At today’s City Council meeting land use entitlements were approved for a housing project on the site of the former Badlands Golf Course. The approval by the City Council was the next step in the continuing settlement process for the lawsuits involving this property. Over the last few years, the City Manager’s Office, with strong support from the Las Vegas City Council, has worked diligently to build up the city’s General Fund Reserves to put the city in a position to better navigate adverse court rulings associated with the Badlands court cases and facilitate a potential settlement.
Currently, the city has negotiated a settlement agreement with the developer of Badlands wherein the city would pay $286 million to settle the cases in lieu of continuing to fight the three remaining cases in court and risk losing them all, and then owing at least $405 million but potentially as much as $450 million upon final resolution and sale of any land acquired as part of the cases.
The proposed settlement would involve the city making two payments as follows:
Payment 1: $250 million sometime between March 20th and May 20th, 2025.
Payment 2: $36 million on or before July 1, 2026
The city’s plan for payment of the $286 million is as follows:
1) General Fund Reserves / Operational Cost Savings: $112.8 million
2) Liability Fund and Internal Service Fund Reserves: $87.5 million
3) Delayed Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) and/or Bond Issue: $49.7 million
4) Sale of Cashman Field Property: $36 million
As part of the General Fund Reserves/Operational Cost Savings category above, 21 employees have taken part in a “voluntary separation program” (VSP) and have now retired. As a result of the VSP, the positions shown below will remain frozen for the remainder of FY25, all of FY26, and all of FY27. These 21 positions include two administrative support assistants, an architectural designer, budget analyst, business license section manager, business specialist, court clerk, engineering project manager, enterprise project manager, IT supervisor, television content and production supervisor, legal secretary, maintenance worker, public information officer, two recreation coordinators, recreation leader, senior community program technician, senior buyer and two traffic systems technicians.
As part of the Delayed CIP Projects and/or Bond Issue category above, the city is still exploring a couple different options wherein delayed CIP projects or a combination of delayed CIP projects and a bond issuance would be used to develop this $49.7 million component of the overall payment plan. We anticipate this option to be finalized during our upcoming City Council FY26 budget workshops scheduled for March 2025.