An oasis of funding amid a recession

By Joe Schoenmann (contact)

Saturday, March 21, 2009 | 2 a.m.

LAS VEGAS SUN

“Failure” isn’t a word typically associated with happy outcomes.

But if the county mothballs its redevelopment agency as expected, officials say, the agency’s millions will be divvied up, and the Clark County School District could get the biggest check — almost $14 million — if the redistribution takes place at the end of this fiscal year.

By the last day of the fiscal year, June 30, the Clark County Redevelopment Agency’s coffers are expected to contain $36.1 million, revenue from increases in property taxes in three special improvement districts. The largest one encompasses the old Commercial Center shopping mall.

But 5 1/2 years after the agency was created, all it has to show for itself is a plan on a shelf. So the county is set to close it down.

At this week’s County Commission meeting, George Stevens, chief of finance, outlined how the redevelopment money collected since 2005 could be distributed to various government entities: $13.8 million to the School District; $10.1 million to Clark County; $3.48 million to the Clark County Fire Department; $3.3 million to the county’s unincorporated towns; $2.7 million to the state; $1.4 million to the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District; $1.3 million to Metro Police, and $10,000 to the Las Vegas Artesian Basin Tax District.

Stevens also calculated how much money the agency would collect in 2010 if the county were to wait another year before shuttering the agency. Stevens projected the collection of another $15 million, of which $5.7 million would go to the school district, $4.2 million to Clark County, $1.5 million to fire service and the Las Vegas Artesian Basin Tax District, $1.4 million to towns, $567,000 to the library district and $557,000 to Metro.

The School District isn’t ready to talk about how it might spend its windfall. Instead it is taking a wait-and-see attitude, district spokesman Michael Rodriguez said.

“Nothing is set in concrete just yet and we don’t know if, when it goes to the state, they might determine a different way for how the money trickles down,” he said. “A lot still depends on how this goes forward.”

A county source also acknowledged there is no guarantee that redistributed money from the fund would necessarily get to the School District, because the state controls school funding. The other dollars, however, would be dedicated to county supported programs.

The desire to unplug the agency is fairly strong, given that the redistributed money would go to various areas that receive county funding and are going to be hurting in the next fiscal year.

“This is really an example of trying to be creative and do everything we can to get through the fiscal crisis,” Commission Chairman Rory Reid said. “It’s another way to divert revenue to a place where we need it now.”

The county agency’s relative inactivity is in stark contrast to the local juggernaut of redevelopment, the Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency.

Though critics charge the city has given excessive tax breaks to developer CIM for its plans to renew both the Lady Luck and the area around the future mob museum, and have shamed the city for approving redevelopment dollars for things such as new signs for strip clubs, the agency keeps chugging ahead. It now has in place the financing for a performing arts center in the 61-acre Union Park, where several other projects are under way or close to it.

Critics say too much tax assistance to developers deprives schools and other government-funded agencies of necessary tax revenue, but the city counters that income from jobs and revenue created through redevelopment makes up the difference.

City spokesman Jace Radke points to World Market Center as a prime example. In 2005, he said, that acreage produced $38,920 in property taxes for the School District. Today the space is occupied by three monolithic buildings and a parking garage, contributing $681,000 in property taxes to the School District in 2008.

In fairness to the county’s redevelopment agency, it is considered a baby at 5 1/2 years. By contrast, the city’s redevelopment agency has been around since 1986.

In any case, state lawmakers appear more attuned to Clark County’s way of thinking than the city’s. Assembly Bill 422, co-sponsored by Assembly Republicans and Democrats, reads as something of a redevelopment backlash because of how it targets tourism improvement districts like the one the city is creating around the mob museum downtown.

Developers in these districts are allowed to funnel a majority of sales tax revenue back into property in the districts. AB422 mandates that schools will not have to give up the portion they receive from sales taxes in these districts.