City near harmony on wards

Dan Kulin

Thursday, June 22, 2006 | 7:09 a.m.

The redrawing of boundaries for Las Vegas City Council districts, a sometimes contentious process, is unfolding this year in a way that seems to keep almost everyone on the council happy.

Everyone except Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, the closest thing that the council has to a loyal opposition.

Tarkanian's ward is being redrawn to exclude a number of affluent neighborhoods and any piece of downtown. The latter shift is especially painful to Tarkanian because the downtown area is expected to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in residential construction tax revenue - money that must be spent inside the ward where it is collected.

That is money that Tarkanian, under the current district configuration, could have spent on things like parks for her district, but that now will fall into Councilman Gary Reese's ward under the proposed redistricting plan.

"They took away all the development and all the redevelopment," Tarkanian said. "They took the affluent homes on one side and the redevelopment on the other."

The inherently political nature of redistricting makes it logical to look for political motives in the redrawing of district boundaries - particularly when the proposed new lines leave all council members but one smiling.

Although most council actions are approved unanimously, on the rare occasions when there is dissent, it often comes from Tarkanian. Yet Tarkanian, for one, is not ready to jump to the conclusion that she is being punished in the way the new districts are being drawn.

The councilwoman said she has no idea why it appears other council members largely got what they wanted while she was left wanting.

"I probably need to find that out," she said. "But I'm not accusing anybody of anything."

Tarkanian is the only one not pleased with the redistricting plan.

Steve Ross, the council's newest member, wants his mother's house to remain in his Ward 6 in northern Las Vegas, and it would under the proposed map.

Councilman Lawrence Weekly would remain the representative for the historically black old West Las Vegas neighborhood, and also would keep parts of downtown, as he requested.

And thanks to an agreement with Councilman Steve Wolfson, Councilman Larry Brown's Ward 4 would retain the city's newest large park - the Charlie Kellogg and Joe Zaher Sports Complex, with 110 acres of soccer fields and tennis courts, just off the Summerlin Parkway at Buffalo Drive. Although that area is currently in Brown's ward, a recent version of the proposed ward map had it shifting to Wolfson, whose ward is dominated by Summerlin. But at Brown's request, the two councilmen swapped three precincts each on the proposed map.

Tarkanian would like Reese to agree to a similar trade so she can keep part of downtown, but Reese does not appear to be in a precinct-swapping mood.

The councilwoman's Ward 1 now includes precincts from the Stratosphere to Fremont Street, but those areas would be added to Reese's Ward 3 under the proposed redistricting map.

Ward 1 also would lose the more affluent neighborhoods now on its western edge, such as the Canyon Gate Country Club, to Wolfson's Ward 2. In return, Tarkanian would pick up precincts near U.S. 95 around the Rainbow curve.

Tarkanian, who feels her colleagues are trying to pluck her plum precincts, has promised to fight the proposed redistricting plan.

But her prospects for blocking the proposed boundary changes do not seem good, if past experience at City Hall is any indication. During her nearly 18 months in office, Tarkanian has often found herself on the losing end of battles over land-use issues specific to her ward - matters on which council members usually defer to the wishes of their colleague within whose district the project falls.

Both Reese and Wolfson said they have discussed the matter with Tarkanian and are satisfied with the current proposal.

"I'm really sorry she's mad," Reese said. "But I can't go anywhere else, and she can."

Reese was referring to the fact that his Ward 3's eastern, northern and southern borders also are the city's borders.

"I have to go west," he said.

Exactly where to the west, however, is the question.

Frederick Kessler, the consultant hired by the city to draw the new wards, said Reese's Ward 3 could not stray into Weekly's Ward 5 because that would reduce the percentage of minorities in Weekly's district. (Weekly and Reese both have so-called minority-majority districts, in which whites are the minority of the voting population.)

But there are several other options for how Ward 3 could expand west. Kessler, a retired judge and now a Democratic state legislator in Wisconsin, would not be specific, but said he shared several scenarios with Tarkanian.

Reese, meanwhile, opposes any changes to his proposed borders.

"They can make other changes, but just leave my ward alone," Reese said. In explaining why he opposes swapping precincts with Tarkanian to address her concerns, Reese said: "I don't like gerrymandering."

Tarkanian said the proposed downtown grab could be a play for more of the residential construction tax dollars. Her Ward 1 has about $630,000 from the tax to spend on parks and park equipment, and proposed high-rise development in southern downtown would generate thousands of additional dollars.

Citywide, there is nearly $14 million in residential construction tax money available, $11.5 million of it designated for Ross' fast-growing Ward 6.

Reese's Ward 3 has only about $42,000 from the tax to spend, by far the least among the wards. But Reese said he was so accustomed to not having the money available that he did not even consider it in redistricting.

Kessler insists there are no political conspiracies behind the proposed council wards, which could be voted on by the council in August. Instead, Kessler said, the significant changes proposed for Ward 1 are more the result of the unusual boundaries put in place five years ago to accommodate the wishes of then-Ward 1 Councilman Michael McDonald. To satisfy McDonald's demand that his ward include his parents' home, part of downtown and his own Canyon Gate residence, Ward 1 was transformed into a long, narrow ward.

The new proposed ward boundaries would return straighter lines to the city's political map, Kessler said.

If the proposed map is ultimately adopted, Tarkanian would be the lone council member to not get anything she sought.

"I asked him not to take away the downtown area and not to chop me off on the west side, too," Tarkanian said.

But that is exactly what the new boundaries would take away and chop from her district.