The boom won't quit

     Las Vegas seems to be angling for a permanent title of "fastest growing city in the nation," a designation that fails to please an increasing number of locals beset by traffic congestion and other fruits of rapid growth.
      The numbers are pretty astonishing. The latest figures from the Census Bureau indicate that, just between 1990 and 1996, the Las Vegas metro area has added more than 348,000 new residents -- a jump of 40.9 percent. The rate of growth far outpaces that of any other city in the nation. And the trend continues. When year-end statistics are compiled, the Las Vegas metro area will have gained more than 70,000 new residents during 1997. In the month of October alone, 7,791 new residents turned in their out-of-state drivers licenses for Nevada cards -- a record.
      Why do they come? One obvious reason is jobs. The area is about as close to full employment as a capitalist economy gets, with the jobless rate around 4 percent. With new megaresorts ready to open, under construction or in the late planning stages, expect the economy to remain vibrant.
      But folks do not live by jobs alone. Low taxes and mild weather are a lure; but Southern Nevada also offers things that are less tangible -- a sense of personal freedom, for example, that's difficult to find elsewhere, particularly across the border to our west. Let us hope the newcomers restrain themselves from trying to duplicate in Las Vegas what they had "back home."The REVIEW-JOURNAL
     January 5