Monday, March 4, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
"We have grits," beams a handwritten sign at the Skillet Cafe, but not even the availability of tasty Southern side dishes is enough to settle Matthew Callister's nerves. He's not comfortable talking about himself, at least not to strange tape recorders, and particularly not if that tape is to form the basis of a personality profile.
There's something squishy and inexact about a personality profile -- so much latitude for writerly shenanigans -- and the maverick Las Vegas city councilman has a bad feeling about it. He mentions several times how queasy this makes him, insisting he's not very interesting. He quickly posts most personal territory off limits.
"I can answer policy questions," he says over a breakfast of eggs almost as runny as he's been in dodging this interview. "That would be interesting." And how! But an up-close-and-personal with a lifelong iconoclast who was once a noted state legislator and is now the city's favorite rock 'n' roll politician? Why, Dullsville!
You might well think he's being coy. After all, among local officials, only Mayor Jan Laverty Jones can move the needle on the charisma meter more than Callister, and he's vastly more enigmatic.
Smart, brash and unconventional, he can be enormously engaging, and he's a Warren Zevon fan to boot. All longish hair and casual style, he baby-boomed onto the Las Vegas City Council last year after eight seasons in state government. He trailed a mixed reputation -- part astute politician, part flake, an acknowledged rock 'n' roll animal, at home in the halls of power or the aisles of a Nine Inch Nails concert. It's a fair bet he's the only city councilman ever to dream of compiling a book of his favorite rock quotes. Clearly a man who ought to be dragged into the open.
He realizes that, however grudgingly, which is why he showed up at the Skillet on this chipper morning. Even if the place wasn't mostly empty, the grits announcement having failed to pack 'em in, he'd probably still stand out: dark lawyer's suit (he's got a court date in a few minutes), blond hair swept back from his angular face, eyes scrunched behind dark granny shades, he prompts a single thought -- Matt Callister and Tom Petty, separated at birth? As the cafe's framed covers of Howdy Doody comics look on, Callister makes a game try at wary self-revelation.
"Let's start at the beginning," he says, not removing the sunglasses. "I was born here in Las Vegas in 1955. ... I went to Clark High School...."
He offers a few more sentences about college in Utah and law school in San Diego, but it's no use. The past is old news (he claims, for instance, not to remember what first nudged him into politics; "that was so @&!!$* long ago") and the present is just crammed with juicy policy questions: the county's disproportionate cut of state revenues, downtown revitalization, his proposed moratorium on apartment complexes in the northwest. In no time flat he's in policy-wonk overdrive. Callister may have a rock 'n' roll heart, but he's got a head for numbers, and boy, can he throw them like confetti.
"I'd call him full of energy," says Scott Higginson, who preceded Callister in the Ward 4 council seat. "He's a very unique person."
"A genius," adds Dr. Steve Thomas, a local surgeon who has known Callister since grade school. "He's always prided himself in being a little step off the line."
He hasn't always been that way, of course. "In elementary school he pretty much fit into the mold," Thomas recalls. "But in junior high he sort of started making his move." By high school he was the sort of guy who'd drive a topless Jeep to school in midwinter just to see what people might think. He was also student body president and a consummate bridger of groups. Jocks, brainiacs, he could charm them all, Thomas says.
But eccentricity can be a mixed blessing. There seems to be a certain headlong, improvisational quality to his existence, as if he were constantly trying to keep up with his schedule, his day-planner always managing to stay one step ahead. An appointment with him should allow for a certain amount of waiting in the lobby. He's said -- by people who've waited vainly for him to return calls -- to be bad at returning calls.
In the Legislature, he had a sometimes-spotty record of committee attendance (although he maintained he was on hand for the important stuff). His fidgetiness during a council meeting last year prompted a letter to the editor calling him "half a councilman" who "acted like a kid."
But his unconventionality isn't the political baggage it might seem. You don't get elected to eight years in the state Legislature if people think you're too many steps off the line. Following his January 1995 appointment to finish the departing Higginson's term on the City Council, voters overwhelmingly handed him a four-year term last May.
"He marches to a different drummer," Higginson says, "but I don't think that hampers his effectiveness."
