Editorial: A mentor in reverse could come in handy

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2003 | 8:50 a.m.

As North Las Vegas embarks on its biggest public works project ever -- the building of a $30 million justice facility -- it should take advantage of the opportunity to use Clark County as its mentor. Clark County is in a perfect position to provide the best possible counsel to North Las Vegas -- on how not to build a justice center.

The county's Regional Justice Center is still not done, despite an original hoped-for completion date of late 1999. It's also $15 million over budget. It's also mired in legal wrangling with contractors. There's already a shortage of office space. Just about everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

All North Las Vegas has to do is get Clark County to reveal exactly what it did from the outset of the project, and then do the opposite. That way, its plans to break ground in September and have the 96,000-square-foot project completed by 2005 may actually come to pass. "Everything looks top-notch on this thing," North Las Vegas Municipal Judge Warren VanLandschoot told the Sun. He sounds just like Clark County, circa 1997. We hope the city has an altogether more successful outcome.