Letter for Sep. 19

Local sees reinventing Boulder City

Mr. Knightly, in Sept. 9 opinion, framed the discussion nicely and offered very intelligent insight into the effects of the Interstate 11 (bypass). I see I-11 as the most positive thing to happen to Boulder since Hoover Dam.

To the residents, your town will be quieter, cleaner, greener and more desirable. Home values will increase. Our close-knit community will get closer and you will be prouder than ever to be a resident here.

Business owners, the people coming though town will either be locals or tourists looking to spend money. Your business will increase and your customers will repeat. We will reinvent ourselves and our community in such a way that makes it more desirable to visit and more desirable to call home.

I am thrilled for the economic vitality it will bring to our state and the positive effect it will have on our community. We have our work cut out for us as a community and we must take serious action in the near term to maximize this opportunity. We possess the creativity, leadership and initiative to make it happen and I look forward to being a part of it.

Raising minimum wage has consequences

It’s always been somewhat dismaying to find that the federal government wants to get involved with minimum wage or welfare requirements of a small privately owned business. Keep in mind that the largest employer in America is small business.

This letter suggests we leave the small-business payrolls and insurance requirements to the employer — the guy with money invested. Employers are financially strapped as it is. If a minimum wage increase is mandated, they’re faced with several impossible “Catch 22’s”:

A. I have 10 employees, but my salary budget will only cover eight of them at the new level (Oops! two more in the unemployment line!), or …

B. To keep all the employees, I’ll have to increase our service pricing.

Then …

C. Because product pricing increases will be a snowball (starting at the beginning of the supply chain to cover their salary increases), my prices will have to also increase, so …

D. Oops! Now no one can afford my product(s) or have decided to do without, so my cost is no longer competitive.

E. Oops! Now there are 10 unemployed people, not to mention management employees out of work.

Whereas I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the underemployed and minimum wage workers, wages should be market driven, not dictated, especially at the local level. After all, the cost of living in Boulder City is entirely different from the cost of living in Pioche.

The employer should decide. A mandated salary that would barely enable a citizen of one place to eke out a living would allow someone from the other area to live very well, indeed.

Any government should keep its hands out of business pockets and let the owner of the business decide how much he can afford to pay including paying for health insurance or not paying — what can he afford?

One thing we don’t need is people running around without ever owning a business or any business experience and no skin in the game like most all the present federal administration workers without any experience in business and thinking we need to raise the income of everyone. Let’s forget that this type thing is what creates people working off the books and not paying any taxes but this is better than not working at all. We don’t need any change.

Let’s leave Boulder City like you found it: clean, green and the oasis of the desert.

Another bypass fiasco in the making

The incompetence exhibited in the existing bypass by the city manager, the mayor and council members. In the past residents were told city officials wanted to do nothing to alleviate the traffic in Boulder City and took away the need for a bypass. That was a monumental error as the traffic congestion shows, as doing nothing created a monster. Now they scream for a bypass to route the traffic around the city, and do away with city traffic. Then they want to have meetings to see how they can re-route the diverted traffic back through the city! All to protect the small businesses.

Boulder City and the Interstate 11 bypass

This event is more significant in Boulder City at this point in time due to the loss in ad revenue to the newspaper with the, now inevitable, interstate bypass of the city, or is it? We do have an alternative available to us which is significantly better than the interstate bypass.

This is especially true for the business community. A community’s assets include its business and commercial district. Our property values are likely to stop rising since we are going to lose many of our commercial and business interests in Boulder City when an interstate bypass is built. That’s unfortunate for our community since our downtown businesses are the real character of Boulder City.

We have a fabulous community that will only survive in its current context if we do not build the interstate bypass, but instead build the previously studied Willow Beach route for Interstate 11. This can only be done when our community unites behind this proposal.

When the community is bypassed from its normal traffic flow on what is now U.S. Highway 93, it inevitably has economic trouble. That is what Boulder City is facing.

Second, driving south of the intersection of Veterans Memorial Drive and Buchanan Boulevard about one mile you will find the location of this new interstate bypass. Interstate 11 will be constructed here if the bypass is allowed to be built.

Tragically, there will always be a cacophonic din of interstate traffic flowing directly south of our community. At this time, Veterans Memorial Park is idyllic with the sounds of ducks and children playing.

The constant din will be traffic flowing through Boulder City in what I call the Great Wall of Interstate 11. We will permanently lose the view across the valley to El Dorado, Highland and McCullough Mountains since sound barriers will be necessary to prevent the noise from invading the residential areas of Boulder City. The sounds will keep growing as interstate traffic increases in the ever widening Interstate 11 bypass of Boulder City.

The current bridge and Sugarloaf route for the, then U.S. 93, highway was chosen while it was a U.S. highway, not an interstate. That was the only route that made sense for the community at that time since the route I am proposing for the interstate bypass, Willow Beach, would not have kept the U.S. Highway 93 traffic close to the city and flowing through the community. That would have been trouble for Boulder City.

Constructing the Willow Beach route will allow the dam and city to remain one. You will have to come through Boulder City to get to Hoover Dam. You do not have to come through Boulder City in the current proposed interstate bypass. Instead, you can exit at the Hoover Dam road.