To city politics he brings "enthusiasm, intelligence, institutional knowledge," says Mayor Jones. "He understands the intricacies of municipal financing. He not only understands the problems, he knows how to fix them."
Even people on opposite sides of the issues agree. "Matthew's a very bright kid, if a little misguided sometimes," says a wry Paul Christensen, county commissioner and Callister's cousin. That said, he decided he didn't want to be quoted in this article.
Attorney Chuck Gardner, who's publicly debated Callister over the city's use of eminent domain to build the downtown parking garage, applauds the councilman's offbeat nature. "It's time we had someone who's not following the conventions. I think he's one of the bright stars of Nevada's future."
"'Offbeat' I don't mind," Callister says. "Even 'eccentric' doesn't bother me much. I would hope I'm as much unlike traditional government as I can be. So I take that as a compliment."
Even though it's not always meant that way. "He's very bright," says a longtime observer of city politics who chose to remain nameless. "He's also too slippery by half. He's too willing to give downtown away (to casino owners)."
Back in the Skillet, Callister is enthusiastically harpooning his current Moby Dick, the city-county tax split.
"One of the reasons I ran and stayed involved is that there's an enormous disparity in how revenues generated countywide are shared," he says. "What you've got is 63 percent of the people living in cities only getting about 40 percent of the revenue stream. There's no sense in that."
This is where the numbers start flying: Clark County's ending-fund balance -- "the amount of money they have in the bank" -- is $150 million, he says, three times the state's and about 10 times the city's. "You can tell by looking at the county's new building that they have a lot of spare change."
He'll upshot it for you this way: People who live in the city (particularly Callister's swiftly growing Ward 4) but work in the county (that is, on the Strip) generate revenue for the county but require services from the city. The same city that's getting a beggar's share of the tax revenue generated by the Strip.
County Financial Director Randy Walker argues that since the monies are gathered in the county, they should stay there. "To redistribute them back to cities where they weren't collected doesn't make sense. I mean, where's the argument?"
He also says each entity's ending-fund balance represents 33-35 percent of its available resources. "It's essentially the same. You have to remember that the county's budget is larger than the city's."
Dry stuff, all right, but Callister irrigates it forcefully and convincingly. And frequently. There are those who say he's obssessed with the subject, going on about it at the slightest provocation. And when he begins sketching visual aids on the back of the Skillet breakfast tab, you can sort of see where they're coming from.
But he would argue it's an issue worth obsessing about. A more equitable distribution of the tax stream, he says, would give Southern Nevada's cities enough cash to provide services while "lowering property taxes for three-quarters of the valley."
"I'm certainly doing all I can to try to force the issue," he says. "Do I sometimes get expressive? Sure. But there's an issue of, as I see it, paramount importance, and nobody's talking about it. So I'm gonna talk about it."
"I don't think Matt Callister came in looking for a fight with the county," Jones says. "But when you're faced with this bureaucratic wall and it just won't listen, your frustration grows. And if you're bright, it grows more quickly."
"Can one guy make a difference?" Callister wonders. "I don't know. But you can certainly use the vantage point of your elected seat to demand a reconsideration of what is bad policy."
He glances at his watch; he's got a judge to sway, remember.
"I don't think I'm a good politician," Callister adds. "I'm too quick to speak my mind. A better politician wouldn't always do that. It's hard for me not to show my cards. I'm not very image conscious."
You could point out that he's at least image-conscious enough to know the value of claiming not to be, but he's already out the door, headed for court, out of the Skillet and into the fire. He never did take off the shades.
Enough with the nervous aerobics already! It's the next day, at his law office in the Callister & Reynolds building on Las Vegas Boulevard, and Callister's unease is manifesting itself as an inability to stand still. Shadeless today and dressed in jeans and blue work shirt, he's engaged in a high-speed pace behind his chairless desk (an old spinal injury makes standing preferable to sitting).
When he's not brushing his fingers through his hair, he idly opens envelopes, paper-clips the contents and drops them into piles on the floor. He absently rearranges things. It makes you want to staple his hands to the desk.
