EDITORIAL: Our Top Ten News Story Wishlist For 2019

Last week’s edition of the PROGRESS featured a last look back at news highlights from our pages during the year 2018. To try something new, this week our Editorial looks forward at potential headlines that we hope to publish in 2019. To be clear, these are not really predictions for the future; nor even concrete expectations. Rather this is our top 10 wishlist of news items we would most like to cover during the coming year. Here goes.

1. Major employer announces it will locate operations in Moapa. Perhaps the biggest factor for economic vitality would be new local jobs – and good paying ones. With the recent closure of Reid Gardner Power Station in Moapa, we have lost most of what little was left of an industrial sector. Yes there are a couple of small manufacturing operations in the area that still provide a few jobs. And Simplot Silica is still going strong, employing about 40 people. Thank goodness we will always have sand! But these things alone aren’t nearly enough to grow a thriving local economy.
So in 2019 our #1 news wish would be to break a story announcing that a major employer has purchased land in the industiral corridor of Moapa (or just about anywhere else for that matter) to build it’s central operations plant. Maybe thats just a silly pipe dream. But hey! It could happen.

2. Developers submit plans for attractive residential projects aimed at young families. There is a gaping hole in the Moapa Valley real estate market. It is a serious shortage of reasonably-priced homes for young, middle-income families. In the $200,000-250,000 price range the local housing inventory is awfully slim.
Local real estate professionals agree that the unfilled demand for such property is high. Young people who have grown up in this community now wish to return here to raise a family. And there are not just a few of them. But where will they go to buy a nice home? The inventory just isn’t there for them.
The Moapa Valley community needs to diversify, grow and refresh its housing inventory. It also needs an influx of new residents and the vibrance and enthusiasm that comes with growth. We hope that plans for quality new residential developments, and an openness by the community to receive them, will be the subject of 2019 news stories.

3. MV Fire District board set free to provide locally-based advanced EMS coverage. In the next few months, we would like to report on a reorganization of the Moapa Valley Fire District (MVFD) board of directors into a fully legitimate decision-making body. Then we would like to write about how the local board was given de-facto autonomy to formulate its own budget, fully account for its own revenues, manage its own expenditures and develop its own strategic plan.
Furthermore, we would love to be able to report that the draft proposal, approved by the MVFD board last summer, for the district to provide part-time paid paramedic/EMT coverage is back on the table for consideration. That, as well as robust pay-per-call incentives that have already been proposed for volunteers, would be most welcome in our pages.

4. A record snowpack on the western slopes of the Rockies. Yes, we know this is not a Moapa Valley event. But we wouldn’t be covering it for the winter wonderland it would create in the mountains of Colorado. Rather it would be because of the spring melt that would swell the Colorado River and bring needed water to nearby Lake Mead.
The lake is at near record low water levels. Currently it has reached an elevation of around 1,078 feet above sea level; and its still dropping. By the summer of 2020 current projections show the water falling to 1,051 feet. That is only a foot above the threshold for a federal water shortage declaration, curtailment of water rights on the river, and the level of the officially published minimum power generation pool for Hoover Dam. Pretty serious stuff! So we would love to publish reports of record-breaking blizzards in the Rockies this winter. Here’s hopin’!

5. Safety improvements made to Moapa Valley High School. Concerned local residents and MVHS administrators have been pushing Clark County School District officials for funding to better secure the local high school campus against possible single-shooter incidents or other domestic terror threats.
At an estimated cost of only $78,000, this minor project would amount to mere pennies in the $4.9 billion CCSD budget. But local advocates have, thus far, gotten nowhere with their repeated requests.
Instead they have been informed that if the local School Operational Team (SOT) wants such improvements, it should use money from the school’s instructional budget to pay for them. That’s appalling!
In 2019, we’d be thrilled to publish a happy, feel-good report about how the board of trustees and other top brass at CCSD actually valued our local children’s lives above that of a few pennies in their budget, or other political factors, and just approved funding for the improvements to be made immediately.

6. Work begins on flood detention basin north of Clark County Fairgrounds. It was a part of a ten year Muddy River Flood Control Plan presented to the Moapa Valley Town Advisory Board way back in 2006 – and again in 2011. Yet still the flood waters rush down the wash, spill out across Whipple Ave, and cover parts of the fairgrounds and Bowler Elementary school property with mud and debris.
Also on the ten year plan, by the way, were improvements to the Logandale levee just below Wells Siting, and significant flood control infrastructure along the flood channel between Gubler crossing in Logandale and the Wildlife Management Area south of Overton. Logandale levee has been completed. There is still a long way to go on the flood channel, but both Gubler and Cooper bridges have been constructed since 2006.
Wouldn’t it be great to see coverage in the PROGRESS of looming plans to finally address the detention basin above the fairgrounds once and for all?

7. Mesa View Medical expands services in Moapa Valley. While the care provided at the Logandale Quick Care by Physician Assistants Andy Rose and RJ Briggs are top notch, there is a dire need for more health care services in Moapa Valley.
Mesa View officials have long talked about expanding their facilities, updating their equipment, adding staff and increasing quick care hours. They have also floated ideas about sending various specialists to the Logandale site to see scheduled patients during weekly or monthly clinic hours.
Those things have all been desperately needed here for far too long. So we would gladly cover news that real commitments to act on some of these plans have been made, along with a specific timeline for their implementation.

8. Funding secured for expansion of Moapa Valley Recreation Center. More than a year ago, County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick began talking about her vision to maximize usage of the Overton Senior Center by establishing a multi-generational model for the building. This involved programming both senior center activities and Parks and Rec youth programs in the same space.
Initially this idea was not received well by the seniors. In fact, United Seniors Inc. is still feeling a lot of transition pains, though they are adapting.
It hasn’t been a walk in the park for the local Parks and Rec staff either. In programming youth activities in a building designed solely as a senior center, they they are faced with the problem of trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.
While the Commissioner’s idea has merit, this arrangement is bound to remain awkward until the building is expanded and redesigned for multi-generational programming. Thus, we would be eager to cover an announcement that funding is identified and set aside for such improvements.

9. Discussion begins about building Phase 2 of the MV Trails Plan. This year will be a decade since the Moapa Valley Trails Master Plan was developed, with careful input from the community. Since that time, Phase 1 of the plan has been constructed connecting Bowler Elementary to MVHS with trails along St. Joseph, Heyer, Lyman, Gubler and Whipple.
The second phase of the plan called for a “central spine” of the trail system to be built north/south along the Muddy River corridor. Off of this spine would be various east-west access routes.
If the community could celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the MV Trails Plan by kick-starting some real discussions about its next-phase implementation, it would be an exciting story for the PROGRESS in 2019!

10. Plans presented for a new supermarket at the north end of Logandale. With all due respect to Overton Lin’s Market and its many years of service tothe community, isn’t it high time for a more centrally-located supermarket-sized grocery store to be built in Moapa Valley?
After all, its bad enough for Logandale residents to have to drive 10 miles to the south end of downtown Overton to shop for groceries. But that’s nothing compared to the poor folks who live all the way up in Warm Springs? By the time they drive all the way to Lin’s, they might as well have gone to the much larger stores in Mesquite. What a shame for Moapa Valley commerce!
If a story about plans to build a new supermarket were to show up in a 2019 PROGRESS edition, it would make us, and many other north-enders very happy.

Well, that completes our top 10 news wishlist for 2019. If all, or any, of these things actually take place, our readers will be able to learn all about them in the pages of the Moapa Valley PROGRESS!