Officials have different takes on unincorporated Clark County

Northwest Las Vegas has a hole. Smack in the middle of Centennial Hills — the Nevada-shaped wedge of city property between Rancho Drive and Decatur Boulevard — there’s a 3½-mile-long stretch of unannexed Clark County , one of a handful of chunks of county jurisdiction in the city’s northwest .

If he were king for a day, Ward 6 Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross would make those county islands disappear, he said.

“This is going to (upset) a lot of county commissioners, but if I had one day of unilateral authority, I would annex all county islands,” Ross said. “What happens in these county islands, when a homeowner wants to build homes, they’ll get approval from Clark County and then sign an agreement that allows those county homes to tie into our water and our sewer, and they don’t pay the same price as (city homeowner s).

“There’s no county fire departments out here. There’s no county services out here. The city of Las Vegas provides services to these county islands.”

County Commissioner Tom Collins remains unmoved.

“If Steve (Ross) ever tried to annex, I’d break his nose,” Collins said. “The cities here have this ‘everything should be the same’ mentality: Everybody should have a two-car garage and a certain kind of streetlight.

“They don’t understand that some people don’t want that,” the longtime District B representative added.

Perhaps it’s hard to blame Ross for coveting county islands in the northwest. The biggest, a McCarran International Airport-sized swath of “rural neighborhood preservation area” between Ann Road and Grand Teton Drive, is dotted with privately maintained roads and multi million-dollar ranch-style estates that could provide a property tax bonanza for the city.

With unparalleled access to residential livestock and equestrian centers — and with homeowners such as legal notable Bruce Alverson and Greenspun Media heir James Greenspun knocking around the neighborhood — it’s just as easy to see why Collins would hold his ground.

“You’ve got some large, private 10-acre parcels out there that city planners just don’t understand well enough to annex,” Collins said. “Las Vegas has a better chance of annexing parts of North Las Vegas when it goes broke.”

Terri Gamboa, a Realtor who lists a handful of properties in the area — including the third-most expensive home listed in the Las Vegas Valley — can see it both ways.

As a real estate agent, Gamboa said annexation could provide a boost to city property values and open up lucrative inroads for area business owners.

But as a hybrid horse owner and
homeowner, she has no doubt that county pastures remain greener for clients such as herself.

“Most horse people want to be in the county,” Gamboa said. “You can have 25 horses on county property and call it a residential boarding facility. ... The city wouldn’t allow that.

“The folks who live out here spent two years privatizing the roads, they have underground water rights, they’ve made it their own.”

The Las Vegas Planning Commission hasn’t signed off on a major annexation request in the area since the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary entered the city fold in 2011 .

The area’s second-largest county island, which includes dozens of acres off Durango Drive south of Moccasin Road, hasn’t seen a noteworthy jurisdictional shift since city and county officials butted heads over a failed 52,000-acre annexation bid in 2002.

Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@viewnews.com or 702-477-3839.