Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Growth: Task force’s big job begins

Clark County launched its formal discussion on the region's rapid growth and ways to better manage the growth with a meeting of a new task force Tuesday.

The meeting was long on process and short on disagreement, although some participants privately predicted that would change when the 17-member board gets into the meat of policy questions.

Commissioner Rory Reid, one of three who initially backed the creation of the task force, said the work will be important.

"The formation of this task force, in my view, is the most ambitious effort Clark County has undertaken to confront some of the challenges posed by growth," Reid said. "Through this initiative we have a chance and a unique opportunity to lay a road map to the future."

He described some of the problems related to growth: new and resold housing prices are experiencing double-digit growth, while median incomes in Clark County are rising about 2 percent annually; the county and cities are having a tough time stretching tax resources to provide services to their growing populations; and water, air and land resources are also stretched thin.

Reid said another challenge is "a growing belief by our citizens that we have not done enough to limit growth."

Watching the meeting were representatives of developers and of various agencies throughout Southern Nevada, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Regional Transportation Commission and agencies from within Clark County government.

Many of those government officials will contribute to the discussions over the course of the year.

At the end of this year, the policy recommendations produced by the Growth Task Force is scheduled to go to the Clark County Commission and the intergovernmental Regional Planning Coalition.

Assistant County Manager Rick Holmes framed the work the group will do in four principal areas:

While some of the pressure, especially over the last year, has come from people who actually want to limit growth, task force participants said they believe their goal will be to better manage the growth that exists.

"It's not clear to me that cutting the rate of growth is the objective," said Hal Rothman, a writer and University of Nevada at Las Vegas history professor. "Managing growth is the objective."

Robert Lewis, a building contractor and real estate broker, represents the development community on the task force. He said his industry has felt the pressure to stop building, a scenario that he said has some worried.

The answer is not to stop growth, but to better manage what is happening, Lewis agreed.

"How do we manage growth?" he asked. Lewis said the community, including the developers, can do a better job of limiting the negative impacts of growth on the neighborhoods of Clark County. That will be needed to avoid "hysterical responses" that could affect his industry, he said.

The product of the task force "should be positive so we can continue to grow," he said.

Jane Feldman, an activist with the local arm of the Sierra Club and also a task force member, doesn't often agree with developers, but she said growth management is the goal of the group.

She said the task force might not come up with policies that actually limit growth, but the group can come up with ways to control the negative impact on the environment. The factors driving growth now will ultimately dry up because of negative impacts on the community, Feldman said.

"At some point, we'll start feeling impacts we can't bear," she said. "The things will start changing."

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