Minorites ask: Where is expanded City Council

Denise Cardinal

Thursday, Feb. 5, 1998 | 10:15 a.m.

Marzette Lewis doesn't feel comfortable talking to the Las Vegas City Council.

It's an unusual feeling for the black activist who isn't known for keeping her mouth shut.

"Any time you go into an all-white chambers, you don't feel comfortable," said Lewis. "You just don't feel like there's anyone you can relate to."

In an attempt to help Lewis, and other members of the minority community, Nevada State Sen. Joe Neal, D-Las Vegas, introduced Senate Bill 38 -- which gives the Las Vegas City Council the power to add council seats to the board by changing the city's charter.

The bill passed in the 1997 Legislature, but the city has been dragging its feet. After agreeing to add the seats, the City Council then decided that a citizens committee should handle the issue.

The committee would be in charge of drafting the petition necessary for the charter change -- 15 percent of the population's signatures are required for a change in the charter, which can only be done through a ballot initiative.

Per request of the council, the committee also would look at whether council members should be full time, rather than part time as they are now.

But five months later -- seven months before the planned ballot initiative vote -- a committee has yet to be formed.

City officials say they still plan to appoint a committee within the next few weeks.

But Neal contends this delay is another example of the City Council turning a deaf ear to minority concerns.

He recounted a City Council meeting in 1996 where he asked the council to change its structure to better represent the minority community -- perhaps by adding council members and redrawing ward boundaries.

"The city chose to ignore that particular request," he said. "They said it had to be done in the Legislature. So we were left with the notion that if we got the state law changed to allow the wards to be expanded, they would go along with it."

So Neal worked on Senate Bill 38, proposing that the four wards of the city be changed to six.

But rather than support the measure, the city of Las Vegas lobbying team opposed it, convincing Sen. Jon Porter, R-Boulder City, to amend the bill -- giving the council power to add seats at its discretion.

And there's been little -- if any -- progress.

"Now, they left us with nothing," Neal said.

Expanding the number of council members is important, supporters say, because while the city has grown -- the number of council seats has remained the same. As a result, each ward has about 100,000 people in it. The only other city comparable to Las Vegas that has only a five-member board is Miami, said Neal.

"The areas are just too large," said former City Councilman Matthew Callister. "The whole notion of civic government is that you're accessible. When you're representing more than 90,000 people it's tough to do that -- especially when the jobs aren't full time."

Callister agrees with Lewis and Neal that the current ward boundaries don't allow for adequate representation of the minority community within the city.

Frank Hawkins, the last minority member to serve on the Las Vegas City Council, said he also thought the wards should be changed, but that a balance of all communities should be the goal.

"My ward doubled when I was in office," he said. " I was receiving 75 to 100 calls a day and I was part time."

Current council members said they were in support of council expansion as long as the constituents agreed.

"That must absolutely go to an advisory ballot question," said City Councilman Larry Brown.

The problem with changing the wards for the 1999 election, city officials argue, is that the 2000 census will probably force the city to change them again, since the wards are required to be redrawn whenever anyone of them contains 5 percent more residents than another.

But Neal said the census shouldn't matter.

"If they don't do it this year, they'll be confronted with it at the next Legislature," he said. "And we can mandate that it has to be done."