NLV: Officials plan for initial wards beginning with next election

Lisa Snedeker

Tuesday, June 8, 1999 | 10:16 a.m.

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Come the next municipal election, North Las Vegas will be a city divided.

Into wards, that is.

Currently the four-year City Council seats are elected at-large.

Today will mark the last time in the city's history that council members will be elected strictly at-large. That leaves Boulder City and Mesquite as the only local governments within Clark County to elect their officials at-large.

Three North Las Vegas council members now live within a mile radius of each other in El Dorado, a master-planned community in the northwest.

The 1999 Legislature, with the support of Councilman John Rhodes, wanted to see representation from throughout the city on the council. A bill that changed the city charter by dividing the city into wards was signed into law by Gov. Kenny Guinn late last month.

As in Henderson, residents will still vote for candidates at-large. And as in Henderson, candidates have to live within one of the four wards in which they run.

City Clerk Eileen Sevigny said the first meeting between the city's planning and public works staffs to determine how to divide the municipality into wards would be held today.

"We (staff) have to divide the city into four wards with plus or minus 5 percent of the population," she said. "This is the very beginning (of the process)."

That process will eventually result in the form of an ordinance to be approved by the council after Oct. 1.

While Mayor Michael Montandon and the remainder of the council opposed the legislation, Rhodes said he felt the current election process needed to reflect the growth of the city that is now estimated to have more than 107,000 residents.

Rhodes also has said he feels the new election system will make council members more accountable.

But council candidate Marcia Blake, who is running against incumbents William Robinson and Paula Brown, as well as Planning Commissioner Shari Buck, for one of two open seats, said while one of the pros of the new law is that each individual area of the city will be represented, she is concerned it will create a divided council in its stead.

"The con is that instead of having five people working together, they each will be working for their area," she said. "It causes political game playing."

Mark Kincaid, son of Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid and campaign manager for Brown, agreed that is a criticism of Las Vegas and the county, both of which have representatives that are elected by wards.

Las Vegas Councilman Michael McDonald said, however, the advantage of being elected within a ward is that the candidates know the needs of the area.

"If you run throughout the entire city, you don't know the needs (of areas) if you have never lived there," he said. "It's not fair to the people who reside in the ward. I live in a tract home in the city that I was born and raised in. I don't know the needs of a rancher living in the northwest."

McDonald added that the reason the mayor of Las Vegas is elected at-large is so that he will act as the conscience for the city.

Blake pointed out that three council members -- Stephanie Smith, Brown and Robinson -- as well as the mayor and the two other council candidates -- live in the northwest. If someone lived in the mature area of the city, she said, residents there would receive more attention. Currently Rhodes is the only council member who lives in an older neighborhood.

The other council candidate, Buck, said one of the positives that will most likely come with the change is that there won't be 13 people running for two seats, which is what happened in the May primary election.

"Now people also have a specific person to go to in their area if they have a problem," she said.

Buck also expressed disappointment in the state for changing the city charter after the City Council and the citizens had voted the change down in the past.

Another downside is running at-large in a growing city that shows no signs of slowing down.

Recently re-elected Henderson Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers can relate to Buck's concerns.

Cyphers supports the Henderson election system because council members are accountable to every individual and there is little opportunity for the political play that can surface when candidates are elected strictly within wards rather than at-large.

"It keeps us in line and in check," she said. "It makes sure we treat every neighborhood the same."

It can be more expensive and a lot more work to run an at-large campaign than simply running for office within a ward, Cyphers said.

McDonald agreed that it is much more expensive to run at-large and pointed to the Las Vegas mayoral campaigns in which the candidates raised more than $2 million.