Editorial: Think outside the daily box

Sunday, Oct. 1, 2006 | 7:35 a.m.

Clark County's seven elected commissioners meet four times a month - twice as the County Commission to decide general policies and twice as a zoning board to decide land-use issues. Their agendas can be a foot or more thick, and the majority of the items pertain to short-term issues.

What this means is that commissioners are primarily focusing on day-to-day decisions, with virtually no time left over for thinking about what the urban Las Vegas Valley, and the county's more open-space areas, should be like when today's first graders reach middle age.

Even Clark County's planning staff is largely committed to handling the multitudinous issues that are affecting our fast-growing urban area today, along with the equally numerous issues that are readily apparent on the horizon.

There's an obvious problem here. While county officials are busy paying attention to all of the short- and near-term issues, where are the people thinking long and hard about the next decade and beyond?

It is sobering to think that there is no duly appointed board that is tasked with that responsibility. While task forces have come and gone, no permanent group exists whose sole job is to comprehensively research the future based on current trends and make recommendations to the County Commission.

UNLV officials have been saying for a while now that such a group is needed, and we agree.

In 20 or 30 years, is it safe to assume that oil will be a fast-fading commodity? Will we need space throughout the valley for solar collectors? Will we need a reconfigured mass-transit system? What will be the space requirements for schools when enrollment here is above 600,000? Where will the water come from? How will health care be delivered? What types of housing will be necessary?

Such questions must be posed and discussed in depth, and if consensus is reached on ensuing scenarios, planning should start right away.

Helen Neill, a UNLV environmental studies professor, remarked to Las Vegas Sun reporter Brian Wargo that if a long-range planning group had existed here decades ago we might not now be afflicted with poor air quality, a water shortage and traffic congestion.

We hope county commissioners agree that a long-range planning group is necessary, and soon begin discussing how it should be organized and funded.