Bill would change NLV council races

Candidates for North Las Vegas City Council in 2001 may find themselves running in wards for the first time in the city's history if an Assembly bill makes its way into law.

Council members would have to live in the ward they represent, though they would still be elected by all of the city's voters.

That would mean residents would have a specific council member to whom they could address concerns, according to Assemblyman John Lee, D-Las Vegas, who grew up in North Las Vegas.

"My family lived there for 38 years and if you had a specific problem, you had not one councilman that was yours. You had to call City Hall," said Lee, who added his mother and sister still live in North Las Vegas.

Currently North Las Vegas council members run at-large for four-year terms. In municipal balloting every two years, the top two vote-getters join the council.

Assembly Bill 590 was introduced earlier this session to change the North Las Vegas City Charter so that candidates would run at-large but for particular seats not confined to a geographic area.

In hearings, objections were brought up to the original bill, so Lee proposed the amendment that would create the wards. The Assembly bill missed a deadline last Friday to move from its committee, but because of the amendment, it was given a 10-day extension.

As a model for the amendment, Lee said he used Henderson, where candidates must live within the ward in which they run but are elected at-large by the community.

"I felt it was time for the constituents in the mature areas to have representation, to have a voice and to have someone be responsible for their needs," he said. The majority of the current council members live in the city's newer northwest area. "I didn't want people to become ward councilmen. I wanted them to be city councilmen."

A handful of residents, mostly council members and current or former candidates, turned out at an Assembly Government Affairs Committee hearing earlier this month to voice their opposition to the original bill.

John Rhodes was the only council member testifying in support of the bill. The others, including Mayor Michael Montandon, sent a letter to the committee requesting the original bill not be passed.

At an informational meeting last week, council members, with the exception of Rhodes, agreed they would like to see the issue be brought to a vote of the residents in 2001. They could not, however, agree on how the proposed ballot question should be worded.

Assembly Government Affairs Committee Chairman Doug Bache, D-Las Vegas, said Lee's amendment also had asked for a ballot question, but that portion of the proposal was shot down.

Rhodes has said he supported the original bill because he believes the current city election process is antiquated. So does Lee.

"North Las Vegas is not the little bedroom community of Las Vegas that it was," Lee said, noting the latest state population estimates show 107,000 residents.

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