Nor'Town: Politics in North Las Vegas, Nevada

Easy Question

The Sun wrings its hands over the question viz., who's responsible for the melt down at the housing authority? Is it the board? The director they hired to run the thing (into the ground)? Gremlins?

Well, that's easy. It's the board, which consisted at the time of William Robinson, Shirley Hogan, Stephanie Smith, then-mayor Mike Montandon, and Robert Eliason.

Nor'Townies have heard whining from the board that they were deceived by then director Don England. Sorry, but even if Mr. England wasn't being entirely forthright with the board, that doesn't remove their responsibility. The board is there, stuffed with elected officials, to provide oversight. They obviously failed in their main job.

No doubt Mr. Montandon's opponents in the Governor's race will want to remind voters of his less than stellar job on the board when that election starts to heat up.

Of course, the problem with living in a democracy--yes Nor'Town is one--is that responsibility slops over onto those who do the electing. Nor'Town voters need to stop letting the Greenspuns, Goetts, and Fertittas of the world make their council choices for them.

And be sure to ask your neighborhood assembly and state senate folk, when they come knocking for your vote in 2010, where were they when campaign reform died in the last Legislative session. The Greenspuns et al. will continue to own Nor'Town elections as long as councilfolk need hundreds of thousands of dollars to get elected, and the Greenspums are allowed to bundle 20 and 30% of that despite a $10,000 official limit on contributions.

Currently the housing board is in limbo as it waits to be absorbed into a multicity organization. It is interesting to note that councilfolk want to shove citizens onto the board--and keep themselves as far away as they can. (See items 30 and 31 of the last meeting) Maybe they're feeling a tad uneasy about the whole debacle?

Elsewhere: another Nor'Town cop arrested? (RJ,KXNT) It is clearly time for a little soul-searching in council chambers about how to run that department. Hope the accused isn't another one of those "policemen for Buck".

Hmm. The city swapped in a pic of Cherchio into the lineup pretty quick. They're a little slow on updating that pic on the index page. Shouldn't be too hard, tho, there's three people you can stick between Robinson and Buck now.

Um...are those (non-functioning) video links I see over in the action reports? Will citizens soon be able to view meetings without actually having to sit in the same room as Dean Leavitt? Ah, technology! And if you get bored watching council on the Internets, why porn is just a click away!

Exciting Upcoming Events!

Stuff to do this week:

• Weds, July 15th, at 4:30pm, City Council will announce the replacement for Shari Buck's seat in Ward 4. Gee, I hope Council doesn't violate the open meeting law like the RJ alleges Henderson did when it picked a replacement. None of those secret ballots, guys!
• One ward4wannabe is all a-gush over the possibility of being appointed. (Facebook) Moral: be careful what you post on Facebook, kids.
• There's always the regular meeting of the City Council at 6pm. You'll see: which council members get stuck on the notorious housing authority board which seemed to think mold is an insulating material, an increase in ambulance rates, the school board trying to worm out of upgrades for a new school, and the usual madcap fun.
• Also, Weds, July 15th: the final of three campaign finance reports is due, pointlessly and incredibly, a month and a half after the election. Say, to break up the office blues, why not start a betting pool as to how much new cash the mayor will be getting from casinos? Or what the latest name of the front-LLC for Gary Goett, an Ensign-enabler who still owes us money, will be? (LVG)
• Say, anybody ever find out what that $220,000 was for that Goett owes us? Aren't city services pay-as-you-go? My water bill certainly is. Try getting out of that!
• North Valley Dems are meeting Thurs, July 16th at 6pm 7pm over at the Aliante Library. Agenda: finding a mayoral candidate without a secret FBI file. Good luck, guys!

