View readers give their opinions, May 14, 2015

READER SAYS KIDS SHOULDN’T USE POOL TABLES

Regarding the April 23 East Valley View story, “Parkdale recreation center reopens with twice as much space,” as an avid pool player, I want to vent every time I see kids playing on a pool table paid for and maintained by public funds. Pool tables, sticks and balls are precision devices. When they let kids play on them, they destroy them. These pool tables should be restricted to those older than 18.

— Georgie York, Las Vegas

READER UNHAPPY WITH CONDITION OF DURANGO DRIVE

I notice in your columns that you are often addressing road conditions here in Las Vegas. I am presuming that you have developed ties to someone in our municipal services that you are able to get answers from about various things. I have long wondered a couple of things:

I am mystified at the surface condition of Durango Drive between Desert Inn and (approximately) Sunset. The section close to Tropicana has for years had a surface layer of asphalt that is badly deteriorated. The section between Tropicana and Desert Inn is solid but very rough. They have clearly at some time in the past attempted to smooth it using a surface grinder/leveler, but it is still bad. This is a main throughway, and it’s in surprisingly poor condition.

Why does there seem to be little or no quality control done by the city over asphalt patches that are done after streets are opened up by either the city or by private companies? I live in the Rhodes Ranch area, and obviously, it is back to being a beehive of construction activity. Whenever the streets are dug up for this reason or that reason, the repair patch to the road surface is usually very poorly done, and one’s best bet is to own a four-wheel-drive vehicle that can take the pounding of having to run over these shoddy repair jobs. It seems odd to me that the city does not have a small crew that monitors this in terms of getting nice repairs done to the streets, and in the case of construction companies that open up the road surfaces, standards that have to be carefully met for the patch-up job since they tore into the street in the first place.

— Morpheus Blak, Las Vegas