessed for his or her share of the wall's $825,000 cost.

But after the council approved the SID, resident Cuthbert Mack sued in District Court to stop the process. City Attorney Brad Jerbic said the city won eight different hearings on the matter.

Then, just after construction on the wall began last May, Mack asked the Nevada Supreme Court for relief. The court issued an injunction, prohibiting construction of the wall, until the justices rule on Mack's suit.

Mack objects to the wall because he says a majority of residents now do not want the project completed, in part, because the cost to individual residents has risen from the original $2,300 estimate.

The Supreme Court on Sept. 21 granted the city's request for an expedited review of the case. But the city still has no idea when the court will hear the matter.

For now, Jerbic said, the city can only wait.

"We can't build the wall, the court would hold us in contempt, and we can't go there," Jerbic said.

Construction of the wall has divided the neighborhood, "ruined friendships," and has almost led to physical altercations, Weekly said.

"It's a major problem," Weekly added.