Letter: Legislature must adequately fund social services

Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004 | 8:56 a.m.

No longer do any excuses exist for allowing the provision of social services in Southern Nevada to be a grudgingly accepted and inadequately satisfied responsibility.

The bountiful and perhaps providential receipt of surplus state tax revenues and the prospective receipt of significant increases in Clark County property tax revenues afford Nevada, and in particular, Clark County, the opportunity to meet the demonstrated social service needs of their communities.

Year after year, compassionate Southern Nevadans have been disheartened to hear and read about the plight of homeless individuals who are unable to obtain even a modicum of relief from the elements by securing a bed in a shelter.

Just recently, the closing of a local mental health facility mandated the transfer of the clients of that facility to the hospital emergency rooms of Clark County, resulting in trauma for the clients and frustration for all other individuals who were in need of medical treatment at the emergency rooms.

Rather than considering ways to rebate surplus state tax revenues and rather than considering the placement of a numerical limit on Clark County property tax revenue increases, Southern Nevadans should strongly encourage their legislators to spend their time considering the wise and generous utilization of these revenues for the purpose of satisfying our demonstrated social service needs.

No longer should Southern Nevadans bear the shame of having Las Vegas named as among the "meanest" cities in the nation for the homeless.

No longer should Southern Nevadans accept anything less than bettering the lives of all of their fellow citizens, and in so doing, bettering their own lives.

JORDAN BODENSTEIN