New Mexico voters will have final say in the Southwest�s largest bond issue: a $155.2-million request for funding dozens of higher education and special school projects throughout the state, including $5.65 million for expanded classrooms at Dona Ana Community College and $10 million for a children�s hospital outpatient building in Albuquerque. Similar education bond issues have been approved by voters time and again in the state in recent years.

Additional general obligation bonds up for statewide vote would provide $7.7 million for senior citizen facilities and $7 million for various libraries.

Bond elections in the state�s most populous county, Bernalillo, include $12 million for roadway design and construction and $6.4 million for storm, sewer and wastewater systems. Voters in the City of Albuquerque control the fate of a $20-million bond for flood control construction.

In Arizona, Scottsdale voters will contend with $63.6 million in general obligation bonds for construction and maintenance of streets, drainage and public safety facilities.

In the suburbs of Phoenix, Chandler Unified School District�s $84.3-million bond measure will primarily fund renovation and new school construction. Other school district bonds in Arizona include $16 million for Shall Continental Elementary School District #39 in Pima County and $43 million for Marana Unified School District #6 near Tucson.

Voters in Flagstaff have a chance to approve $42 million for a for a 200,000-sq-ft city maintenance services center, $23 million for a new municipal courthouse and $16.5 million for streets and utilities.

Taking the competition from the baseball diamond to the voting booth, the City of Mesa, Ariz. is asking voters to finance a proposed $84-million spring training baseball stadium for the Chicago Cubs to keep the team from abandoning the state�s Cactus League for competitor Florida. The main thrust of the referendum would allow the city to raise its bed tax from 3% to 5%.

In Nevada, Carson City School District is asking voters to pass an approximately $37.5-million school modernization and construction program.

But the most contentious and significant Nevada vote will be statewide Question 4 to repeal and amend a portion of the popular PISTOL initiative passed in 2008 that greatly restricted eminent domain proceedings. The new initiative, supported by many construction trade associations such as the AGC, Las Vegas, eases the ability to exercise eminent domain for public infrastructure projects.