Downtown parking

First Friday events draw thousands of people to the downtown Arts District, once a month.

There's not enough handy parking. But there are plenty of vacant, unpaved lots. People park there. And they get towed away, incurring expenses that make many wonder whether our towing companies shouldn't fly the Jolly Roger.

In fact, neither property owners nor towing companies are mostly to blame. City regulations make it illegal to allow parking on unpaved lots - and prohibitively expensive to pave them for that purpose.

Right now for a land owner to operate even a temporary lot requires a level of landscaping, sidewalk improvements, fencing and other upgrades that can drive the cost of creating a lot to $3,000 to $5,000 per space - far more than landowners could recoup through parking fees, admits Brandy Stanley, hired in June 2011 as the city's parking czar

So a Las Vegas City Council committee Tuesday voted 2-0 to advance to the full council a proposed ordinance "allowing" vacant-lot owners in the downtown area to use their property for parking up to six times per month, even if it's not paved, if they provide enough dust control to satisfy the Clark County Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management. (Under the proposal, the city would also ease requirements for temporary lots - lots that landowners create for everyday use for up to three years.)

The fact that such rules exist in the first place - that they have to be laboriously "peeled away" - leaves no mystery as to why many developers avoid the Las Vegas city limits.

That said, the proposal is a big step in the right direction - with one exception: While they're at it, city officials should go to court and challenge the ridiculous "dusthole" rules, too.

The victims of such rules are required to hire water trucks to spray their dirt, turning it into mud. Parkers or construction trucks slosh and careen through said mud, tracking it out onto the adjoining paved streets as they depart. There, the mud dries overnight and blows away the following day, as ... dust.

Net benefit to anyone? Nice-paying jobs for the county's Dusthole Gals; not much else.