Council approves shooting facility

Wednesday, March 14, 2001 | 11:46 a.m.

Boulder City Council members said Tuesday they plan to build a public safety shooting and driving range in Eldorado Valley.

They will send out requests for proposals in the next couple of days.

Police departments throughout the Las Vegas Valley and other state and county agencies have lined up in support of the project, at the site of a gravel pit off U.S. 95 about 4 miles south of Railroad Pass.

City police departments and other state and federal agencies have been forced to give up training facilities as residential neighborhoods have grown around them.

Police officers and other emergency services personnel are required by law to qualify in shooting and driving exercises annually. Most police departments put officers through firearms training six times a year.

The public need for a shooting range is there as well, council members noted.

An estimated 100,000 registered gun owners live in Clark County. Currently fewer than a dozen public shooting facilities exist in the valley.

Steve Hill, president of Silver State Materials, which owns an excavation company at the Eldorado Valley gravel pit, has offered to put up $1.5 million to help start the public safety range.

He will submit plans to the city, he said.

The council also gave a landlord just more than a month to clean up two rental properties that neighbors say are a public nuisance.

Clay B. Goldston, who owns residences at 850 and 852 Montera Lane, was ordered to clean up debris and tear down a shed by April 10 or face fines that could amount to as much as $1,000 a day.

Several neighbors asked the City Council to take action immediately. They said Goldston, who owns eight properties on Montera Lane, has neglected his properties as far back as 15 years.

Most of the photographs submitted by the city code enforcement officer were views of the back yards of Goldston's properties taken from adjoining properties.

Goldston said he would do as the city requested. But some questioned whether three months from the April 10 deadline Goldston wouldn't be piling up junk again.