Anti-AIDS signs raise ire in West Las Vegas

Art Nadler

Wednesday, July 14, 1999 | 2:43 a.m.

Four anti-AIDS billboards may be coming down next week, their demise hastened by a message some critics believe is both offensive and misleading.

The billboards proclaim: "Westside. We've finally been put on the map! One of the highest HIV infection rates in the nation. It's a FACT."

Anthony Snowden of the West Las Vegas Community Development Corp., a nonprofit information resource association, brought photographs of the billboards to the City Council meeting Monday night and lambasted city officials for allowing them to be displayed.

"It sends a message that West Las Vegas has been anointed as having one of the highest rates," Snowden said. "I don't know who FACT is, and I don't know anything about them."

FACT stands for Fighting AIDS in our Community Today. According to a spokeswoman for the nonprofit organization, it represents community activists, executives and professionals. One of its press releases says the group wants to reduce the cases of new HIV infections in the black community through preventive education measures.

The organization, which was formed in March, obtained donated billboards at four locations: Owens Avenue near B Street; Bonanza Road, east of J Street; F Street 100 feet north of Van Buren Avenue; and Las Vegas Boulevard North 600 feet south of Washington Avenue.

Councilman Gary Reese said Tuesday that all four billboards will be taken down by next week. He said he was against them in his ward because HIV is high all over the Las Vegas Valley, not just in West Las Vegas.

Jocelyn Nixon designed the billboards and said the nonprofit organization is standing by its message. She said only two of the billboards will be taken down.

The city administrative telephone numbers will be changed on the other two, she said, referring people to Aid For AIDS of Nevada, a local HIV/AIDS support group, at 382-2326.

"I wanted to make people aware of the problem that needs to be addressed," Nixon said. "I'm surprised at the reaction."

The nonprofit organization claims that 20 percent of HIV infections in Clark County are concentrated in the West Las Vegas ZIP code of 89106. It also says that 60 percent of new HIV/AIDS cases in Clark County are in the black community.

Recently Clark and Nye counties and Mohave County, Ariz., were awarded $3.4 million in federal Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act funds to treat and care for AIDS and HIV-positive patients.

Out of 75 metropolitan cities with populations of more than 500,000 people, Las Vegas was ranked 24th in the nation for HIV and AIDS cases.

The Clark County Health District's Office of AIDS reported in April that there were 1,594 people living with AIDS in the county and 2,104 who were HIV positive.

The state HIV/AIDS Epidemiological Profile also showed that from 1992 to 1997, blacks accounted for 24 percent of the reported AIDS cases in Nevada. Blacks make up only 7 percent of the state's population.

The profile also showed that Hispanics are slightly overrepresented, while whites are underrepresented.

Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who is a founding member of the nonprofit organization, said it just wanted to educate people with AIDS and tell them there are services in the community to help.

"It's not meant to be a slap in the face to anyone," Atkinson Gates said. "The signs are killers, but so is AIDS. The problems still exist."

Morse Arberry, deputy director of the city Neighborhood Services Department, said the phone number currently on the billboards is a city administrative number and should not be construed as being part of the nonprofit group sponsoring the billboards.

"We are no longer involved with FACT," Arberry, who also is a state assemblyman, said. "We told them they could not use the number. This is not our (the city's) project."

Nixon wouldn't say whether new billboards would be selected in the near future.

"The message won't be changed until the statistics are changed," she said.