Newly appointed councilwoman ready to serve

By Jeremy Twitchell

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2009 | 1:18 p.m.

On her first full day as a Henderson City councilwoman, Debra March bustled into her office on the fourth floor of City Hall at 3:45 p.m. -- 15 minutes later than she had planned, thanks to traffic and her new key card for the city’s underground parking lot, which didn’t work.

Ahead of her, she had an evening full of briefings and meetings with department heads as part of a whirlwind initiation tour into the life of a council member and effort to fulfill the promise she made when seeking the appointment: to hit the ground running.

Long term, there’s the little matter of sorting out the city’s beleaguered budget. Henderson cut almost $60 million from last year’s budget, and with tax revenues remaining grim, additional deeper and more painful cuts are expected.

The Henderson City Council meets tonight at City Hall.

March, who beat out 13 other applicants to fulfill the remaining two years of the City Council seat vacated by Mayor Andy Hafen, said she was aware of the challenges that would await her if she won the seat, but not intimidated.

“I think you’d be foolish not to think of all that,” she said. “These are tough times, but tough times require commitment. We can’t shirk our responsibility or run away.”

March, who for six years previous to her appointment July 21 served on the Henderson Planning Commission, said seeking a City Council seat seemed like the next logical step in a progression that she said her parents put in motion when she was young.

March grew up as one of eight children in Detroit, living in a 1,000-square-foot home that allowed her family to save enough money to send all eight children to private school.

Though her family had little, March said her parents kept her too busy with sports and volunteering in school, church and the community for her to notice.

“We didn’t know we didn’t have a lot, so we just enjoyed our lives growing up,” March said. “It was kind of a culture in our family to give back.”

March said she has tried to keep that tradition alive by volunteering on various planning boards and charitable organizations over the years, including the Henderson Community Foundation, where she is the secretary.

Those childhood lessons were also the impetus for her spending her adult life in the public sector, beginning in 1975 as a state park ranger and leading to positions as a social worker, a welfare office manager and a state industry regulator before she was hired for her current position, executive director of the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at UNLV in 1996. March said she plans to retire from the position in the near future.

Those experiences, March said, made her feel prepared to face the challenges that come with her new assignment.

“I believe I’m the right person at the right time for this position,” she said. “I want to make a difference and I want to be a team player and work with everybody here on the fourth floor to get us through this difficult time.”

Now on the City Council, March said she hopes to bring the perspective of a lifetime of volunteerism and public labor into her new undertaking and encourage citizens to take a greater role in the community.

“Especially at a time when your resources are limited, if you can provide additional resources for the health of the community by engaging your residents, I think that makes a big difference,” she said.

Among her other goals for her time in office, she lists helping local businesses weather the current storm and diversifying the city’s economy.

March admits that she still has a lot of studying to do to be up to speed on the city’s finances. As far as budget cuts go, she said she would be reluctant to support layoffs of city staff, but wasn’t ready to rule them out, either. Though she stressed that she is confident the city will get through it current struggles, she said it will take a combined effort of elected officials, city employees and residents to make it happen.

“I have the philosophy that we all need to get into the sandbox to solve this and we all need to work together,” she said.

March’s appointment will end in 2011, at which time she will have the option of running for a regular, four-year term. She said she plans to take time to decide whether she will seek additional terms.

“I’m going to get into this experience and I’ll make a decision at a later date,” she said.