Sales tax hike is OK’d

Stephen Curran

Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.

A sales tax hike designed to put more police officers on Clark County streets cleared its final hurdle on Tuesday.

Commissioners voted 6-0 to adopt the quarter-percent increase, capping what had become a three-year effort by Sheriff Bill Young to pay for more cops in the growing county.

Clark County's sales tax is now 7.5 percent. It will jump to 7.75 percent Oct. 1.

The increase is expected to bring in more than $83 million in 2006 for the five police agencies in Clark County -- Metro, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City and Mesquite. Of that, three-fourths will go to Metro, said George Stevens, the county's chief financial officer.

Young also wants the sales tax to be raised another quarter of a cent in 2009.

Young estimated the increase could mean 1,700 more officers in the next 10 years.

On Tuesday, Young verbally sparred with Commissioner Myrna Williams over where the more than 200 new officers Young has argued the tax increase could bring in each year would be stationed.

Williams, a long-time supporter of the initiative who ultimately voted in its favor, cautioned against placing more uniformed officers along the Strip at the expense of decaying residential neighborhoods.

"Would they (the officers) just be spread all over the place?" she asked. "Because I don't think this is a matter of whether we should protect the Strip."

The sheriff has repeatedly argued for a stronger police presence on the Strip, saying more officers on the tourist corridor could potentially prevent terrorist strikes there.

Young added that, of the new officers expected to come on board, 80 percent would be assigned to uniformed patrols at each of the department's seven substations. And, while he emphasized a need for stepped-up patrols in dangerous residential neighborhoods, the sheer number of tourists that descends on Las Vegas Boulevard each weekend made positioning more cops on the Strip a priority, he said.

"If they (the public) don't like the Strip and don't feel it should be protected, they should move to another community," Young said.

Young's presentation met with criticism from senior citizen groups, which turned out Tuesday to say the seemingly popular measure could open the floodgates to voter-approved tax hikes for countless services.

Ken Mahal, president of the Nevada Seniors Coalition, called the move "a serious mistake" and questioned Young's assertion that more officers lead to less crime.

"Nowhere is there any proof that more police means less crime," he said.

Voters in November approved imposing an increase of up to 1 percent to hire and equip more police officers in the valley. The Legislature approved the measure, which was signed by Gov. Kenny Guinn.

The increase was popular in urban parts of the Las Vegas Valley, where it garnered enough to support to overcome strong opposition from voters in the rural parts of the county.

North Las Vegas Police Chief Mark Paresi told the commissioners Tuesday that the roughly $8 million his department expects to receive next year from the sales tax would help officers in the rapidly growing city move from a"reaction mode" to more actively preventing crimes.

The key, Paresi said, was to increase patrols along individual streets and to build trust among the residents there.

"We need to get back into our neighborhoods," he said. "Our children need to be safe. ... Right now, we go from call to call."

Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who lives in and represents Boulder City, where the measure failed, said the measure would help stem what had become a "significant" need for more officers.

That urban need, he said, outweighed the public disapproval in rural parts of the county.

"I live in and represent a community where this did not pass," Woodbury said. "But the people have spoken. If the vote had gone the other way we would not be considering such a measure. There is a very significant need for more cops now."