On January 21, 2009, North Las Vegas Mayor Shari Buck hosted her first State of the City address at Texas Station to a full house and did well with her first major public event.

An opening video montage had her grasping something in her hand as she opened it—I didn’t have my glasses on yet and I thought it was a Raisinette or a rabbit turd, but it turned out to be a seed—which she then proceeded to over turn some dirt with a garden shovel and plant it only to see it grow like an animated Jack’s Beanstalk!

Betcha didn’t know that those come from these, did you?

Most amusing to everyone there was her doing this civic gardening in a very tasteful Chanel suit!  I had no problem though as I do my yard work in Armani as I believe everyone should be required to do!

Hokey?  Yes, but her point was made.  She also did a $5 per ticket to Three Square proceeds donation that was a first for this type of event that I’ve seen here and a much needed ‘sharing’ type of fundraising effort.

Most impressive to me? She made it a point to greet every table in the room personally; that’s very smart and what any host should do at such an event.

It was also my first time meeting her; for some reason our paths hadn’t crossed even though Councilman Richard Cherchio is a dear family friend who I had helped in his ward race against her a few years ago.  I’ve stood back on commenting on most NLV matters until both got their feet wet in their new positions but the time to get back into the NLV groove has come and we’ll get into answering the big backlog of reader requests very soon!

After the presentation, I am confident that she has indeed gotten the memo that she is in fact, the mayor of North Las Vegas as she’s getting much more comfortable with the public aspects of her job, even teasing former rival and guest Commissioner Tom Collins; what I’m not sure about is whether she has read page two of that memo which points out that she is now de facto leader of the GOP in southern Nevada!

I don’t included DA David Roger because he has the personality and political persona of a can of tuna fish; a generic one at that!

She’s the star of the SoNev GOP and she will be courted like a queen to step up and expand her political universe this spring and were she to ask me, I would tell her that the moment that filing closes that she should fully endorse Brian Sandoval, not her predecessor Mike Montandon, who as of today, is still stubbornly sticking to the guv’s race rather than taking another office he is sure to win in a strong GOP year.

I’m not sure Keith Buck would let his old lady the Mayor get too close to such a good looking guy like Sandoval, but these two not only look like the top of a wedding cake, they both have enormous political value to each other.

Maybe she could take him as her plural political husband?

Endorsing Sandoval does two things for her; it knocks Montandon down considerably for a potential congressional race from him for the new seat we’ll get next year which she may (should) also have her eye on, and it strengthens her outreach to NLV’s rapidly growing Hispanic community. A Republican Mormon woman endorsing an Hispanic Republican Catholic who will absolutely win his party’s nomination has strong political symbolism and cache too with chits to be called in for NLV in the future and for her own political future too. In fact, I would work ensure that she endorses him as soon as possible for those reasons; and to do so very publicly with a big announcement together!

Grandma Rory Reid in his old granny glasses which the campaign was supposed to have thrown under a CAT bus last year!

Sandoval and Buck need each other for a variety of reasons though the irony is that Mayor Buck knows Rory Reid much better and has worked closely with him.  Every Republican at all levels wishing election here in 2010 would be very wise to seek Mayor Buck’s counsel, if not her endorsement, as she is now the best known elected Republican in SoNev to ‘regular voters’.

I would think that the GOP US Senate candidates would be camping outside her office door too as her public support would be considered invaluable to any of them!

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I’m pleased that Buck and her council have undertaken efforts to work together and with civility if not comity. Since organized crime created NLV in the 1930’s as their base for a multitude of their different enterprises, dysfunction and corruption has ruled the city and in recent years there was a kind of chasm that had the Mayor and the City Manager as one bloc and the council as the other most times.  This resulted in the modern day NLV hodge-podge of development and a continuation of always using the term ‘stigma’ with regard to why NLV is so far behind its sister city of Henderson.

‘Stigma’ is racial code-word for too black, too Hispanic, too poor…say it enough times, and it becomes self-fulfilling and developers used it as a threat to take their business elsewhere if their demands weren’t met by the city.

Nothing could be further from the truth either—the is no stigma regarding North Las Vegas—and the current recession is actually a blessing for city leaders to regroup, reassess, and redouble efforts for a better city.

When you can ride down the 215 and see from hundreds of feet away the shoddy residential construction and piling one home on top of another, you know something went terribly wrong in the boon years and that these fly-by-night developers did nothing to strengthen the central city and the older parts of town and took the money and got out of Dodge as soon as they could.

That’s got to end and standards have to be substantially strengthened and Mayor Buck needs to lead on that.

For instance, a temporary moratorium on residential and commercial building permits may help to clear some of the ever growing inventory of foreclosures and commercial defaults.  A complete rethinking of the failed Park Highlands project should redirect it to what’s noticeably missing in NLV’s residential portfolio; higher-end homes on larger tracts of land.  Perhaps splitting it up into half acre, full acre, and 5 acre homestead sites will answer a market that is still there even in this economy; yes, there is a big market for bigger parcels of single family residential land in SoNev.

Historically, NLV doesn’t work the Nevada legislature much at all and had one lonely lobbyist that most city employees didn’t even know was on the payroll.  Henderson sends up a big delegation to work their concerns every session.

North Las Vegas doesn’t even have an annual conference with its Assembly and State Senate representatives and none of those representative have ever delivered much of anything for the city either.

Senator Frick and Assemblyman Frack have delivered precious little to North Las Vegas and neither have the others from the NLV delegation up there.  Time to end that NOW and hold these flunkies accountable for their years long inaction and indifference regarding North Las Vegas!

That’s disgraceful considering Majority Leader Horsford and expected-Speaker Oceguera purport to represent the city in the Nevada legislature; you’d never know it looking at their actual abysmal records or those of the others.

NLV still has the very worst tax rates in the entire state and no one has ever bothered to do a damn thing about it!  Now they’ll have the number one leaders in both bodies and this issue must be addressed in the next session if NLV is to recover and grow into the future.

I’ve yet to hear from anyone on the 2010 ballot claiming to wish to represent NLV, what they plan to do about that particular outrage!

I would hope that the mayor and her council act to rectify that and that all five will go up to Carson City together in 2011 to work the legislature on behalf of the city.

You’ve all got to go up to Carson City next year; forget consultants and lobbyists; those 63 up there need to be personally reminded by you all that there is a major city in Nevada called North Las Vegas, and you five need to be the messengers!

NLV is still struggling to close an over 30 million dollar revenue shortfall, and that’s actually pretty modest for a city their size ; NLV’s fiscal position is better than most any other city its size in the US, but more cuts are necessary to continue that position.  It would appear that a 10% across-the-board permanent cut in salaries will save jobs and come close to closing the gap.

That means everyone from the mayor to the cleaning lady; no exemptions or exceptions for the judges, the police, the firefighters, the city marshals…everyone has to feel the pain equally or the city’s going to have to lay off a large chunk of employees.   Delaying opening/staffing some of the new fire stations, getting a few more miles out of the city’s fleet; all of that kind of stuff has to be on the table too.

That’s the choice today and Mayor Shari Buck seems well equipment to sit down with her council and work toward solutions that will work for the city’s long-term fiscal health. Once they’re past the current budget gap, then on to tomorrow and a new and very different approach to what should be the crown jewel city of the county.

And if they work together as they have been lately, they’re well on their way to a better North Las Vegas for everyone!

And Mayor Buck, it’s OK to enjoy the political aspects of your job and to also enjoy all of the attention you’ll be getting from all of your fellow Republicans this year.

Just make sure both you and the city of North Las Vegas are getting something of value in return!

Mike Zahara
01272010
www.WatchdogWag.com