Residents show support for Goodman’s stance on council appointments

Erin Neff

Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 | 11:25 a.m.

With two Las Vegas City Council appointments hinging on a city ethics board decision Thursday, residents gave Mayor Oscar Goodman more ammo in his weapon to win the political battle.

On Friday dozens of residents attended Goodman's monthly town hall meeting in City Hall to voice their support for particular candidates and to question the appearance of impropriety they claim would accompany city employees winning the coveted seats.

"It doesn't mean I'm going to listen to every whim and caprice," Goodman told the crowd. "But I will consider everyone's viewpoint."

The council chambers were speckled with carpenters union members toting "I Back Mack" signs in reference to Planning Commissioner Michael Mack's attempt to win the Ward 6 seat.

The blue-shirted laborers are part of an overall publicity front organized by Palladin Advertising to again thrust Mack into the front-runner's position.

When the council originally was to make the appointments on Oct. 20, Goodman sensed Councilman Michael McDonald had the three votes needed to appoint Orlando Sanchez to the Ward 6 seat and Lawrence Weekly to the Ward 5 seat.

Both Sanchez and Weekly are currently employed by the city, and both count McDonald as their friend.

Goodman stalled the appointments by raising an ethical issue: Would the appointment of a current city employee to a seat on the council violate the city's code on lobbyists?

And if it wouldn't, would the appearance of impropriety create an ethical conflict per se?

Those two questions will be considered Thursday by the city's Ethics Review Board.

On Friday residents chimed in with their own opinions.

"I think it's unethical," said Renee Roberts, one of Mack's supporters. "They've been a part of the city, they know everybody and they have an advantage."

Two Ward 6 candidates who haven't received the publicity Mack and Sanchez have told Goodman the process has been difficult.

"We do not like the fact that this has turned into a media circus of sorts with bets being taken to see who will win the crown in the end," said Louise Ruskamp, vice president of the Tule Springs Homeowners Association and the grass-roots candidate for the Ward 6 seat.

Ruskamp, who is also co-chair of the northwest Las Vegas-based Coalition of Neighborhoods, said that group is polling hundreds of Ward 6 residents to determine which candidate the council should appoint. That group will meet Sunday to discuss the poll results.

Meanwhile, former state Sen. Mike Malone, who was also interested in the Ward 6 seat, presented Goodman with some data of his own about the appointment.

Malone conducted a phone poll of 631 residents. The majority picked Mack, who has been campaigning hard throughout the ward since moving there from Ward 2 to seek the appointment.

As a result, Malone said he would support Mack.

Goodman has favored Mack for the seat and is likely to continue that support even though McDonald, Gary Reese and Lynette Boggs McDonald appeared ready to vote for Sanchez.

"There does not appear to be unanimity at this point," Goodman said Friday.

The ethics opinion -- which will be binding on the council -- is critical to Goodman's ability to sway Boggs McDonald into Mack's camp.

The Ward 5 seat, however, remains up in the air.

Goodman is reportedly still backing Uri Clinton, a mediation specialist for Clark County who recently passed the bar exam.

Jerry Lindsay, a real-estate agent and West Las Vegas advocate, threw his support behind Katherine Duncan Briley's grass-roots campaign for the Ward 5 seat.

Duncan Briley and Jose Solario, a former Clark County School Board member, both lobbied Goodman during the open meeting for consideration for that seat.

A majority of Ward 6 residents who spoke told Goodman they did not want any former politician to serve as a caretaker of the ward until the 2001 election.

Goodman agreed that he would not support such a shepherd being cast into the flock of candidates.