Monday, Dec. 11, 2006 | 7:31 a.m.
CARSON CITY - A proposed 180-unit apartment complex for low- to moderate-income families in Las Vegas is moving forward through the bureaucracy of the local, state and federal governments.
Last week, the state Board of Finance approved issuing $15.3 million in revenue bonds sought by the Fore Arby Limited Partnership to build the project on Bureau of Land Management property at Arby Avenue and Riley Street.
In addition to using the tax-exempt bonds, the developers plan to take advantage of soon-to-end tax breaks for financing affordable housing. The tax breaks could help lower construction costs by more than $20,000 per unit, which in turn would reduce rents, state officials said.
Lon DeWeese, chief financial officer for the state Housing Division, said if the apartments were ready today, the average rent for a two-bedroom unit would be $671. That figure likely will change when the complex opens in two years, based on economic conditions at the time.
Gov. Kenny Guinn called the board approval a "great first step" in moving the project along.
The next steps involve the project being reviewed by the national office of the BLM - which must set the land's price - and the Federal Housing Administration.
Among the various top-level appointments that Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons will have to make is finding someone to run the state prison system.
Glen Whorton, state director of prisons, plans to leave the post in January or February to spend time with a son in the military who will be going to Iraq.
Whorton, who retired once from the state after 30 years with the prison system, returned in September 2005 to replace Jackie Crawford. Now he wants to re-retire.
His successor, Whorton said, will face growing problems in the future dealing with inadequate staff, programs for inmates and facilities to house the prisoners.
There are 500 more inmates in the prison today than were budgeted for in 2005. That problem is exacerbated, an audit found this year, by the fact that posts at the seven largest prisons were staffed only 83 percent of the time.
To ensure better safety for inmates, guards and the general public would require an estimated $14 million more a year, which would be used to hire an additional 231 correctional officers to oversee the more than 12,000 inmates scattered through the state's 10 prisons and 10 conservation camps.
The prison expects its population to double in the next 10 years.
Incoming Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, called the prisons' proposed building program to house the growing number of inmates "staggering."
Buckley suggested that alternatives could include freeing some nonviolent offenders.
And Assemblyman David Parks, D-Las Vegas, who will lead a special committee during the 2007 Legislature looking into corrections, parole and probation, said he did not know whether the state could afford a major prison construction program without harming other programs.
Under a measure the Legislature will consider next year, parents could be fined $100 if their child is declared a truant.
Officials of the Clark and Washoe county school districts say parents often are responsible for students' unauthorized absences from class, especially those involving younger children.
The Legislative Committee on Education has approved drafting bills that would authorize the fines for parents of students who have three unauthorized absences and are declared truant.
According to a report of the state Department of Education, 1,702 students out of an enrollment of 412,179 were declared truant in 2005.
But Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said although the number of truants is small, the effort "is worth it if we save only half of them."
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