EDITORIAL: Juvenile facility’s cost estimate beyond wasteful

Clark County government is in the market for a residence with 5,000 square feet, and officials want to spend $2.9 million of your money on the home for troubled juveniles. We should all be so fortunate to have such parameters in our own house hunts.

Consider the 6,342-square-foot palace for sale on Meadowhawk Lane in Summerlin's custom village, The Ridges. It's perfect for entertaining, with golf-course views and a spectacular kitchen. It's more than enough room — and it's listed at $5,000 under the county's budget!

If the county wants more space for its buck, officials should consider the property on Summerlin's Mountain Grove Court. It's 8,274 square feet of luxury, with custom touches throughout, a huge swimming pool, a full gym, two game rooms and a wine cellar. Its list price is just $80,000 over the county's budget. Another custom Summerlin home, on Moon Valley Place, has 8,645 square feet and is listed at $25,000 under the county's budget.

But who are we kidding? These aren't fair comparisons. The aforementioned prices include the cost of land. The county estimates that its new juvenile home will need $2.9 million for construction and furnishings alone. The new home will be built on county-owned land behind the existing Spring Mountain Residential Center, a deteriorating 12-bed facility.

As reported Monday by the Review-Journal's Yesenia Amaro, the county's initial plan for the home called for 4,000 square feet at a cost of $2.3 million, or $575 per square foot. Predictably, Washington officials thought that price was perfectly reasonable and awarded a grant to cover the full cost. But the county's Real Property Management department subsequently amended the plan to add 1,000 square feet and, incredibly, $600,000 in estimated expenses, increasing the 16-bed project's total cost to $580 per square foot, or $181,250 per bed.

At that price, why not just buy each kid his own house? Keeping up with the Kardashians isn't easy, but the county sure wants to try.

"That doesn't even make sense to me," County Commissioner Susan Brager, a Realtor, said of the project during a recent juvenile justice and child welfare meeting. "I thought you were going to say it was a 26,000-square-foot building. Why would it even be more than $800,000? That's just stupid."

It's worse than stupid. It's waste that screams of gross incompetence or potential malfeasance. Even if the county scrapped the $600,000 in added costs, the new juvenile facility would stand as one of the great public-sector boondoggles in Southern Nevada history.

Bravo to Ms. Brager for calling out the absurdity of the county's estimates. Federal money isn't "free." It's borrowed against every single Nevadan. If the county can't come up with a plan of appropriate scale and cost, the project should be scrapped and the grant returned.