Residents oppose site slated for school

     By Tina Allen
     View staff writer
      Northwest residents are protesting a proposed site for a middle school in the Northwest in a battle backed by Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone.
      So far, about 650 residents have signed a petition opposing the site at Lone Mountain Road and Conough Lane, which many feel would cause a traffic gridlock in the area.
      Malone stepped forward with an offer to the Clark County School District in a town hall meeting May 23. In exchange for the district-owned 18-acre parcel, the county would relinquish either an 80-acre site at Ann Road and North Hualapai Way or a 75-acre site near Ann Road and Shaumber Road, just west of the Las Vegas Beltway. In addition, Malone said the county would contribute funds for off-site improvements.
      "These other locations are much larger and you can master plan those areas," Malone said. "You can master-plan it for park sites, for a junior high school and maybe an elementary school close by. I think those are really good ideas. I think we are looking with some vision here."
      The Lone Mountain Road and Conough Lane site was purchased by the Clark County School District for $1.5 million. The proposed school is expected to relieve overcrowding at a nearby Molasky Middle School, located at 7801 W. Gilmore Ave.
      "We know we need the school, we want to build the school," Malone said. "We just need to make sure wherever we are building it, it's the right place. I'm not sure that one that's a mile away from another junior high school is the right place."
      The opposed site is currently zoned as Rural Estates Residential. However, the school district is currently trying to get the property rezoned to Public Facility.
      Although the site was favored at a meeting by the Lone Mountain Citizens Advisory Council in a 3-to-1 vote, the zone change was unanimously recommended for denial by the Clark County Planning Commission May 18. The item is now scheduled to be heard by the Clark County Commission at 1 p.m. June 21 for a final decision.
      "I'm not sure how my board will react," Malone said. "Nobody really is."
      Northwest resident John McGrail is concerned about traffic problems should the school be built at Lone Mountain Road and Conough Lane.
      "They (the school district) are not that concerned about being very well-planned," said McGrail, a civil engineer. "They just want to get the school up in a hurry, which I can understand. But there are a lot of things wrong with it."
      McGrail explained master-planned Painted Desert sits to the north of the site. The community's golf course would block any direct route to the school from the area in which a large percentage of the children would be coming from, he said.
      "Everybody has to drive around and around and basically all the traffic is going to have to come in from one direction," McGrail said, adding the traffic would have to travel west on Ann Road, south on Durango Drive and east on Lone Mountain Road.
      In addition, the school district would incur added costs because most of the pupils living in that area would most likely have to be bused in because the distance would be farther than two miles. All students in the district who live farther than two miles from a school are eligible for busing.
      "Spend an extra six months to put it in the right location and near the center of the zone it's meant to serve and not just cram it into something that's good enough when the school's going to sit there for 40 years," McGrail said.
      Dusty Dickens, the Clark County School District director of zoning, demographics and realty, said the district had originally planned to build the school on a 22.5 acre site owned by the Bureau of Land Management located at Ann and Campbell roads. The site, which is more centrally located to pupils who would attend the school, is preferred by the petitioners. However, BLM has refused to turn the property over to the school district after a smaller group of residents in that area protested the school.
      "The fact is, we still need to provide seats for students who are attending Molasky who live in this area north of Craig Road," Dickens said. "So when this (site at Lone Mountain Road and Conough Lane) became available to us when we were going through the process, we said to keep within our timeline as close as we can, we'll do this site first.
      "If we didn't think this was a good site for construction, we wouldn't have purchased it."
      Dickens said the school would be scheduled to open at that site the first quarter of 2002. In addition, another three or four schools are being planned for the Northwest area in the future. She agreed one of the parcels offered by the county would provide a convenient site, but at a later date. She feared a possible residential protest in that area could delay construction up to three years.
      "The school board could accept the county offer," Dickens said. "It would have to go before them. All this is time. I think at some point in time that will be a good site. But why would we build out here when the student population is over here (to the east)."
      Mindy Weiser, a resident who lives near the Lone Mountain Road and Conough Lane site, is hoping the school district will reconsider building the school there.
      "We are hoping they appreciate our pleas for common sense. People keep saying we are fighting a school, it's not true," Weiser said. "We're trying to get them to look ahead just five years. These people have lived here for no less than 20 years. They moved here 20 or 30 years ago to get away from it all when Las Vegas was a one-horse town. You can imagine how betrayed they feel because this zoning was suppose to protect them from this kind of invasion."