Despite all the movement, he's worn out. His face is tired, his voice is tired. He won his court case yesterday, something about dueling pawnshops, but only after an energy-sapping "vicious courtroom battle." Later that night, he felt compelled to drag his weary bones to a radio station promo event. Rock 'n' roll, he's giving you the best years of his life.
"I've always enjoyed rock music, all my life," Callister says, curiously understating his passion, perhaps concerned about playing the rock 'n' roll councilman too much.
Despite the Hootie and the Blowfish chiming from the office radio, he has a taste for music with a little more bite. He went to Lollapalooza; he'd tune the radio to KUNV 91.5-FM's edgy "Rock Avenue" show if it was on during office hours.
"He's been to quite a few concerts here," says Richard Lenz, head of the Huntridge Theatre for the Performing Arts. "He's an alternative music fan, quite a regular." Over the years, Callister has been not only a patron of the Huntridge but a benefactor, helping it navigate the devious byways of state government to secure much-needed historic-restoration funds. "I'm a big Matt Callister fan," Lenz says.
"Every time I go to one of those (concerts), I feel older," Callister sighs. Some scene-makers might think it's square to be hip for a fortysomething politico to get within spitting distance of a mosh pit -- "That's our councilman," one Huntridge regular groans. "My girlfriend calls him the Mad Hatter" -- but Lenz doesn't think so.
"I think the kids appreciate the fact that there are people my age and around there who appreciate the same music they listen to."
Callister's late night was followed by a long morning. A meeting at City Hall sproinged into a marathon session. "The downside of the job is days like today, when you're thinking you're out of City Hall by 10 or 11, and I got here about 2. So it's hard to do your day gig" (as a lawyer).
So why give up the biennial grind of state government for the everyday grind of running the city? The answer is right there in his unwritten book of rock quotes: Stop, in the name of love!
"I elected to say home and raise my kids," he says. There's a picture of them in his City Hall office, three girls ages 5 to 15. State government forced him to be absent from them for long stretches, and it finally got to be too much.
"My kids said, 'Yeah, it's time to come home,'" he says. Although they don't live with him, he sees them daily and it's the best part of his day. "Access to kids is so important," he says.
Anyway, it's unlikely that he ever came back from a fist-pounding Senate Finance meeting to find a message like the one on the white board in his City Hall office: "Hi Dad," it says in a neat girlish hand. "I hope you had a good day. Maggie."
At least the morning's meeting concerned a favorite Callister topic: downtown revitalization. If the city-county tax split is his Moby Dick, this is an only slightly lighter shade of whale.
Having attended school in Salt Lake City and San Diego, he yearns for a jumping urban scene in downtown Vegas. He can see it all in his head: Rolling Stones concerts at the (as yet unbuilt) downtown stadium, strolling through (as yet unbuilt) promenades of shopping, public art and restaurants, marveling at the (controversially built) Fremont Street Experience.
"You'll have an urban experience you don't have now," he says, not to mention a little economic juice pumping through the area's tired veins.
Still, it's just a little ironic for a politician so concerned on one hand with homeowner and neighborhood issues to have the other hand on the wheel of an eminent-domain machine gobbling up downtown property against the owners' wishes.
But Gardner points out that most of those decisions were made before Callister joined the council.
"I think he's taken the position he's taking because of where he sits. I have a feeling his true beliefs may really be a little different."
Callister seems to agree -- sort of. "I wish I'd been involved in some of the decisions that led to some of the lawsuits we now have over the use of eminent domain," he says. "I think there might have been better ways to get there. But I'm there now, and I'm not going to second-guess the people who had the job before me."
Right about then his speaker phone buzzes. "How're you, Matthew?"
"Just working for a living," he says, a common greeting.
"I'm up at 3 a.m.," the man reports, "I'm watching the council proceedings (on local cable) ... you're quite an animated man."
Callister grins. "As I like to say, I'm out of politics altogether; I'm into show business now."
City Hall, a few days later: 10 stories of people in suits, and on top of it all, in a 10th-floor office with a stunning view of downtown, Callister is taking care of business in jeans and a black T-shirt. A reporter and photographer arrive, having loitered in the lobby for 30 minutes. Callister greets them warmly. "Are you sure I can't talk you out of doing this?" he asks, running a hand through his hair.
archive
