Council to tackle tax, traffic issues

Dan Kulin

Thursday, April 22, 2004 | 9:16 a.m.

Changing the way taxes are divvied up among local governments and putting special cameras designed to catch red-light runners at several intersections are among the top priorities the North Las Vegas City Council decided Wednesday to focus on during the coming 2005 state legislative session.

Both issues have been hot topics in recent sessions.

An effort to allow the red-light cameras at intersections failed during the 2003 Legislature. North Las Vegas plans to ask for permission to run a two-year pilot program.

The council agreed to make that request through proposed legislation, which is planned to be submitted as a bill draft request to the Legislative Counsel Bureau in May or June. The deadline for bill draft requests is Sept. 1.

The council also agreed to submit bill draft requests for legislation that would give the council more time to consider proposed laws and shorten the time police must wait for people to claim their property from the police evidence vault.

Now police must hold onto such property for 90 days. The proposed change would shorten that to 60 days, which city officials said would ease the overcrowding in the vault.

The other change would require the council act on a proposed law by the second council meeting following the introduction of an ordinance. Now the council is required to vote at the first meeting after an ordinance is introduced.

The effort to change how the consolidated tax is distributed will begin with negotiations with other area governments. North Las Vegas is not proposing any specific changes to the complex tax formula now. City Manager Gregory Rose said specific suggestions should come out of meetings with other government leaders.

In the end city leaders are hoping for a new formula that will steer more of the tax money to North Las Vegas.

Rose said changes to the tax formula changes done in 2001 left the city better off, but more needs to be done.

"On a per-capita basis we're still losing ground," Rose said. "We're better off because of 2001, but it's still not equitable."