County tries to tackle infrastructure wish list

      Infrastructure.
      Taxpayers may seldom utter the word but often gripe about paying for what it represents.
      For most residents, infrastructure simply means the roads they drive on and the potholes they curse on their way to work. It means the water that nourishes and bathes them, the pipes that deliver it and the sewers that carry it away.
      It's about their local schools and whether children will have classrooms to learn in, let alone teachers to teach them.
      And it's about the parks where they walk their dogs, the police and fire departments that protect them, and the courtrooms and jails they rely upon for justice.
      The price tag: an estimated $10 billion to keep up with growth projected for the next decade.
      How to fund infrastructure and whether Southern Nevadans will agree to buy it have emerged as perhaps the toughest problems facing state and local policy-makers.
      Clark County commissioners voted earlier this month to ask state legislators to focus on funding water, sewers and schools this session.
      That leaves funding for other areas dangling -- to be addressed in future legislative sessions or by a County Commission more eager to take the lead on funding growth-related needs.
      "We've got a long, long list of expenses and can't tackle them all at once," said Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who has advocated taking an incremental approach to paying for infrastructure.
     
     What do we need?
     
      The first obstacle in tackling the problem is defining and prioritizing needs. Nobody in state or local governments -- nor in the private sector -- has devised a comprehensive list of exactly what services need funding.
      "To really get a handle on overall needs, you need to have a uniform definition of what exactly infrastructure means, which hasn't been settled," said Guy Hobbs, the former county finance chief who advises several legislators and county commissioners. "Until that's defined and until it's determined what needs are not funded, there's going to be confusion."
      In the meantime, agencies vying for tax dollars are shuttling lobbyists to Carson City to make cases for why their needs should top the infrastructure shopping list.
      One of the most aggressive lobbying efforts has been that of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which is seeking help paying for $1.8 billion in expansions to its aging water delivery system. Toting charts and graphs to the capital, agency officials asked for a quarter-cent sales tax to help fund the project, which is designed to accommodate new growth and provide backup in case of an emergency.
      The need for extra reliability became painfully obvious in February, water officials said, when the water system broke down for the first time in its 26-year history.
      "If that didn't alert people to the need for expansions, I don't know what would," water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said.
      The delivery system will be expanded with or without help from the quarter-cent sales tax.
      In December 1995, the water authority approved a funding package that splits financing between new development, through connection fees, and ratepayers, through higher water bills. Revenues from the proposed sales tax increase would keep those fees and charges from increasing eightfold over the next two decades, water officials said.
      Proponents of the sales tax note that it spreads the funding burden to tourists, who pay about 30 percent of all sales tax in Southern Nevada. Supporters also tout the tax as discretionary, protecting poorer households from skyrocketing water bills and shielding new home buyers from expensive connection charges.
      If approved as proposed, the sales tax would exclusively fund the water system through 2001, when 43 percent of revenues would begin helping pay for sewer system expansions.
      Sanitation officials say they need $1.3 billion in new tanks, pipes and treatment processes beginning in 2003 to meet demands of growth and to keep up with increasingly stringent environmental standards. Without them, they say, the current system would be overloaded.
      As proposed, the sales tax would offset future sewer rate increases, with revenues expected to save households about $21 each year.
      The Clark County School District also is jockeying for tax dollars to fund its growing infrastructure needs.
      District officials said they'll need $330 million for school construction and rehabilitation each year to serve the 13,000 new students projected annually.
      "It's like triage," Clark County Schools Superintendent Brian Cram said. "People keep coming and coming, and somebody's going to have to pay to accommodate them. The bottom line is that somehow, some way we have to figure out how to avoid an urban meltdown with our schools."
      Such a meltdown, he said, has occurred in Washington, D.C., for example, where years of neglect and disrepair have rendered schools unusable.
      Last year, Southern Nevada voters approved a $643 million bond program to help avoid a similar meltdown over the next five years.
      To help carry the district past the millennium, special interests have offered partial solutions. The gaming industry has volunteered to accept a 1 percentage point increase in room taxes and home builders have offered to nearly double real estate transfer taxes, adding $155 to the price of a typical $128,000 home. Should state lawmakers approve those tax plans, they are expected to raise $43 million annually for schools beginning next year, increasing to more than $60 million annually after 2000.
      Still, Assistant Superintendent Mike Alastuey points out, "the new sources unfortunately won't meet building needs on a pay-as-you-go basis by anyone's calculation." Funding for the remaining $270 million to $287 million shortfall would come from bonding against those taxes, or against the 55-cent property tax rate levied for education, he said.
     
