By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Valley Town Advisory Board (MVTAB) met on Wednesday night to hear a single agenda item. This was to be a report on phase one of the Moapa Valley trails system. But the county staff member who was scheduled to appear and make the report did not show up at the meeting. So the board was unable to hear that item.

During the public comment period of the meeting, however, a group of Logandale residents who live in the neighborhood just south of the Logandale Sports Complex presented a petition to the board requesting action.

The petition was in opposition to a newly constructed dirt berm that was recently installed by County workers along the south border of the ballfield parcel on the north side of Bunnell Ave. The seven foot high berm, along with a number of large boulders placed on either side of the berm, acts as a barrier, restricting safe access; whether it be pedestrian, bicycle or vehicle; to the ballfield complex from the south, residents said. The petition asked the MVTAB to request County Public Works to dismantle the new structure and return the desert area to what it was before.

Logandale resident, Pat Hanley, who presented the petition, said that he had called the office of Commissioner Tom Collins to complain and was told that the berm was installed because of complaints of vehicle traffic across the street

Collins’ Community Liaison Janice Ridondo told the board that the Commissioner’s office had received a phoned-in complaint about automobiles driving in the desert area just south of the ballfields.

“The caller made it sound like it was just treacherous; like a speedway out there and so on,” Ridondo said. “In our secretary’s defense, thinking that she was doing a good thing, she immediately contacted Public Works and asked them to go out and take a look. I had no idea what took place from that phone call.”

Hanley pointed out that the berm wouldn’t solve that problem because the entrance to the ballfields is off of Frehner to the north. Furthermore there is access to the area from the east at Heyer.

“Just because you put up a berm at Bunnell doesn’t stop people on ATV’s from entering that area,” he said. “It just stops people from entering from the south. It only affects our neigborhood, nothing else.”

“The whole issue is that there are no roads at the ball park,” agreed MVTAB member Gene Houston. “There is an entrance off of the asphalt and the rest is dirt. So tell me where the road is. There isn’t one. People are coming in accessing the property from all directions. This just cuts off the neighbors to the south.”

Hanley pointed out that school children from his neighborhood who walk and ride bikes to school every morning would be affected by the berm.

“The kids that are going to school from our neighborhood used to cut across the desert to go to school,” Hanley said. “Now they have to walk down Bunnell, then they have to walk down Heyer, then they have to make a left on Frehner; all along busy roadways with no sidewalks.”

Hanley said that he had also spoken to Commissioner Collins himself on the matter. “He told me that this was an air quality issue,” Hanley said. “But there wasn’t an air quality issue until the work crews started putting up the berm.”

Hanley added that if the dust control issue was because of ATVs and other vehicles driving in this desert area, the dirt berm wouldn’t solve that, as the ATVs would still be using that area just accessing it from other directions.

In addition, Hanley said that Collins had expressed concern about the legal liability to the county if someone should be injured in a vehicle while driving recklessly on the property. If anything the berm and boulders would increase liability issues by putting children and others wishing to access the ballfield from the south in danger, Hanley stated.

“I don’t know much about this but if by putting up whatever they have put up is to keep people out; if you get hurt by what’s there, you shouldn’t be there,” said Ridondo.

“That’s not true,” said Houston. “You’d have to put up signs saying that people can’t cross that area.”

“So there is no signage then,” Ridondo said.

“Even with signage, at this point it is an existing use,” said MVTAB member Dustin Nelson. “There has always been a historical pattern of traffic for everybody in the community to go through there and access the ballfields.”

Logandale resident Billy Mildice stated that the problem could be solved if people in the area would not ride their ATVs across the property.

“I think the trouble is that the people who live in that area take their ATVs riding up and down, right across the street from the Metro officer that lives in the subdivision,” Mildice said. “I think that if you could stop that, you could get rid of that dirt berm and the people could walk as it is supposed to be used, and not as a vehicle path.”

“Why not as a vehicle path?” asked MVTAB Ann Markle.

“Because there is no road there,” Mildice said. “And if there is a road you have to keep the dust down.”

“But that is really a non-issue,” Houston said. “The whole ball field area is dirt. There will be a dust problem everywhere there.”

Neighboring resident Mike Cope agreed.

“I called Tom (Collins) and spoke to him and he said this was about dust control,” Cope said. “I said: If you want dust control, Tom, pave the parking lot because there are a lot of cars and trucks coming to games there. Sometimes they do donuts and peel out. The thing is, you’ll never control the dust until you pave it. It’s never going to happen.”

Speaking of dust control, neighboring resident Ben Cornwall expressed frustration that county crews had hastily built the structure without complying to standards.

“Yes, County Public Works has some exemptions,” he said. “They don’t need to pull permits or have contractors licenses. But one thing they still have to meet is building standards. There is no way that berm meets the development standards of Clark County. I’d be interested to know how a structure like that gets built without any dust control measures, without flood control planning, without a traffic study. All of those things, any of us private citizens would have to go through if we wanted to build something like that. There is no private person who could do anything like what was done here. (The county) should not be exempt from those standards.”

Cope agreed. “I told Tom that if you want to do something over there, then come up with a plan,” Cope said. “Then we can all meet with the town board and have the engineer there and see what they want to do. But that is not going to happen because you don’t have the funds. So we want you to just put the area back the way it was. Then we will be fine with that.”

Nelson expressed amazement at how quickly county crews had responded to the complaint. “All this came from just one complaint and we go that much action?” he said. “I’ve made a lot of complaints to the county over the years and I’ve gotten a lot of people calling in about them hoping for action. But I’ve usually got nothing. This is amazing!”

MVTAB chairperson Judy Metz requested that the matter be placed on the next board meeting agenda.

But Houston felt that this was not enough. “I think that is fine (to agendize it), we can do that,” he said. “But this all got done over a single complaint and done suddenly over a weekend. And now here we are going to wait more than a month to discuss it at our next meeting!”

“I agree,” said Markle. “It was done in a day or two. It should be fixed before we even meet again.”

Ridondo pledged to start working on the problem immediately.

“Ok, but I still want it on our next agenda,” Metz said. “And by then you can say either that the issue has been taken care of or report on what the plans are for taking care of it.”