Lighting The Path
Last month a special committee of the Moapa Valley Chamber of Commerce gave a presentation reporting on the feasibility of the Moapa and Moapa Valley townships forming a single incorporated city (Apr. 2: MV Chamber of Commerce Hears Incorporation Report)). The report represented nearly a year of research and fact-finding by committee members. The results, while far from conclusive, were both eye-opening and thought provoking. This presentation should open the doors to a thorough community discussion, dialogue and debate regarding the possibility and plausibility of incorporation. This is to be welcomed.
The members of this special committee should first be commended for their work. They have volunteered a tremendous amount of time and energy in seeking for, and sorting through, hard-to-find and difficult-to-read material. They have poured through stacks of voluminous state tax spreadsheets and city budgets to glean the numbers needed to make initial budgetary projections. They have searched the state law to discover the different legal methods possible for becoming an incorporated city. They have then weighed the benefits and drawbacks of each of these methods and come up with a recommended path that the community might best take. All of this has been done by the committee members, on a completely volunteer basis, merely because of a deep and abiding interest in their community. The committee members should be applauded for having come up with an intelligent beginning point for this community discussion.
This initial presentation should be viewed merely as a starting point. The research of this committee does not answer all the questions by far; nor did it ever claim to do so. While it has sought for and found many answers, there are still a multitude of questions left to ponder. In fact, there are undoubtedly still questions lurking around the corner that no one has yet thought to ask. In other words, the work of this small ad-hoc committee is certainly not meant to be a final culmination of all the facts necessary to make a final decision.
The process of incorporation is, by its very nature, a voyage through new and uncharted waters. No matter how much information is gathered, no matter how many questions are answered there will still be unknowns along the way. There will still be a measure of risk.
It is important, though, that the community gathers and gains as much information as possible. Equally important is that this information, once prepared and presented, is discussed in a thoughtful and thorough way by the depth and the breadth of the community. People living here should be engaged and involved in this important discussion. This will, undoubtedly, lead to the raising of new questions to which answers should be sought.
To be sure, there are many questions yet unanswered. Among these are things like just how much revenue an incorporated City of Moapa could expect to receive as its share of the Consolidated State Sales Tax. What would happen to major capital projects currently underway like the new sewer system or the flood control project? How would we deal with the overwhelming expense of adequate police and fire protection? And there are many more.
Some of these questions might be answered merely by doing additional research. In the coming weeks the Progress will publish a series of articles exploring these types of issues as they are introduced. But we suspect that some questions will simply not have specific answers at this stage of the process. Rather, the community will have to be willing to travel further down the uncharted path to find these definitive answers along the way.
By keeping an open, yet critical mind, we might be able to keep a light just one step in front of our feet as we start into this new and unfamiliar territory. The Chamber of Commerce committee has done just that. They have provided a light, and an invitation, by which we can take a reasonable step or two forward. But there is still a long, dark, unseen road ahead. If we commence in that road, keeping the light of information just ahead of us, answering questions as we go, we can hope to reach daylight at the other end.
We expect, however, that there may come a time when that next step ahead will not be lit; a time when the community will have to make a step out into the darkness. By then we must be equipped with enough information to assure that we are taking a safe bet. Hopefully we will be able to size up the risk, measure it against the fair promise of a bright light coming at the end of the tunnel, and take a well-informed step of faith.
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