Busy Day in Nor'Town

• City Manager has a new toy. He's got the Nor'Town housing authority all to himself. (KXNT) Don't miss the city's official announcement. The bit about former housing authority boss Don England announcing his retirement is just too funny. (NLV)
• New faces at the Nor'Town Bidness Club. (IBLV) I hope we've seen the last of the extremist anti-environment leadership of the past. Course, I'm guessing some developers couldn't afford dues this year.
• Nor'Town makes the top ten list of most boring U.S. cities. (Forbes) They obviously have never seen the tire Christmas tree over at Purcell's.
• Another reason to preserve Kiel ranch: it was the scene of the first Nor'Town murder. (NLV) Maybe. There will be a workshop on the ranch at the same time (?!?) as the Planning Commission meeting: Jan. 14, 6pm, at the North Las Vegas Library.
• You know, the UNLV anthropology department has the bodies of the mysteriously killed Kiel folk. If Nor'Townies were a Native American tribe, we'd consider that sacrilegious and demand the bodies back. So we could bury 'em proper under the Purcell tire Christmas tree.
• Now your neighborhood drug lord's kidnapping folk for no apparent reason whatsoever. (MSNBC)
• Don't know why they picked up this guy. Looks like he was driving like most other Nor'Townies.
• Airplane guys will be having a meeting Jan. 14th on how to be better neighbors to folks near the Nor'Town aerodrome. I'm guessing not crashing into houses so much might be at the top of the list.
• You know, Henderson is just plain stuck up.
• The Stephanie Smith for Mayor campaign published a webpage that is only in the Lorem ipsum stage. "Lorem ipsum" is fake Latin filched from Cicero used to create fake text while a page is being designed. It's kind of odd to go live while still in that stage, tho. I'll be publishing candidate webpages and info as I find out about them over on the Nor'Town 2009 Election site.

Nor'Town Campaign Laws May Change in Legislature

Yeh, yeh. There's too much fun going on over in the Clark County Commission where they learned, much to their surprise, that there are still Nor'Townies living in the Buena Vista Apartments that the Nor'Town City Council convinced them to bulldoze. (Sun,Sun)

Ha, ha, Rory! Never trust a Nor'Towner!

Anyways, you all might want to have a gander at the proposal to change election laws in North Las Vegas which will be making it's way through the state legislature next spring. (AB39) Basically it will require a mandatory primary election for every candidate. In the past, candidates with only one or less opponents skipped the primary and went straight to the general. AB39 will allow the winner of a "total majority of the votes cast" during the primary be declared winner of the office.

That seems a bit hinky to me, especially when a very bare minority of the voters ever make it to the primary. It seems a way to make the anointing of the lobbyists' favored few even easier than the present system makes it.

Seems to me that if you have more than 2 candidates in the primary, no matter how well the winner does, she or he should still have to face the second ranked winner in the general, when the greatest number of sleepy Nor'Townies are paying attention.

Plus, the new version is a confusing mess. Tell your Assemblyfolk and Senators to kill that sick puppy, or at least have somebody who can write an complete English sentence take a shot at it first, so everybody can have a chance at figuring out what the heck it really says. Before putting it out of its misery, of course.

And somebody please tell me why the bill has "on behalf of the City of Las Vegas" at the top. Is Sou'Town allowed to make laws for us? Is Oscar Goodman secretely trying to make us look like idiots?

Or is it simply too much to ask bill drafters to actually proofread their stuff before submitting it?

Nor'Town Sludge Cakes: High Stress Edition

• Recently resigned head of Nor'Town's Tenement Authority is stressed out after being run over by a Governor-wannabe and two or three mayor-wannabes. (RJ) Still, the Housing Authority's line about being deceived by Mr. England, or trying to pin all the grotesqueries of the Casa Rosa apartments on him doesn't quite gel with the fact that the authority was told by HUD a long time ago that they suck and that they were trying to hand off their tenements to Las Vegas as fast as they could.
• Local charity being abused by stringent City authorities. Or, you might read this as: local charity doesn't work up to code. You pick. (KLAS) In any case, we have another story making that rounds that makes everybody on Nor'Town's city council look bad, including the mayor who would be governor.
• Area gambling establishment partially owned by area newspaper magnates cuts benefits to workers at that shiny new casino on the hill. (RJ,Sun)
• Nor'Town County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly has lots of cash left over from the old campaign fund to throw around. (Sun) But, we are assured: he's not buying votes. That'd be wrong. It's more like bread and circuses.