Boulder City gadfly buzzes about The Man

By Mike Trask

Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006 | 7:09 a.m.

Fifty-eight-year-old Sherman Rattner is the kind of free spirit who wears Converse Chuck Taylors with a navy blue sports coat and pressed khaki pants.

His wild gray hair, tied in a ponytail, gives him the look of an aging hippie trapped in a 12-round epic brawl with The Man - which is most apt.

Rattner may soon have the U.S. Supreme Court as his captive audience, something The Man dreads.

Rattner is the brains behind the widely publicized plan that would have put every resident of Boulder City, population 15,000, on permanent Easy Street by selling 107,421 acres of Eldorado Valley and giving the profits to the people. Some thought it was a cockamamie idea. Others thought it was brilliance.

In an alternative proposal that made far fewer headlines, he also pushed for the land to be preserved as open space for eternity.

Either way, the decision would have been made by the voters in November.

But this summer District Judge Kathy Hardcastle ruled that residents could not vote on administrative matters.

Many people thought Rattner's 15 minutes of fame had expired.

But Sherman Rattner won't be throwing in the white towel and driving his 1994 Nissan out of town just yet.

This week Boulder City attorney Travis Chapman is composing a writ on Rattner's behalf, appealing to the high court to allow ballot measures to dictate government administrative actions, not just legislation.

But Rattner's principles have been dragged through the mud in conservative Boulder City.

"He doesn't seem to have a very directed or purposeful life other than getting involved in these various arrangements," said Mayor Bob Ferraro, a 30-year veteran of the city bureaucracy.

As Rattner weighs in on various land-use issues that come before the City Council, half of the town, it seems, tunes Rattner out, the other half nods in agreement. He speaks smartly, mixing SAT vocabulary words with common chat in his fading New York accent.

But it's not simply what Rattner says or how he says it. For all of his civic loquaciousness, he gets the most attention for where he came from and where he's sleeping.

Rattner arrived in Boulder City four years ago, walking out of the shadows and into the forefront of small-city politics. He said he simply grew tired of his former life in Venice, Calif., an eclectic beachfront community in west Los Angeles, where he worked in architecture.

"It was time for a change," he said. "I just started driving and I stopped at the first real body of water I came to."

He checked into the Best Western overlooking Lake Mead, and he never left. It's a good deal, he thinks. It offers HBO, a pool, continental breakfasts, a dandy view and maid services if he chooses. But despite his transient neighbors, make no mistake about it, he says: He has settled here. He empties his wallet onto a table, eagerly producing his Nevada driver's license, local bank cards, membership to the city's senior center and even a club card from a local supermarket.

He spoke at the first council meeting he attended. "They just said something that was the most stupid and outrageous thing I had ever heard," he said. "I just had to say something."

And since then, he has co-founded a political action committee with the pretentious name Coalition to Save the Future of Boulder City. The group has made the ballot questions on Eldorado Valley its mission.

Rattner is proud of his actions over the past 48 months. He is comfortable being called a gadfly. He's only doing what's right, acting as a watchdog for democracy, he says.

"He's a visionary," said Frank Fisher, a longtime Boulder City resident who despite his own conservative Republican leanings has befriended the liberal Democrat Rattner.

"People think he's just riding through town," said Nancy Nolette, the other co-founder of the PAC. "But the fact that he's lived here for four years says something. He's developing some roots."

Others aren't convinced Rattner has any goals except to frustrate City Hall.

"If he did (have legitimate goals), he would live somewhere else besides a motel room," Ferraro said.

The city does not track expenses of staff time, research and clerical work. But the city attorney's office has spent $78,146 in lawyers' fees to fight Rattner's ballot question .

"I don't believe he has thought about the impact he has on this community," City Attorney Dave Olsen said.

Rattner shrugs off The Man trying to keep him down. He runs a Web site - zoomerboomer.com - selling his computer-generated drawings of airplanes to pay the bills. The work gets sold around the world.

The rest of his time is devoted to fighting The Man.

"Sometimes it just takes an outsider Sometimes you need some fresh energy," he said. "The problems aren't here because I came along."