Sunday, Sept. 5, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Following a longstanding tradition, Brian Greenspun turned over his Where I Stand column to others in August. Today, we continue to present columns submitted by those guests. In presenting this year’s series of columns from community leaders, we feel it is important that our readers, trying to emerge from the ravages of the pandemic, hear from some of the people who can help guide us to better tomorrows. Today’s guest is Ryann Juden, city manager of North Las Vegas.
In New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis wrote “a state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
Indeed, states are a wonderful laboratory of democracy; however, the city of North Las Vegas’ experience has demonstrated that local governments are also perfectly situated to act as “laboratories of democracy” where policies are created and tested. As a proving ground, cities can provide insight for policymakers searching for solutions at the state and federal levels.
As with any experiment, measuring the end results and verifying final outcomes inform scientists of the experiment’s success, and replication increases the reliability of the findings. Without a doubt, one of the most rewarding parts of my time in North Las Vegas has been sharing our data when other local governments, scholars or think tanks contact us to understand our successes. In 2018, financial analysts from Wall Street bonding firms made a rare site visit to sit down with our team to better understand how we turned the city’s finances around. Local governments from as far away as Japan have inquired about the economic development model we used to attract new enterprise. Scholars from think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center have visited to better understand our methods and transformation.
There are laboratories all around City Hall searching for innovative approaches and new models for the delivery of services to our residents.
The results can be seen in the success of the city’s parking services division, created in 2018 and intentionally established as an arm of economic development to beautify neighborhoods, enhance community safety, provide efficient and responsive customer service to constituents, and boost home values. The goal wasn’t to ticket people; it was to keep our streets safe and our neighborhoods welcoming, attractive, walkable and rising in value.
We applied similar out-of-the-box thinking to public safety, first with the North Las Vegas Community Correctional Center, and more recently with the North Las Vegas CARES Court. Recognizing that most of the folks who enter our center will be out within a matter of days, we wanted to find a way to meaningfully connect them with services to address the root issues —not just the crime —that landed them there. The coordinated rehabilitative justice program that has emerged in North Las Vegas is connecting offenders and their families with ongoing social services and supports, reducing recidivism and, most importantly, giving our neighbors a second chance at life.
Operationally, we have strived to do government differently since Day One. A perfect example is our North Las Vegas remote video inspection program, the first of its kind for a Southern Nevada municipality, that has become a model in efficiency, customer service and convenience. First piloted in 2019 to cut customer wait times and increase efficiency among inspectors, the program has now grown to include 45 types of inspections and served as a prototype during the pandemic to enable us to seamlessly continue serving constituents during the quarantine.
In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the success of our “laboratory of democracy” mindset. Our ability to quickly pivot and analytically approach issues as problem solvers enabled the city of North Las Vegas to lead an innovative and effective response to both the health and economic impacts of the pandemic, proactively putting measures in place to minimize the spread of the virus, fighting for equal treatment and resources for the constituents of North Las Vegas and anticipating and working to mitigate the long-term economic effects of this crisis.
From the very start of the pandemic, we reimagined city operations and immediately transformed non-essential workers at risk of furlough into front-line responders addressing our community’s most pressing needs. Staff from libraries, the recreation department and other affected departments were redeployed into new COVID response related roles, using their work hours to package and distribute meals with Three Square Food Bank while people were homebound; assist the Southern Nevada Health District with contact tracing to curb the virus’ spread; assemble and operate a dedicated call center for business and resident assistance; and develop and operate a first-of-its-kind in the nation, in-person school in repurposed city facilities to enable parents to work while public school remained virtual.
As the city received federal dollars for the response, it was never a question among the city council and management that the money would be used in the best interest of taxpayers and delivered with the public’s trust. Almost 90% of our funding went directly back to taxpayers in the form of small-business grants, rental and mortgage assistance, utility assistance, broadband access, COVID testing, contact tracing, flu shots and mobile food pantries. The remainder of the money was spent on protective equipment for first responders and equipment to enable staff to work remotely to continue to provide customer service during shutdowns.
In addition, our tremendous North Las Vegas Fire Department provided more than 100,000 doses of vaccines to residents. Within a matter of days and only $6,000, our IT Department was able to create a vaccination registration and deployment system that met the needs of our community without a single system crash. Empowered leadership throughout our laboratory embraced and excelled in their role as chief scientists within various departments uniformly committed and dedicated to searching out solutions through experimentation.
Not everything we attempt succeeds, but our mistakes are the best instructors for informing future success. Not everyone supports the issues we address; however, the mayor and council have made it clear to solve problems within the corporate boundaries of North Las Vegas. A tremendous number of resources have been allocated to solving some of society’s most pressing issues, and when entering another person’s lane, we push the narrative and threaten entrenched interests profiting from the status quo. Whenever possible we join the valiant efforts of others, and whenever necessary we form our own research questions and begin experimenting.
Our country and state need bold persistent experimentation. I am proud of our team of thoughtful public servants actively reimagining democracy through their experimentation. As a region and country, we have a unique opportunity to learn from the pandemic and simply do better! With unprecedented federal resources flowing into Nevada, we must first support programs, groups and institutions proven to work; second, we must deliberately experiment to seek new solutions to the problems we all know exist.
Now is not the time to double down on dumb — let us support success and be bold and purposeful in our laboratories!
