North Las Vegas: What Are Your Priorities?

One topic at a longish meeting of the North Las Vegas City Council last night (Dec. 15th) was an exercise in determining what should be Nor’Town’s primary responsibilities. The idea is to rank services so as make it easier to identify where to snip.

Council and staff spent the weekend and first part of this week identifying the “service responsibilities” for the city. After a few rounds, the results looked like this.

First there are super-basic services that the city must provide in order to be inviolate of its own laws, the states, the Feds. There were two marked for that:

• Govern and represent the community
• Enforce laws and codes.

Next up are basic, “core” services that the city CHOOSES to do but are not mandated by law:

• Respond to emergency situations
• Operate water utility
• Plan the city’s future
• Plan, build, and maintain road network–streets, sidewalks, curbs, and gutters
• Operate library system
• Stimulate economic expansion and private investment
• Operate a municipal court and comply with judicial orders
• Prepare for, respond, mitigate and recover from a major emergency or disaster

Next up are services that aren’t “core” but are considered nice to have because they enhance quality of life and are the sorts of things that residents think of when they wonder why are they here rather in Henderson?

• Regulate land uses, developments, and buildings
• Plan, build, and maintain public facilities
• Plan, build, and maintain parks and trails
• Provide recreation and leisure programs and activities
• Support community organization and events
• Inform, educate, engage, and seek participation of residents and businesses
• Represent and be an advocate for the community and the city
• Plan, install, and maintain streetscapes, medians and living infrastructure

Finally are the “Add Ons”: stuff considered a relatively low priority:

• Support other governmental entities
• Operate municipal golf course
• Provide a safety net for individuals in need
• Participate in regional service delivery
• Acquire and maintain open spaces

Couple of things that didn’t make any of the lists, making them a super-duper low priority:

• Operate EMS response and transport
• Operate a detention facility

But, that last one’s okay. The city’s going to need all those inmates to paint over graffiti and fill in for laid-off staff.

Now here’s a civic exercise for the two or three of ya who care about that stuff: do you agree with these rankings? Was anything left out? Don’t ya wish politicians would worry about this stuff before they get themselves elected?

Frankly, I would prefer a more deliberative approach that would include a follow-up meeting after a night’s rest wherein councilfolk revisit their lists. And perhaps that’s the plan. The meeting was run by one of them consultants us’n Nortownies are all supposed to hate as part of one of those corporate retreat like thingies. I’m guessing you have to hand that consultant a hefty check to find out what happens next.

Another bit of the meeting was devoted to councilfolk stating their expectations of the new, interim city manager, and vice-versa. All well and good, but the most disturbing aspect of that exercise was the picture painted of what things were like under the old regime nobody is supposed to talk about anymore. You know, kinda like after Obama took over for that guy we’re not supposed to mention. Wazzisname? Voldermort?

Anyways, one gets the impression that information was not always passing from the former city manager to city council, and that there was a subsequent loss of trust. Staff, apparently, lost their willingness to speak the truth to council, even when councilmembers might not want to hear it.

Basically council and manager promised to talk to each other more and to keep everyone informed about what other folks are doing.

The question remains, tho: how did such a dysfunctional regime last so long, with the support of so many people? And more importantly, why would you want the guy in the middle of it as your Governor? Except for the fact that, unlike other candidates, he can keep his pants on?

Full disclosure: I plan to vote for Jim Gibbons in the Republican primary because I think he best represents the values of the modern Republican party. Who’s with me? Maybe the mayor?