Change in rules to ease privatization of streets

Sito Negron

Thursday, April 22, 2004 | 9:42 a.m.

The Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance change that makes it easier for residents of existing neighborhoods to turn public streets into private ones, a move promoted by some residents of the Scotch 80s who want to gate their community.

"This bill is not gating off Scotch 80s today," said Councilwoman Janet Moncrief, who supported the rule change. She emphasized that the bill affects the entire city, not just the influential Scotch 80s, a high-end neighborhood near Charleston Boulevard and Interstate15, and said residents who want the gates still must apply for a permit to make their streets private.

The rule change makes it easier to file for such a permit, called a "vacation" of public streets.

Moncrief said residents who support gating still have questions to answer before she'll be satisfied that it's the right thing to do.

Proponents of gating the neighborhood say it would make their streets quieter and safer, and relieve the city of the burden of maintaining the roadway, something Moncrief has said in the past is a benefit of the plan.

They point to Rancho Nevada, an existing neighborhood that shut itself off in the early 1990s, the only time previously that the city allowed an existing neighborhood to take over its formerly public streets.

Danny Piper, the Scotch 80s resident who has been working on the issue for years, has said he's trying to make his neighborhood safer and quieter. He said after the meeting that "this is not over. We still have issues to work through." Among those are getting enough neighborhood support for the plan. Piper said a majority of his neighbors already favor the idea.

Several Scotch 80s residents spoke in favor of the council action Wednesday, with one saying the rule change was a request from older neighborhoods in the city. However, city officials, including Moncrief, have said they have not received any requests to close existing streets other than the one from the Scotch 80s.

Opponents of the action question whether it's fair to neighbors just outside the proposed gates who consider themselves part of the same community, especially if the neighborhood boundaries are unclear, and whether it's fair to neighbors inside the proposed gates who don't want any part of the plan.

Among other issues that have come up in the discussion about making streets private: how the city would calculate subdivision boundaries in older areas that may have been subdivided more than once; and whether there ought to be a length of time specified between when a street is renovated to when it can be privatized. Taxpayers spent more than $300,000 worth of work on the streets in the Scotch 80s neighborhood about four years ago.

Jeffrey Firschman, who lives just outside the Scotch 80s, said the bill approved by council was better than the one originally proposed, because it includes certain restrictions, such as requiring the applicants prove that their request would not hurt residents outside the area to be privatized.

However, it does not include provisions on notifying residents in a broad area outside the area requested to be privatized, although Moncrief said her office would notify those people when the formal request to block off streets is to be considered. It would be up to each council member to notify people when a vacation is requested in their district.

The boundary of the area that would be gated would be Charleston on the north, Rancho on the west and Oakey on the south. The eastern boundary would be Martin Luther King Boulevard and Shadow Lane.