     Speed bumps in funding
     
      With the water system, sewers and school funding topping the infrastructure wish list -- and likely to be resolved by summer -- funding for other needs is left uncertain.
      Transportation probably will snag future tax dollars because traffic jams and potholes make such needs obvious to the public.
      "It takes an hour to drive three miles around here," motorist Dean Stanley said while filling up his Hyundai at a Texaco station on West Charleston Boulevard. "The roads aren't wide enough. There's too many traffic lights and all that damned construction. Hurry up and wait, I tell you, it's hurry up and wait."
      The Clark County Regional Transportation Commission has drafted a 20-year, $2.2 billion plan that would improve mass transit, build a proposed $1.2 billion monorail along the Strip and construct east-west arterials to alleviate traffic congestion.
      Without those improvements, planners say, gridlock -- especially in the resort corridor -- would grow unbearable.
      "Traffic delays would make Las Vegas such an inconvenient, frustrating place to visit and work that it would cost jobs and could devastate the economy," said Lee Gibson, the transportation commission's planning manager.
      Parks also are vying for about $325 million in infrastructure funding over the next five years.
      That sum would buy land, pave parking lots, build swimming pools and playgrounds, although exact parks needs haven't been defined. County and city governments have yet to decide whether new funds should be spent on smaller, neighborhood parks or on a few larger, more expensive regional parks.
      Whichever the scope, some residents gripe about having too little park space.
      "The government is ignoring the kids," said Bud Miller, a construction worker playing with his nephews last week at Lorenzi Park. "It lets all these houses be built but doesn't leave any room for play."
      County Commissioner Erin Kenny, who has rallied for more parks since taking office in 1995, agrees parks should top infrastructure wish lists.
      "It's what people want: green space, places to congregate, to run around, play with their kids and become a part of their community," she said. "It's buying something tangible with their tax dollars."
     
     Paying for services
     
      Seemingly less tangible -- unless Southern Nevada is hit with what flood control experts call the "100-year storm" -- is the need for $600 million in channels, storm drains and detention basins over the next decade.
      Unlike other infrastructure, flood control needs are triggered by the area's topography, not population growth.
      Said Gale Fraser, general manager of the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, "No matter how many people move here, it doesn't change the fact that we live in a valley and are susceptible to flooding."
      Criminal justice also has infrastructure needs.
      Officials with the Metropolitan Police Department said their 2,400-member organization needs more room for offices, ideally a centralized facility that would save them from renting space in dozens of locations throughout the valley. Such a "public safety" building would cost about $50 million over the next decade, said budget chief Lois Roethel, and would offer the public "one-stop shopping" for police offices much the way the $68 million Clark County Government Center did when built in 1995.
      Roethel said the police might need four new substations over the next decade, at a cost of about $12 million. The department also needs a new, $15 million communications system designed to last 10 to 12 years.
      It's still unclear who might pay the $75 million tab for that police infrastructure. Without new revenue sources, Roethel said, funding would have to come out of the department's operating budget, possibly resulting in fewer police on the streets.
      The growing North Las Vegas and Henderson police departments also will require new substations but don't have cost projections yet for the next decade.
      As Southern Nevada's population and crime rate grow, so too does its need for courthouses and jail space. A $120 million bond question approved by voters in the fall will help pay for a $78 million Clark County jail expansion and $122 million regional courthouse.
      New jail beds will suffice until 2006, police officials said, although the county will need about 430 more beds to carry it through 2010. That expansion is estimated to cost $10 million to $12 million.
      The County Commission is expected soon to vote on how to fund its $84 million share of the regional courthouse; court officials expect the state and city of Las Vegas to pitch in the remaining $38 million.
      "How exactly they're going to come up with the money, I can't tell you," said District Judge Nancy Becker, who coordinates the justice center project. "I'm assuming they will simply allocate the funds for it."
      Three months into the Legislature, little has been solved on how to fund infrastructure. Those involved in discussions remind themselves that growth-related problems didn't crop up suddenly and won't be completely solved this session.
      "The problem has been growing for years and isn't going to disappear overnight," Hobbs said. "I think the moral of the story on infrastructure is have patience."