Resident’s hopes dim for trail

For two years, Martin Dean Dupalo has been working with city planners in hopes they'll follow through on building a recreational trail behind his backyard along Las Vegas Wash.

But with each day that passes, the 27-year resident of the neighborhood that flanks the west side of the flood channel between East Charleston Boulevard and Stewart Avenue sees his hopes dim as crime and graffiti tighten their grip on the community.

A trail for joggers and bicyclists would be nice, but as Dupalo put it: "You cannot invite people to come down here. It's not secure. It's not safe."

Unless enhanced security measures such as lights, emergency call boxes and even surveillance cameras are incorporated into the trail's design, he said the attraction that Las Vegas planners envision would instead become a nuisance.

"Taggers, gangs, homeless and the drug-addicted go down there every evening," he said Thursday. "The 14-foot-wide path is OK, but what's around it is intimidating. It's supposed to be for families, for joggers.

"If you called for help, nobody would hear you. You're walled in. There's no way for you to escape," he said about the half-mile stretch.

The high crime area extends a short drive away to Lamb Boulevard north of Washington Avenue, where some of the city's most prolific graffiti can be found in a concrete underpass. Places like that will need floodlights to deter taggers and other criminals, Dupalo said.

Recently, during a 60-day period there have been 1,300 crimes reported within a 1-mile radius of where the planned Las Vegas Wash Trail would be built parallel to Nellis Boulevard between East Charleston Boulevard and Stewart Avenue. That's according to police statistics compiled by Dupalo, a political science instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a former candidate for the School Board.

He said it hasn't always been this way. In fact, 15 years ago the area was used by horseback riders and children who played there and searched the wash for crawdads.

Jeremy Leavitt, the city's program manager for the Las Vegas Wash Trail, said it was designed as part of a regional trail system to connect trails in North Las Vegas with those in Clark County.

Some $8.4 million in funding is available from the sale of public lands in Southern Nevada to build the Las Vegas portion of a 2.6-mile trail in two phases next year. The first phase, from Owens to Stewart avenues will be under construction by early fall, according to the current schedule, with construction of the section from Stewart to Charleston to begin in the winter.

Leavitt said Monday that plans call for 14-foot-tall lights to be installed every 100 feet. Security will be provided by city marshals and the times the trail will be open will be posted on signs.

He said video surveillance and flood lights at underpasses are not in the plans. As for emergency call boxes, he said, "We're not looking at adding that right now."

Margo Wheeler, the city's planning director, said the trail would serve as a deterrent to crime.

"By having more activity and more persons, there would be more eyes and that makes the area more secure, not less," she said.

Dupalo said he's not so convinced based on the recurrence of theft, graffiti and other crimes in his neighborhood. Those who commit crimes in a nearby shopping center often hop the wall that borders it and escape into the wash area, he said.

The city's master plan for recreation trails estimates that at the most, the 7.8 miles of trails proposed in the revised, 2005 document will cost $37,000 per year to maintain.

Dupalo said the maintenance cost should be more if graffiti abatement is factored in, but planners have told him graffiti in underpasses along the Las Vegas Wash Trail route won't be mitigated.

Last year, the city spent more than $111,000 on paint and supplies and nearly $572,000 in labor to clean up more than 63,000 walls, structures, signs and places marred by graffiti.

In the spring 2005 Las Vegas "Growth Watch" update, the trail was touted as "the valley-wide connector to the Las Vegas Wetlands Park and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Tom Perrigo, deputy director of Planning and Development for Las Vegas, said the solutions to some of the problems described by Dupalo aren't easy and will come with experience from operating and maintaining the trail after it is built.

"I understand this is a big challenge," Perrigo said. "The idea is that making the places that are less attractive to be more attractive will make them better for good activities rather than the bad activities."

Kim Hutson de Belle, deputy executive director of Outside Las Vegas Foundation, said solutions can be found in community ownership of the trails. The foundation, a non-profit organization that advocates linking the valley's outskirts with a regional trail system, considers the stretch between Owens and Charleston the most challenging in terms of safety.

"It's really going to take our community to take care of them, to preserve the integrity and beauty of the trail system," she said Monday.

She pointed to the example of Anchorage, Alaska and successful techniques used there that have been adopted by a citizens group, the River Mountain Trail Partnership on the valley's east side.

Teaming up with Lake Mead National Recreation Area, the Bureau of Reclamation, Henderson and the Metropolitan Police Department, citizens who use the trail are trained to serve as monitors much like a neighborhood watch program. They carry walkie-talkies and report unauthorized activities to authorities without engaging those involved in the bad deeds.

"We understand from other communities who have built and maintained inter-connected regional trail systems in urban areas that the key is to get a sense of community ownership," she said.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.