Friday, Nov. 29, 2002 | 10:53 a.m.
Unless you've had your head buried a mile deep in the Southern Nevada sand, you know that this state is in a serious financial crisis.
"We're growing too fast," says longtime political consultant Kent Oram. "We're blowing our quality of life here."
Rapid growth no longer is paying for itself. Our tax base is out of whack and must be broadened so that the infrastructure -- the roads, the schools, the police stations -- and the necessary services -- education, welfare, mental health programs -- keep up with the burgeoning population.
It's not an easy task, as Gov. Kenny Guinn, who's dealing with an unprecedented budget shortfall of $450 million a year over the next two years, is finding out.
But it has become a necessary task, and something all of us will have to face, sooner than later, if we want to continue to maintain the high quality of life in this valley.
If we want more cops on the street to make us feel safe, we're going to have to pay for those cops. If we don't want our children to attend overcrowded schools, we're going to have to pay for more schools. You get what you pay for.
Local entities fully understand that principle. In their desire to ease the tax burden on the public, they've been re-evaluating old ways of generating revenues to deal with growth -- and looking for new ways.
The under-funded school district is considering deals with cellular phone companies to bring in extra cash. The companies under the plan would be allowed to put up cell towers near high school football fields and advertise their products.
At the city of Las Vegas, Mayor Oscar Goodman recently struck a promotional deal with Bombay Sapphire Gin to raise money for the homeless. The venture was embarrassing and demeaning to the mayor's office, but it nevertheless brought a few more dollars into the city's coffers.
This week the Las Vegas Municipal Court did the unthinkable. It announced that it was postponing its traditional holiday moratorium on traffic tickets to assess the viability of the program.
Motorists with outstanding tickets won't get a chance this year to waive late fees, or even arrest warrants, if they want to settle up with the court.
Collecting traffic fines, it seems, has become an even more important revenue source for the city in these uncertain economic times.
So Municipal Court Administrator James Carmany said he was willing to forgo a little holiday goodwill to study whether the moratorium is hurting the city's efforts to collect those fines.
"We want to see whether the program actually is increasing revenues, or whether people are just taking advantage of the system," Carmany explained.
At Metro Police, Sheriff-elect Bill Young said this week that he intends to ask the 2003 Legislature to put a question on the 2004 ballot that would seek a property tax increase to hire 297 more officers.
Metro, Young said, is far below the national average of 2.7 officers for every 1,000 people. Metro has 1.7 cops for every 1,000 people in Clark County.
The incoming sheriff may be a political novice, but he already understands that when he takes office after the first of the year, money will be tight in Clark County and the city of Las Vegas, which fund the department.
So he's willing to take his case for more cops directly to the voters, who last approved a tax hike for more cops in 1996. And he's ready to start the campaign now, before he's even sworn into office.
"We need to maintain a safe environment in Las Vegas," Young said. "If we don't, we make a bad economy worse. If we get the reputation that this is an unsafe town, the tourists won't come."
What all this means is that we have some tough medicine to swallow in the coming months if we want to maintain our healthy lifestyle in Las Vegas.
It will cost us a little more in our pocketbooks, but in the long run we'll be better off.
We no longer can afford to bury our heads in the sand.
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