By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley township now has a new representative on its town board. Logandale resident Allen Johnson was appointed to fill a vacancy last week by the Clark County Board of Commissioners.
Johnson has lived in Logandale for the past ten years. He has spent nine of those years as a local officer for the Metropolitan Police Department. Johnson and his family moved here from Las Vegas where they had lived for 13 years and where he had previously worked as a Metro officer.
“This is a wonderful community,” Johnson said in an interview with the Progress last week. “We moved here to get away from the hustle and bustle and the craziness of Las Vegas. And it was the best thing that we ever did for our family.”
Johnson has enjoyed being involved in the Moapa Valley community during the years he has lived here. He says that he has coached just about every Parks and Rec sport that has been offered in the commuity. He and his wife, Cristine, have five sons and he has stayed busy being involved in community sports teams and school activities through the years.
In his role as a Metro officer, Johnson has taught the DARE program in the local elementary schools for the past seven years. DARE is a drug prevention program presented to each year’s class of fifth graders.
“It has been a wonderful experience to work with the kids,” he said. “Through that program I have come to know just about every kid in the schools over the years and have watched them grow up.”
Johnson said that he was interested when he saw an advertisement in the newspaper seeking community members interested in serving on the town advisory board.
“I thought it sounded like a good opportunity to see how things work on the town board,” Johnson said. “I hoped that maybe I could help out. I know that a lot of things in the community are volunteer positions. And they are always needing new people to step forward and volunteer. So I felt like it was my turn.”
Johnson said that he was eager to work for greater economic development in the community. He grew up in the small town of Winslow, Arizona which is about the same size as Moapa Valley. But it has more services than are available to Moapa Valley residents, he said.
“I know that the funding is limited and there are a lot of things to work on here,” Johnson said. “But I’ll do my darnedest to see what we can do to expand our base and bring more services to town.”
Johnson said that one opportunity is to become more visitor friendly to draw more ATV enthusiasts from out of town.
“I’d like to see more ATV friendly roads and trails that connect the community with the surrounding areas,” he said.
He talks about travelling up through some of the small towns in Utah where people come from all over to ride the trails and spend money in local stores.
“We already have a lot of people who come to go to Logandale Trails,” he said. “We just have to find some way to draw them into the community and make it appealing to spend money here.”
Johnson feels his day-to-day work as a local Metro officer puts him in a good position to take the pulse of the community.
“Working here the way that I do, I spend a lot of time with locals,” Johnson said. “I am able to pop into the schools and the local businesses, to say ‘Hi’ and find out what the concerns are out there. I look forward to becoming involved in finding solutions for this little community that we all love.”
