FRENCH CONNECTION
LACKING INTELLIGENCE
BY DOUG FRENCH

The 17 community leaders who made up the Clark County Community Growth Task Force have completed their work and their 190-page report is available for all to read. 

Don’t bother. 

The Clark County Community Growth Task Force Report is tedious, repetitive and full of silly, politically correct made-up words like “stakeholder.” It also hosts warmed-over ideas that have been implemented in other communities with dangerous consequences. 

This is to be expected given the make-up of the Task Force. The report’s introduction claimed the “Task Force is comprised of residents from all walks of life …” 

All walks of life?

Not exactly. UNLV (where 92 percent of the faculty are Democrats or socialists) had three representatives. One of the developers on the Task Force is an ex-politician and another runs the development company owned by Brian Greenspun of Tax Task force and Sun newspaper fame. The Sierra Club was represented. The AFL-CIO for some inexplicable reason was there to provide input, as was someone from the Salvation Army. Municipal debt financial consultant Guy Hobbs had a seat, while Bill Bible represented gaming interests. The Chamber of Commerce representative is a budding politician.

Not exactly fair and balanced, and the report reflects it. For example, cost and benefit charts were created for policy proposals within the report. “Decreased property tax revenue per capita” and “ Decreased governmental services tax per capita” were listed, not as benefits, but as costs. 

The report’s Urban Design section recommendations are potentially damaging. The Task Force consistently expresses utter disdain for the automobile, all under the guise of improving air quality and combating sprawl. 

The report touts mixed-use development and to “Place heavy emphasis on linkage to mass transit systems and development.” The strategy is to “Reduce dependency on automobiles; and Increase ability for residents to invest in housing rather than automobiles.” 

The Task Force believes: “There are significant social benefits associated with mass transit (e.g., air quality improvements, reduced congestion, reduced travel related deaths, increased individual mobility, and improved access to housing).” 

However the results will likely be much different as Randal O’Toole, senior economist with the Thoreau Institute and nationally recognized expert on urban land-use and transportation issues, points out. “Planners demonize the automobile for killing people and polluting the air, then promote transportation policies that increase accidents and air pollution. Planners implement policies and declare victory no matter what the outcome.” 

In his book, The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths - How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities, O'Toole shows that rail lines of all kinds do not come through on any of the promises that are made for them. Rail is not only enormously expensive but does nothing to reduce congestion, help the environment, promote urban development, or do anything else that rail supporters claim it does.

The Task Force also encourages “increased density, when and where appropriate,” especially in mixed-use developments built around mass-transit systems. However, there is often little demand for housing in these areas. “Some surveys indicate that as few as 17 percent of Americans aspire to live in high-density, mixed-use developments, and the demand for such development is often fully met by housing in and near downtowns,” O’Toole argues. 

Portland, Ore. implemented a high-density zoning policy in the mid-’90s and Oregonians weren’t pleased with the results. “These developments contribute to congested streets, crowded schools, and overstressed water, sewer, and other urban services,” O’Toole wrote in an August 2002 article for Liberty magazine.

The Task Force also recommends the promotion of workforce housing ordinances. However as land use attorneys Brian W. Blaesser and Janet R. Stearns write, “mandatory inclusionary [workforce] zoning essentially levies a tax on the production of new housing. Depending on local market factors, this technique will likely: (1) increase general housing prices and further limit housing opportunities; or (2) decrease land values, which increases the burden on property owners of undeveloped land; or (3) shift development away from the community.”

Andrew T. Allen, professor of economics at the University of San Diego points out, “Inclusionary housing programs may make housing less affordable,” and “may not result in any additional low-income housing [being built].”

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Jane Ann Morrison argues that the “ideas and efforts of 17 intelligent and well-intentioned people on the task force along with countless county staffers shouldn’t be discounted or ridiculed.” 

Members of the Task Force might have been well intentioned, but they made no intelligent recommendations and many harmful ones. Let’s hope their report is ignored. LW