Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Two schools to reap benefits of redevelopment money

The Henderson Redevelopment Agency is giving $50,000 in unused program funds to Basic High School and C.T. Sewell Elementary for beautification and improvement projects.

The agency collects a special tax from development within the city’s five designated redevelopment areas for improvements and re-investment into infrastructure in those areas. In the Downtown and Eastide Redevelopment Areas, the agency offers several programs such as low- and zero-interest loans for businesses to upgrade their signs and facades, business counseling programs and homeowner assistance programs.

However, with the declining economy, demand for the programs has been down because up the up-front costs and matching funds they require, leaving the agency with money that Henderson Redevelopment Manager Michelle Romero said it is obligated to return to the community in some way.

“For redevelopment, we are mandated to spend the money,” she said. “We don’t spend all of it -- we keep a very large reserve -- but there comes a point that we have to spend that money and we have to re-invest in the community.”

C.T. Sewell is located within the Eastside Redevelopment Area, and while Basic lies just outside the border, Romero said it is eligible for redevelopment funds because it is immediately adjacent to a redevelopment area and serves the area’s population.

Basic will receive $35,000 to install shade equipment for the quad area, improve landscaping, purchase electronic signs for the activity center and gym, repaint and resurface the auto shop, print the lyrics to the school’s fight song on the gym’s wall and replace the school logo on the gym floor.

C.T. Sewell will receive $15,000 to purchase decorative rock landscaping, commission a mural, install outdoor benches with shade structures and landscape a tortoise habitat.

Romero said the agency chose to help the schools because in meetings with residents, school officials and business owners within the Eastside Redevelopment Area, education and the area’s aging schools have been the biggest areas of concern.

“The kids lose school pride when their school is falling apart at the seams, and there’s not much money in the budget to fix them up,” Romero said.

The Nevada Legislature considered a bill this year that would have given redevelopment agencies the statutory ability to give grants to schools in their community. Bill sponsor Assemblyman Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City, said his purpose was to clarify existing law, which neither provides for nor prohibits the practice.

“I can’t say that a redevelopment agency is precluded from what this bill would have done, but I wanted to make sure that there was no question,” Hardy said.

The bill was unanimously approved in the Assembly and the Senate, but failed to make it to the governor’s desk because of a Senate amendment that added a fiscal note -- Governor Jim Gibbons had said he would veto any bill with a fiscal note. Hardy said the Senate needed to only vote to drop that amendment and the bill would have become law, but the body ran out of time to do so.

He said he plans to re-introduce the bill in the 2011 legislative session.

“I appreciate (what Henderson is doing) because the bottom line is that we need funds for education,” Hardy said. “Redevelopment agencies have taken a portion of that money that education would have otherwise got, but the advantage of taking the money that the redevelopment agencies have received and putting it back into education is that you can pinpoint it to a specific need.”

Hardy said he prefers the redevelopment approach over simply giving the money to the state for disbursement, because there is no guarantee that it will all return to the community it came from or that it will come as it is needed.

“I like the local ability to solve local problems,” he said. Romero said she was comfortable proceeding with the grants, despite the bill’s failure to become law in the last session.

“Although nothing was decided in the Legislature and nothing came to fruition, we expect to see it again in the next session and we want to be in front of that process when it happens,” she said.

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