Friday, April 22, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Builders tapping city's power

Construction site electricity comes from street lights

Think your Nevada Power bill is high?

The city of Las Vegas' annual power tab runs about $11.7 million.

But taxpayers are footing the bill for more than lights and air conditioning in municipal buildings like City Hall.

Private homebuilders for years have bilked the public by tapping into street light poles to steal electricity for construction sites, according to an audit made public Thursday.

"Larceny is what it's called," Assistant City Attorney John Redlein said Thursday during the city's quarterly audit committee meeting, where the findings were reported.

The investigator who brought the illegal practice to light told committee members he could not estimate how much it has cost taxpayers, because the city's Department of Public Works has failed to track times the power theft has been discovered by city engineers.

"They're telling me it's a regular practice," senior internal auditor Bryan Smith said.

Upon hearing Smith's words, the jaw of City Councilman Lawrence Weekly literally dropped.

Weekly, who serves on the audit committee with Councilman Larry Brown and a handful of people from the private sector, asked the auditor how long that has been happening.

Smith said an exact time is unclear from his discussions with staffers with Public Works' Division of Traffic Engineering Field Operations.

"It sounds like this has been going on a long time," Smith said. "Public Works has been aware of it."

He said developers might have used city electricity for uses other than construction.

"They may use this power for model homes," Smith said.

Public Works officials Thursday acknowledged Smith's findings were accurate and said corrective measures are under way.

They said they have tried to prevent homebuilders from swiping free electricity by locking light pole electrical boxes after they are energized by the power company.

"The developers will take the lock off the power boxes, bust it off to reconnect to the circuit," said Jorge Cervantes, assistant city traffic engineer. "I really don't know how long it's been going on, but unless we catch them in the act of knocking the lock off, we can't really do anything."

However, Smith said that upon discovering missing locks, the city typically cuts the power lines. Taxpayers must later pay to fix this.

Smith said he did not know the names of the developers and electrical contractors who routinely engage in the practice, and Smith did not name companies during Thursday's meeting.

Cervantes said Public Works officials are working diligently to correct the problem and expect a solution to be in place within a month.

In the future, developers will be required to contact Nevada Power and fund electricity to light poles until the city inspections are complete.

Smith and Cervantes explained how the problem unfolds.

Once new light poles are installed in new home developments, city engineers conduct an initial inspection, return to their office and then contact Nevada Power to dispatch a technician.

Once the poles are powered, the Nevada Power employee locks the utility company's portion of the electrical box and a city engineer then returns to the site to lock the city's portion of the box.

But when engineers return some time later to conduct a final inspection, they discover the locks missing and then cut power to the site. That results in taxpayers being hit with another charge to reconnect power to the site later, Smith said.

Upon being told of the audit's findings, Mayor Oscar Goodman said he advocates civil litigation.

"It's amazing," Goodman said. "If somebody is stealing from the city, we should sue them."

Thursday's report from the office of City Auditor Radford Snelding comes only a week after Snelding's staff revealed a city-owned golf course is running in disarray.

The audit of Durango Hills Golf Club states that city marshals are investigating several thefts at the golf course; that the private contractor running the club overpaid the course's taxes by $100,000; that more than $5,600 of pro shop inventory is missing; that the club's restaurant lost $25,000 worth of food to spoilage over 16 months; and that Durango Hills' superintendent was fired in July for using club employees and equipment to benefit his personal business.

In interviews this week, city council members hailed Snelding's staff of numbers-crunching auditors as diligent detectives exposing government inefficiency. And they offer feasible recommendations for correction, council members said.

Said Councilman Larry Brown, "They just do great work."