By Nick Divito
When Gov. Jim Gibbons announced plans to cut the fat from the state budget, the usual victims—our good friends Education and The Arts—naturally began to bemoan their almost predictable fates.
(Doesn’t anyone understand that education and the arts are vital?! Do we not still believe that the children are our future? Teach them well, let them lead the way …?)
Getting far less attention, however, was news that the State Historic Preservation Office—the folks in Carson City who decide what’s historically significant in the Silver State—will be shuttered after $50,000 was gutted from the office’s budget.
That means that for at least the next year, the office will no longer be accepting applications for historic places within the state.
We can’t tell yet if that’s good news or bad news, either. Ron James, state historic preservation officer, sums it up: “It’s certainly not the end of the Western civilization.”
His office—whose 10 or so workers, notably, will remain on the books—used to process between six and a dozen applications annually. Since the state historic program began in 1977, about 165 places have made the list.
Only 16 of those entries are from Clark County, and only six of those are in Las Vegas, including the Morelli House, the Huntridge Theatre and the Las Vegas Post Office and Courthouse, the last Vegas entry, in 2002.
Also cut was the office’s Centennial Ranches and Farms program, which recognized families who have owned and operated ranches or farms in the state for more than a century.
The honor, which has only been bestowed on about 30 ranches, came with a steel plaque, paid for by the state. But those who applied for and won recognition as a historic place had to buy their own damn plaques, thank you very little.
“That’s how impoverished we were to begin with,” James says.