BOULDER CITY, Nev. – You're CEO of a credit union that has nine out of every 10 residents as a member, and stories are circulating that virtually every one may become a millionaire.
Ordinarily you'd picture yourself smiling broadly as you watch the credit union's asset size soar. But William Ferrence, manager of Boulder Dam Credit Union, simply chuckles.
As he talks to various groups in the city, he cautions them, "Don't make out your deposit slips yet."
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A controversial-very controversial-proposal calls for the city to sell off a large chunk of land for development. With Boulder City only about 25 miles from Las Vegas, one of the nation's fastest growing areas, the land should command top dollar. In fact, some estimates indicate the sale could yield as much as $3.2 million for each of the approximately 15,000 Boulder City residents of record as of March 31, 2006.
Petitioners have been seeking signatures almost every afternoon on the public sidewalk in front of the credit union to put the issue on the ballot in November. But talk to Ferrence and you'll learn it isn't that simple. First, he offers what he describes as a condensed, Cliff Notes history behind what's going on.
Boulder City was founded in the 1930s as a planned community built by the federal government to house workers building and operating Boulder Dam. For several decades it was technically a government reservation. In the 1960s the government decided to get out of the business of operating a city. Officials sold everything at a bargain price to the community. They also threw in 33 square miles of land. The city itself covers about four square miles.
"So we had a lot of land at that time," Ferrence observes. Then in 1996 the city purchased another 106,000 acres from the federal government, boosting the total to 200 square miles, bigger in land area than Chicago or San Francisco and making Boulder City the largest city in Nevada in terms of geographic size.
But there are some hurdles facing any developer who might be anxious to transform that land into subdivisions. There's a growth control ordinance that limits to 35 the number of homes a developer can build in one year. There's also a law requiring voter approval for any sale of more than one acre by the city. Oh, yes, and there's the fact that 85,000 acres are leased to Clark County for 50 years as a preserve for the desert tortoise and other wildlife. The county needed the environmental credit to offset rapid growth elsewhere in its boundaries.
But there is some privately-owned land, about 700 acres in what is called the Eldorado Valley, right in the middle of what the city owns and only about three miles from town. A Las Vegas developer wants to build 3,800 homes there. The city, in turn, has suggested a three-way land swap that would move any development further from Boulder City.
Petitions are now circulating both for and against the idea. One calls for selling the land and dividing the money up among the residents.
"The city has hired attorneys. The county has hired attorneys. The bottom line is none of us are going to be millionaires from the sale of that land. It sounds good, but I believe resolving all those issues will be impossible."
Besides, he quips, "What would we do with $6 billion in deposits?" [email protected]
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