City may ban street games

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, Nov. 8, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

At sundown in a pastel Henderson subdivision, 8-year-old Kyle Divicino and 10-year-old Jordan Grill take turns being Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant, dribbling and pump-faking their way toward a portable basket that stands in the street.

"Watch this," says Grill, striding for the hoop, leaping into the air and pantomiming a slam. "That's an air dunk."

Less than two weeks from now, the air dunk, the game and the basketball hoop could all be illegal.

If an ordinance being considered by the City Council passes later this month, Henderson would become one of the first cities, if not the first, in the nation to ban unattended hoops or skateboard ramps and give police authority to ticket the parents of children who "impede" traffic by playing in the street.

"That's ridiculous," said Lisa Wooden, a neighborhood mom who pulled up in her sport utility vehicle to check on the kids playing in the street, neither of them her own. "What is the harm in letting kids play outside together? Kids today play inside way too much, with video games and all that crap.

"Tell the city to regulate people driving through residential neighborhoods too fast."

City staff members, who will review the ordinance with the council Nov. 19, say street sweepers and other city equipment shouldn't be hamstrung by private clutter camped in public streets. They say kids playing in the public right-of-way pose a danger to themselves and a potential liability for the city.

But parents, a sociologist and at least one city official say street games have been around as long if not longer than Henderson, and that the killjoy ordinance will do more harm than help.

Wooden's Green Valley neighborhood off Windmill Parkway is full of kids who have grown up together. The kids, often with parents, play football in the street. They skateboard. Even if she is outside with them, Wooden sets yellow cones in the street that say "Kids at play."

"We look out for each other around here," she said.

But code enforcement officers, police and the city attorney's office say complaints pour in about kids leaving sports equipment in the street and kids who don't get out of the way when a car comes down the street.

No officials track the complaints, but they say complaints have increased and are the reason for the ordinance.

"Sometimes what you have is, people complain about snotty kids that just stare you down and they won't get out of the way," Ron Sailon, assistant city attorney, said. "On the one hand, we don't want to discourage kids from playing in the streets, but we also want safe streets."

While many neighborhood associations throughout the country ban street basketball hoops, Henderson could become the first city in the nation to outlaw them. The National League of Cities and the Nevada League of Cities both said they know of no other town in the nation that has done so.

The City Council floated a similar ordinance in 1996. But the council dropped the proposal, saying the regulations were written too broadly. Changes have been made since.

Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers said she supports the spirit of proposal.

"We don't mind kids using the basketball hoops. We recognize that they do. But pull them up out of the street when you're done," she said. "They shouldn't be playing in the street anyway. It's a public right-of-way."

A perfect example, Cyphers said, is street hockey. Kids set up cones and block off the entire street. At times kids are hostile toward drivers, she said.

"At the end of the day, who has the right to be in the street?" Cyphers asked. "The cars."

Councilmen Jack Clark and Andy Hafen said they were undecided, but Clark said he worries about potential lawsuits against the city stemming from kids hurt playing in the street.

Councilman Steve Kirk, who grew up downtown on Pacific Avenue in the 1960s and 1970s, said he'll vote against the ordinance. Kids like Divicino and Grill are doing just what he did growing up, he said.

"Our whole activity every day after school was playing football in the street," Kirk said. "If anyone, if a police officer stopped and gave me a citation for that, my dad would have blown his top. And rightfully so."

Many homeowners associations already have rules similar to the ordinance being proposed by the city. Many prohibit residents from leaving sports equipment unattended in the street, and some require equipment to be hidden from public view when not in use.

Others prohibit portable hoops altogether, as Sailon found out last Christmas when he purchased a hoop for his 7-year-old daughter. It's gathering dust in his garage.

There's a reason for those rules, Rick Schmalz, president of the Green Valley Ranch Community Association, one of the largest in the state, said.

"In the master-planned communities, people want consistency of architecture. They want consistency of landscaping. They want consistency of color scheme," he said. "That's where property values are the best and where they have increased most rapidly."

A silent majority, including many seniors, considers the portable hoops an eyesore, Schmalz said.

While cities have outlawed skateboarding in public plazas and some relegate rollerbladers to the sidewalk, no cities appear to have banned "sport or amusement" from the streets, said Katherine Bates, manager of policy analysis and development for the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C.

Allen Lichtenstein, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney in Las Vegas, called the Henderson proposal "a bit like overkill."

"It's not like this area is overflowing with parks," he said. "Kids are going to play in the streets as they always have. I would think the police would have better things to do."

Robert E. Parker, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas sociology professor who has written numerous articles on the dearth of recreational facilities in the Las Vegas Valley, said the city should be focusing its efforts not on prohibiting street sports, but on providing more small, accessible parks.

"I really see this as blaming-the-victim legislation rather than taking responsibility for our own failure to provide recreation facilities for them," Parker said. "The average Las Vegan has about one-tenth the recreational space as in another city of its size."

The back yards, for that matter, are postage stamps compared with the back yards David Ringenbach, a professional Las Vegas Strip musician, remembers growing up in New Jersey.

Standing in socks and sweatpants and leaned up against his parked truck earlier this week while Divicino and Grill played basketball, he said, "A kid wants to come home from school and play outside. He's got a half-hour before dinner. You're not going to go to a park. And the back yards are too small. So he's going to play in the street."

Divicino said even if his mother had time to drive him to the park, several blocks away, he'd just as soon stay closer to home after school.

He couldn't understand the problem. Faking left and then driving to the portable basket for a behind-the-back layup, he gulped some air and said, "We've got a hoop right here."