Vegas Law Talk

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:24
Good morning, this is Vegas law talk. I'm Leslie Mark Stovall. I've got with me, Commissioner Michael nafed. Good morning, Commissioner. Good morning. It's good to be with you. It's very good to be with you. You know, when we talked the other day, you reminded me that I had met you many years ago. And it's nice to see you again. It's nice to see you. Nice to see a lot of faces these days, but particularly yours. You know,

Unknown Speaker 0:47
you know, it's true. It's true. We're beginning to be able to see people that we know and visit again. And that's a wonderful thing. That's right. Well, and that's good news for the county also. Absolutely. You know, I don't know that. A lot of people really recognize the different districts what the boundaries of those districts are. And I kind of like to start with asking you to tell our listeners, what District you represent, and generally what your boundaries are. I appreciate that the Clark County is represented by seven county commissioners, I'm one seven. I represent District A it's the commission district that now Governor, former county commissioner sis lac represented for 10 years, the district that Bruce Woodbury before him represented for many years. And it's currently now that we've gone through the latest round of redistricting, it remained largely the same. It's the southwest. So my northern borders Flamingo Road, my I go west, as far as Durango, I go east as far as Eastern, and I go all the way south to the borders with California and Arizona. So when you're thinking about it, you think about the differences between both people and businesses at the 215 and Flamingo in the district where you think of people in Searchlight, Nevada and try to respond to what their very diverse needs are throughout the community are good springs. Yeah, so good. So good Springs is on the other side of the 15th. That's represented by Commissioner Jones. But I represent the townships of portions of enterprise Spring Valley, piece of paradise. And then and then down south to to Laughlin through Calabar and,

Unknown Speaker 2:23
of course search like the that is quite diverse because you have a really

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populated areas in the southern part of the valley. And then Gosh, once you get over the hill over here going south, not much out there. That's right. And you have you know, an area like Loughlin, which is sometimes gets referred to as rural. It's not. It's an outlying area and has a tourism based economy, but a lot of seniors there and now a thriving housing market in Laughlin, down south, like everywhere else. And then you have search light, which is truly a rural community. And then yeah, you think about where all the growth has been and will likely continue to be in Nevada. It's in areas like Spring Valley and enterprise. Well, that's a particular interest of yours. Is it not development within not only Clark County, but particularly in your district? Well, because my district is primarily unincorporated. And for those who don't know it's something that makes Clark County particularly unique is that a large portion of the population in Nevada the majority of people in Nevada actually live in unincorporated Clark County. So while your postal address might say Las Vegas, chances are you don't live within the city of Las Vegas boundaries. You live in unincorporated Las Vegas, like the entire Las Vegas Strip is in unincorporated county, not in the city. A lot of people don't know what a township is. That's right. We were very fortunate here because we do have that extra check in the county of the township. So we, my colleagues and I who represent townships get to appoint town board members, by the way, we're always looking for people who want to serve their community. So to give a call, that's right. Give me a call if you're interested in serving on your town board to it's a great opportunity to impact change in your community, particularly on land use and zoning matters. That's right. It really is. And I don't think a lot of people really understand how the

Unknown Speaker 4:19
state or the county or cities and townships what those boundaries are and what they really represent. That's right. And it's an it's an important part of sort of the distinctions from district to district. Some of my colleagues work colleagues represent districts that are almost entirely in city boundaries. And then some of us, Commissioner Jones and District F and myself represent almost entirety of our district is unincorporated. What do you see some of the development issues in your particular district? Well, we have a lot happening, you know, you look at the entire south end of Las Vegas Boulevard. So my district starts essentially just south of city center. So you've got Manda.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Lay Bay, I have the stadium. But then I go all the way south. And that's where I think you'll see a huge evolution in the next couple of years. You have the 160 acres, the bright line closed on that's the high speed train to California. Something I've been very active in and a strong advocate for

Unknown Speaker 5:20
bullish on that. I think it's coming, it's going to happen. They closed on the land, the station is going to happen there. And I'm really excited about sort of the development opportunities around that train station. Where is that? 160 acres specifically, it's on Las Vegas Boulevard, Accra. For those who are familiar with the South outlet mall. It's right across the street Blue Diamond road. Yep. So yeah, exactly. Robindale is kind of the center line windmill to warm springs on Las Vegas. Well, that seems like a terrific place for terminal or they are a station a station. Yep, that'll be the Nevada station on our side. I think it's a great site because it it doesn't go so far into town that it could conflict or cause additional issues with both clearance going over the highway on ramps, but also the location there near to the car rental facility where we already have transportation to read International Airport. And of course, the proximity to the strip to the stadium. And to so much more, I think is a really good sight. And where's the southern terminal or the California terminal for this high speed? Well, so that's what I'm excited about for many years we talked about you know what's so exciting about a train to Victorville

