Barber-councilman likes to trim blight from ward

Erin Neff

Friday, April 30, 1999 | 12:08 p.m.

While dressed in a business suit and seated in his leather swivel chair at City Council meetings, Gary Reese sometimes appears uncomfortable.

The 57-year-old councilman says he prefers holding court with constituents in their neighborhoods or in his barber shop.

More polished office-holders may relish the television lights, but Reese favors walking through his ward, which has the city's most diverse population and some of the poorest neighborhoods.

"I always go into every decision asking, 'How would I feel if I lived there?' " Reese said. "I enjoy going out and meeting people and walking through neighborhoods. That's why I do this."

As he runs for re-election to his Ward 3 seat, you're more apt to see him at a ballfield than a cocktail party.

"I don't enjoy the fund-raising," Reese said. "I hate that."

Won easily in 1995And that attitude seems to fit in just fine with the majority of his constituents, who helped him to an easy victory with 69 percent of the votes over incumbent Ken Brass in 1995.

"It's easy to say you don't feel represented because the council's all white," said West Las Vegas resident Morgan Henry, who like Brass, is black. "I've seen Gary Reese out here working for us, and I know he's the right one up there."

The issue of minority representation hits hardest in Ward 3, in which 20 percent of residents are black, 18 percent Hispanic and 4.5 percent Asian, according to U.S. Census statistics.

A question on the June 8 general election ballot will ask voters whether they want to expand the council.

Reese said he'd rather see the council members work full-time for the city rather than expand the size of council -- even if it forced him from office so he could keep the barbering job he's held for the past 36 years.

Although known by many for his barber shop on Bonanza Road, Reese fell into hair-cutting quite by accident.

Born in Panaca in Lincoln County, Reese and his family moved to Castleton so his father, Jack Reese, could work in the mines to support his wife and three children.

"My dad was always telling me, 'Don't lie to me, don't steal from me,' " Reese remembers from those childhood days.

Once, however, Reese took the family's new car out to pick up a date in Pioche. He left the house with strict instructions not to speed, no matter how barren the road seemed, due to the large population of deer there.

"Coming home that night I was going too fast and I hit a herd of deer," Reese said. "I had to go wake my dad up to tell him, and he didn't believe me at first because I was always a good kid who respected him.

"I started to cry, and he got up and got dressed and said, 'How fast was you going?' and I lied and said '50, 55,' but I knew I was going over 100 and I had killed three deer."

Reese said his father never questioned him, even though Reese knows he didn't fool the old man, who later died of black lung disease.

"I had lied, and it made me feel horrible," Reese said. "I vowed right then that I would never put myself in that position again."

Perhaps the roots of Reese's popularity with his constituents stem from that adage. He may deny a particular project, but he'll tell you so from the get-go.

"When people call you and they have a problem in their neighborhood and don't get answers, it doesn't help the trust," Reese said. "I've been very honest with anybody when they call. I may not have the answer they want, but at least I tell it that way."

It's the kind of no-frills approach he's known since he went to his first barber as a child.

"The first barber I went to owned a country market and never had a license," Reese recalls. "Somebody would come in and want a pound of hamburger, and he'd go get it and then wipe his hands on his apron and go back to cutting your hair."

After graduating from Lincoln County High School, Reese went to Dixie College in St. George, Utah, on a football scholarship. A hip injury, however, kept him from the field, which in turn took away his reason for being in school.

Instead he came here to work as a housing supervisor at the Nevada Test Site. A barber he had gone to as a kid moved to Salt Lake City to open a barber school and invited Reese to come learn the trade for free.

As the leading candidates for mayor can attest from campaigning in barber shops around town, getting your hair cut or beard trimmed is only part of the reason for going.

Every customer has an opinion, and many have complaints they're willing to share. Some even climb the political ladder and return favors to friends.

One such customer, former City Councilman Bob Nolen, appointed Reese to the Board of Zoning Adjustment and later to the Planning Commission. When Nolen left the council to become Clark County constable in 1993, Reese tried unsuccessfully to get the council appointment -- which instead went to Brass.

Two years later, however, when the seat was up for election, Reese campaigned on issues important to Ward 3 voters -- blight, barking dogs and prostitution -- and won easily.

Keeping those issues in mind, Reese worked with Councilman Michael McDonald to create the city's Neighborhood Services department to help spur revitalization efforts and code enforcement in the city's aging core.

His sponsorship of cleanup days and use of surplus campaign money to pay for Metro Police patrol bicycles, uniforms and helmets won him instant approval.

Neighborhood Services Director Sharon Segerblom credits Reese for his dedication to revitalization efforts in blighted and crime-riddled areas.

"He really fights for solutions and makes them happen," Segerblom said.

But some of Reese's sponsored ordinances rankled citizens, including one that limited to six the number of vehicles that can be stored on most residential lots.

Reese said he received death threats after pushing for another ordinance that ultimately passed -- one that included a $1,000 fine and potential jail time for any driver caught soliciting day laborers at Bonanza and H Street. This long-standing practice was causing traffic tie-ups on the narrow streets. Reese's ordinance established a day-labor center, where drivers could solicit workers without creating traffic problems.

He also sponsored a controversial council redistricting plan that added the predominantly black West Las Vegas to his traditional eastern Las Vegas ward.

And he took some heat for his support converting Nature Park -- one of the last remnants of natural desert in the city -- into the Desert Pines Golf Club, where critics claim the greens fees are too high.

Reese defends the project, saying, "I didn't want to see apartments there," and calls it a significant achievement for economic revitalization in his ward.

"I'm thin-skinned and I take it personally when people say I'm not looking out for them," Reese said.

Not always controversial

Reese has many other projects to his credit that were not controversial, including major renovations at Doolittle Park, a social services center at the Rafael Rivera Community Center and a bridge at Nellis Boulevard and Washington Avenue for students at Robison Middle School.

His office walls are lined with photos of him at a variety of opening nights and groundbreakings of projects he's sponsored.

In between the "official business" photographs, the divorced Reese beams in a photo with Miss Universe contestants and another with Brooke Shields.

"I told Andre (Agassi) to get out of the photo," Reese laughs.

Reese calls a city-sponsored trip to Washington, D.C., for a National League of Cities seminar "a waste" despite his display of a photo of himself and McDonald on the White House lawn.

But most of his office's personal effects involve his lifelong love of ducks and pictures of his three children and four grandchildren.

Reese divorced after 17 years of marriage and raised his three children -- then aged 7, 9 and 13 -- by himself.

"Every child needs to have a mother and a father," Reese said, speaking candidly about what he called a difficult time as a single father. "I feel as though when my kids grew up they liked their mother more than they liked me."

As a result, perhaps, Reese tries to spend as much time as possible with his four grandchildren -- all of whom live in Las Vegas.

His new philosophy: "There's only one first Little League game" has taken center stage.

But Reese isn't ignoring his own political future as a result.

"There's a lot of things I started in my ward that I need to finish," Reese said.

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