The Boulder City Damboree Committee has announced a change in the route down Fifth Street for the annual July 4th parade this year.
After the entries have passed through downtown and turned toward Central Park down Fifth Street, entries will be divided at Aztec Place depending on their water status.
Entrants who wish to remain dry during the parade will be diverted down Aztec Place to Sixth Street and over to the park so those entries that prefer to get wet can proceed down Fifth Street to Avenue B and turn right.
During the past few years, water play in the area at the corner of Fifth Street and Avenue B has gotten so bad, the Damboree Committee considered canceling the parade altogether.
"We've got a serious situation down there," said Roger Hall, committee chairman and Parks and Recreation director. "It's gotten so out-of-hand that a number of past entries said they wouldn't come back if something wasn't done about the water issue."
The flyer attached to the parade application form warns entrants "if at any given spot on the parade route water play escalates to an unacceptable level, the parade will be stopped until the situation can be corrected."
Central Park name will change July 4
With holiday festivities in full gear during Damboree July 4 at Central Park, a special ceremony will be held at 12:30 p.m. on the corner of Fifth Street and Avenue B to officially rename the park.
The ceremony will honor Boulder City's first mayor, Bob Broadbent, with the unveiling of a likeness of the man who helped guide the transformation of a government-controlled city into its inaugural days of a municipality as well as the renaming of the park to Robert Broadbent Memorial Park.
After his days as mayor of Boulder City, Broadbent went on to bigger duties serving as a Clark County Commissioner, the director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the Reagan Administration, the Clark County Director of Aviation and, finally, the head of the private organization that oversaw the design, construction and operation of the Las Vegas Monorail.
Ironically, the state has two municipal parks named after members of the Broadbent family.
A park in Ely, Nev. is named after Broadbent's father who, also, was the first mayor of that Eastern Nevada city.
Traffic
Public Works to study area traffic issues
With the completion of the Colorado River Bridge only two years away and completion of the Boulder City Bypass south of the city set farther off in the future, the city's Public Works department has been studying traffic relief measures in Hemenway Valley, which were presented to the City Council May 23.
Public Works Director Scott Hansen, noting that with the opening of the new bridge, average daily traffic counts will increase 35 percent, from 15,000 vehicles per day to more than 20,000, including 2,000 multi-axle trucks per day, said, "this adds a substantial safety concern."
He also noted that the Level of Service -- the measure by which traffic flow is evaluated, with A being the best and F being the worst -- will be D or worse when the bridge opens on U.S. Highway 93 at all Hemenway Valley intersections.
Hansen came up with seven alternatives that could help ease the obvious traffic congestion, which will occur in the residential areas between U.S. 93 and the River Mountains when the crossing becomes a reality.
Using a weighted factoring system, the first three changes -- do nothing, change the medians and restrict left turns -- scored low compared to the other four choices.
Those include at Lake Mountain Drive a signal or grade separation, a bridge, the reduction of speed limits, or extending Canyon road up and east so it would link up with Marina Drive or just south of Valencia Drive within existing power corridors.
He said signals and grade separations at Ville Drive and Pacifica Way are also options, but were not factored in.
Any of the last four scored about the same, except that the grade separation at Lake Mountain Drive would cost more, somewhere between $5 million and $10 million.
Since U.S. 93 is governed by the Nevada Department of Transportation, City Manager Vicki Mayes said her letter to NDOT involving the bypass and other local transportation issues would include a request to extend left-turn merge lanes and right-hand acceleration lanes on U.S. 93 as well as NDOT looking at the formal process of installing a signal at Lake Mountain Drive.
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