Unknown Speaker 6:32
doesn't quite get the job done. Don't get over that hill. That's right. But what I think is really great about brightline is that they they This isn't some pie in the sky thing. This is happening in Florida. They've been pretty successful. They're making high speed rail work to connect corridors in Florida. And that's what they're looking to bring here. So they've already have all the right of way worked out the line through Rancho Cucamonga and eventually to

Unknown Speaker 6:57
downtown Los Angeles. You'll be able to with one connection be able to get there. We'll even get into Rancho Cucamonga solves a lot of problems because does from Victorville to the other side of the hill is is a challenge certain times of the year. And with the traffic, you hit it on the head. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's wonderful.

Unknown Speaker 7:17
What's the speeds of those trains that they're planning on putting out there? Well, it's about a two and a half hour journey. So it's true high speed rail. This isn't your traditional up line that we had up until 1997. So this is this is something that we can be excited about something that we can be proud of fully electrified. So it's, it's helping the environment and helping the economy. A lot of people don't remember Arden, which used to be a train yard, you can still see the water tower out there. If you drive up blue diamond road,

Unknown Speaker 7:49
just for those railroad tracks. You look to the south and there's an old

Unknown Speaker 7:53
railroad yard which was a separate town out there at one time. Yep, there and there is a long, nice long history with rail in Nevada Northwest so well, Union Pacific. I mean, union Plaza was the old

Unknown Speaker 8:05
railroads railroad station. Amtrak was there for many years. Exactly. Right. Yeah, we go to Salt Lake City.

Unknown Speaker 8:12
Well, that's terrific. You're also interested in aviation. You've worked on the Ivanpah project. I have as the Board of County Commissioners, we own and operate five airports read internationals, one of them and, and one day, I think that Southern airport, right now known as Ivanpah, it's not named yet but

Unknown Speaker 8:33
that'll be kind of a reliever airport. We know that read international will max out one day not too far away. You know, I was surprised when I was talking to you. You said the maximum number of passengers for

Unknown Speaker 8:46
Harry Reid is what 60 million input? People? Yeah, it is. It is a lot of people. But we continue to see the increase. And we spoke a little bit about the increased demand in general aviation that we've seen and the demands that that's put on the the whole the entire aviation community, but particularly read, so making sure that we're continuing to invest in Henderson executive continuing to invest in North Las Vegas so that we have those relievers in place because particularly as our sports economy continues to thrive, that's going to be a really important part about bringing dollars to our community. You know, I have an interest in aviation and one of the things like that the Northwest ace airport is having more hangers, built hangers, you know, enclosed hangers rather than on the ramp parking spots.

Unknown Speaker 9:37
Are there any plans for developing more hangar space out there? There are and I can tell you I've been intimately involved in Henderson executive because that's in my district, and we just went through our five year update plan. And that calls for an additional 1000 feet of runway space over there to accommodate some of the more modern GA aircraft that we're anticipating

Unknown Speaker 10:00
but it also does call out some additional hangar space because you're right that that is sorely needed. Well, and there's a lot of guys or a lot of folks I should say guys, ma'am and women all excuse me, women also for pilots, they have their own aircraft and they fly back and forth from here to California, Utah and Arizona that are all within range. Absolutely. And Nevada also also in aviation has a strong history with Senator cannon and, and others who've been really a big part of that legacy. Well, knowing that we had an airline started here, I think it was Western airlines began here in Las Vegas and Nellis Air Force Base, and I was stationed at Nellis. That's how I came to them. I was with the Air Force. So aviation is great. Well, that's interesting.

