NLV candidates, constituents miss City Council campaign forum

Lisa Snedeker

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 10:30 a.m.

Somebody was missing from the North Las Vegas City Council Candidates Forum a week before the primary election -- most notably constituents.

Staunch supporters of individual candidates outnumbered independent citizens in the crowd of about 50 residents who turned out at Monday's forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Las Vegas Valley.

Also missing were four of the 13 candidates who are seeking two City Council seats. Councilman William Robinson, 59, who is running for a fifth term, was one of the missing.

Forum moderator Mary Albers said candidate Dave Cienega, 35, a Metro Police officer, was in Mexico City with his grandmother who is ill. Jonathan Martin sat in as a proxy for his candidate wife, Laura Perkins, 34, a UNLV graduate and former Frontier Girl Scout leader, who was on a business trip in Reno.

Albers said she had not been able to contact candidate Connie Glass, 50, a medical technician. Robinson, Albers said, had said he would try to make it.

What wasn't missing was some heated debate over the controversial North Las Vegas Police Department, which is having funding problems and facing allegations of corruption.

In a city known for its high crime rate, other issues that dominated the forum included how to stop the decline of the city's older neighborhoods and how to get developers to help pay for needed services, including parks and recreation and libraries.

North Las Vegas, which has an estimated growth rate of almost 15 percent, now boasts a population of approximately 107,000.

Councilwoman Paula Brown, 52, who replaced Mary Kincaid when she was elected to the Clark County Commission, wants to keep her seat on the council after serving two years. Last year she was the target of an unsuccessful recall attempt led by another candidate, Marcia Blake.

Brown said she believes the answers to many of the police department's budget problems lie in the current audit, which she supported.

Blake, 26, who is a department manager at Neiman Marcus department store, wants to see the City Council be more fiscally responsible considering North Las Vegas residents pay the highest property taxes in the valley.

She said in the past 10 years residents have approved three tax increases to put more officers on the streets and yet the number of those on patrol remains the same.

"The City Council needs to make sure the (taxpayers') dollars are spent the way they are meant to be spent. We need to put officers on the street," said Blake, whose remarks were met with a round of applause from the audience.

Former City Manager Linda Hinson, 50, whose contract was not renewed last year by the current council, said recent controversies in the police department stem from personnel issues. She blamed the lack of funds on the previous City Council, which voted for Safe Streets 2000 in concept without sufficient funding.

Ron Long also supports the police audit and believes the problems lie in the department's administration, he said.

Long, 39, is a partner in a small landscape and concrete business and a member of the North Las Vegas Parks and Recreation Board and the Mayor's Crime Prevention Task Force.

Planning Commissioner Shari Buck, 38, a lifelong resident who substitute teaches, said she fully supported the City Council's decision last year not to approve a contract with the North Las Vegas Police Officers Association that would have cost the city millions in pay increases and benefits.

Buck, who also lamented that citizens have to keep paying more for police protection without seeing any results, suggested alternative funding sources to tax increases.

Another member of the Planning Commission, Chris Montanez, 40, a casino general manager, is proposing an auxiliary police force made up of volunteers to free up police officers to fight crime. He also stressed that officers need to speak Spanish.

Bob Campagna, 37, who has spent 13 years in the gaming industry in various positions, is a Neighborhood Watch block captain who wants to see more crime prevention and additional police officers on the street.

"We need to stop the dissension within the police department itself," he said. "We need to look at the department as a whole, and I think the audit will do that."

Stan Vaughan, 42, is an accountant and a professional chess teacher, who serves on the board of directors of the American Chess Association and the Nevada State Chess Association.

Vaughan said as the city continues to grow it needs to focus its limited police resources on violent crimes.

Tony White, 39, was raised in North Las Vegas and is a former city employee in computer administration. He now works for the Clark County School District.

"Getting officers on the street is my concern," he said.