Growth panel readies package for commission

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 | 9:03 a.m.

Clark County's Growth Management Task Force came close to wrapping up more than a year's worth of detailed work Tuesday, going page-by-page over a 149-page report it will formally present to the Clark County Commission next week.

The 17-member group earlier this month set its top five recommendations but expanded that menu to a broad range of recommendations and strategies to blunt the negative effects of the region's rapid pace of growth, which has been around 6 percent for years and has vaulted the Las Vegas region into the nation's fastest growing urban area for a decade.

Among the many recommendations from the group is to expand mass transit, use cleaner-burning gasoline year-round, encourage mixed-use development that brings homes and jobs closer together and expand availability of recreational public facilities for county residents.

As it has in other meetings, the growing issue of the lack of affordable housing sparked some of the most spirited discussion.

Group members have suggested asking the county and city governments to pressure the Bureau of Land Management to integrate set-aside land for affordable housing in its land auctions, to create a local housing trust fund to develop such affordable housing or to have the county or the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Commission study the issue more.

Pat Goodall, the chairman of the group and a former UNLV president, said the recommendations on affordable-housing issues on the range of other issues, from the natural environmental to mass transit, are likely to be acted upon.

"I'm fairly optimistic that the County Commission is serious about this," he said. "All of them seem very much onboard."

Goodall agreed that some issues, such as the cost of housing, are not always amenable to government manipulation. He noted that the group tackled the issue after it had been chartered as the cost of housing seemed to spike.

"We wouldn't have guessed a year ago that in a few months it would be at the top of everybody's agenda," Goodall said. While housing prices are "very much market driven, my guess is you can make some difference."

Jay Bingham, a developer and former Clark County commissioner, said he believes the escalating prices of homes is caused by the auctions practiced by the BLM under 1998 federal law. He said the federal agency's high starting "fair market value" is driving up the cost.

"Working people have been taken out of the market because the proceeds have gone to the BLM," he said.

"I don't know what the answer is, but you've got to get the BLM out of the local land business," Bingham said following the meeting.

Bingham's perspective is not shared by other members of the task force, some of whom argue that the cost of land is set by the market, not by the agency.

Hal Rothman, a UNLV history professor and task force member, said the BLM auction policy, which often generates much higher prices than the market value set by BLM appraisers, reverses the agency's history of swaps and other land practices that sometimes amounted to "theft from the federal government."

Bingham said pushing the BLM to provide set-asides for construction of affordable housing could help some of those at the bottom of the economic ladder with subsidized housing, but would not likely help those who might make $30,000 or $40,000 annually.

"One of the great things about this community is, if you wanted to work, you could afford a house," he said. "We're getting away from that. I don't see this (the recommendations) addressing that."

However, Bingham, as with the host of other issues examined at Tuesday's meeting, signed off on the final product. Participants noted the almost total unanimity in approving the measures to go to the county commission.

"We asked 25 times today whether 17 very diverse people could agree," said Steve Hill, task force member and president of Silver State Materials Corp., a company that sells concrete and sand and gravel products. The answer, he noted, was that they could.

Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said the work of the group will be considered carefully by the county commission and will likely lead to substantive action by the county and potentially by other regional governments.

The recommendations, he said, "have been a long time coming and are the product of an enormous amount of work."

"The hours that this group of citizens, environmentalists, developers, a diverse group, have put into this has been astounding," Reilly said.