Mayor, city manager prepare to slow growth

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2001 | 9:45 a.m.

For years Henderson has been known as America's fastest growing mid-sized city, but now the mayor and city manager are preparing to slow the growth because the city budget is not growing at the same rate.

City officials on Monday met with the Bureau of Land Management to request that a planned auction this spring of 1,500 undeveloped acres in southwest Henderson be delayed 18 months, until November 2003.

The private meeting came a month after Henderson city planners received results from a six-month, $52,500 marketing study of 6,200 acres planned for annexation in southwest Henderson. The 1,500 acres were included as part of that study.

Henderson officials have refused verbal and written requests by the Sun to review the report's findings. The city attorney says that as a draft document, it is not yet available for public review.

But the request for a delayed auction and other comments made publicly at the Henderson City Council meeting Tuesday suggest that Henderson's growth may be curtailed to avoid massive deficit spending.

Due to 1997 changes in state tax distribution formulas, Mayor Jim Gibson said rapid growth can no longer pay for itself. Even with the adjustments won by the city during the 2001 legislative session, Gibson said any city that grows faster than 6 to 6 1/2 percent annually is penalized by state tax distribution formulas. Henderson has been growing at closer to 12 to 14 percent each year, Gibson said.

"None of the municipalities had a clue that this extremely unusual technical adjustment (in 1997) would cause such an immediate and devastating penalty. So we sailed along for a year before we saw that this was a permanent trend," Gibson said.

By 2001, Henderson had lost close to $27 million due to the new tax code, Gibson said.

"These developments have led me to seriously consider something I said I would never consider," Gibson said. "I thought I would never see the day where government would knowingly influence growth in a way that artificially curtailed it. I thought the market would direct all of this."

But in a presentation to the council, Assistant City Manager Bonnie Rinaldi said it would "simply not be prudent to move forward" with plans to build new residential communities on the 1,500 acres in southwest Henderson.

Rinaldi recommended auctioning about 500 acres adjacent to the Henderson Executive Airport, but for industrial and business park development only.