Henderson council briefs for February 20, 2002

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002 | 9:21 a.m.

A Henderson fire station that became the focal point of election eve politicking last spring opened this month without fanfare, almost six months early.

"We opened it quietly," Henderson Fire Chief Jim Cavalieri said Tuesday of the Anthem-Del Webb fire station, the city's ninth.

The city will hold an official ribbon-cutting in the next week or two, he said.

As a June vote neared on a public safety tax that would have raised a projected $850 million over 30 years, city officials said the fire station would not open unless voters approved the tax. It was the second time in seven months that the proposed tax appeared on the ballot.

Voters rejected the tax for a second time in June. But by then, city officials were able to lobby for a shift in the state consolidated tax formula, giving the city an annual boost of $4.3 million in revenues. The city use $1.1 million annually to staff the Anthem fire station.

Council approves for-sale units

Henderson will get 476 new units of high-density, low-cost multi-family housing on 30 acres southeast of Green Valley and Horizon Ridge parkways.

The Henderson City Council on Tuesday approved two separate multi-family developments in an effort to provide affordable housing for "the average" working family and to elude a growing reputation as an elitist suburb.

They won't be apartments though, a type of housing generally frowned on in Henderson. They are for-sale units, from roughly $90,000 to $110,000.

"At some point we could price ourselves out of first-time home buyers by our insistence that every home has a front yard, a side yard and a back yard. I'd hate to see the time we're seen as elitist," Councilman Jack Clark said. "We do want honest, decent, hard-working people in our city."