Unknown Speaker 10:45
You have worked, and you sit on the condition for the committee. I think that's the proper term for it for the police department. I do so we have we're a very unique area here how we handle in many ways, but how we handle law enforcement is unique here as well. We're probably the only jurisdiction in the United States that has shared municipal responsibility over one department that has an elected sheriff heading it. So what that means is the elected sheriff has the responsibility of running the operation. But there's a fiscal report and responsibility to the municipalities that fund it. Clark county funds about 64% of metros budget, City of Las Vegas funds the balance. So because of that there's been created, it's called the Fiscal Affairs Committee. I serve as vice chair of that committee, and we have the fiscal responsibility over the department. So it's to city councilman to county commissioners and a private citizen who head up that body. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Departments the result of a consolidation of the Las Vegas City Police Department and the County Sheriff's Department back in. Jeez, I want to say the 60s. Yeah, I would have said 70. But you're probably right. That's right. And it's worked out pretty well, ever since that consolidation. So and they cover I Metropolitan Police Department, if you go up to Mesquite, you've got the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, you go down the Laughlin, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Unknown Speaker 12:20
So that's a lot of turf to cover. But that's right.

Unknown Speaker 12:23
How does

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there are?

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nationally there's a discussion about becoming more involved in communities with law enforcement, community policing, for example. Does your fiscal committee get involved in those kinds of issues? Well, when it comes to funding, in fact, just the other day, our preliminary budget came out and Councilman courier who sits on that committee was asking the questions about their called the CLP team, that community policing divisions and ensuring that they're being funded adequately, because we certainly believe that that that has played a significant role in the success that we've seen here in Southern Nevada, with in terms of our community policing, I think those offices are really vital to make sure that we're proactively policing and you don't want people's only interaction with law enforcement to be negative, which often it is. Well,

Unknown Speaker 13:17
I suppose that's true. But the work that law enforcement does involves

Unknown Speaker 13:23
getting involved in disputes and interdicting disputes or making decisions in the field. And it's a difficult job.

Unknown Speaker 13:32
One of the things that I've always wondered about is the adequacy of mental health intervention in these in when you have these kinds of situations that law enforcement is called for, has there been a movement in the county to provide more mental health intervention, as opposed to strictly law enforcement? I'm glad you've asked about that. Because, and that is our you know, one thing I love about this job is that there are so many different areas that we're involved with. But there's a clear line, right. So in other words, Clark County, it's our one of the regional services that we are fundamentally responsible for social services, I would include mental health in that. And we are also responsible for funding law enforcement and UMC, which is an important element in this as well. And the detention center, which is the most expensive and probably worst option for mental health in any community. It's unfortunate, but it's from my as a lawyer, I look at what happens and sometimes I get, I have the impression that mental health has become, to some extent criminalized, there seems to be no other option. You're mentally ill persons ended up being incarcerated when maybe they should have been diverted. That's right. And not only is it the humane thing to do to divert in many cases, but it's also the fiscal the most fiscal most prudent

Unknown Speaker 15:00
option there as well. So we've actually are currently in the process of working with the Metropolitan Police Department on a program to embed social workers within

Unknown Speaker 15:10
within area commands and at the headquarters to really act as a in tandem with first responders. We're not we're not going to do some communities who are looking to replace first responders with social workers. I don't think we're there yet. I think you have to first work in tandem. And if

Unknown Speaker 15:32
hopefully, we'll have some success with that. Well, it sounds like you'd have social work or mental health

Unknown Speaker 15:40
workers who would be called out by your first responders, it'd be a dual response. And they would also have better information than

Unknown Speaker 15:49
many patrol officers have on what resources are available. So they'll be on the forefront of knowing how many beds we have at certain facilities, making sure that they know the right line to connect the right person with the right services, or you. You mentioned the the hospital the hospital has moved from being having the county commission bored to a different type of board, is that correct? So there's now a they put in a call it before I came to the county they put in a governing body and I'm basically between the county commission and and the administration. We we being the county commission is still the Board of Trustees over UMC. So we we own the hospital, we have oversight by virtue of you sitting on the county commission, you're a trustee to the hospital. That's correct. So I assume that again, we're talking money. Yeah, that's That's right. Exactly, exactly. Right. How's the hospital doing? By the way, you know, UMC? Well, for many reasons, the Affordable Care Act being one, the hospitals doing quite well, I think this governing body has been extremely helpful. In addition, I have never understood the opposition to the ACA when it would provide funding I you know, to rural, for example, well, University Medical Center is not a rural hospital, but two hospitals like UMC. But when you get up into the rules in Nevada, they've had a history of being unable to afford

Unknown Speaker 17:17
hospitals, community hospitals, and like Tonopah has theirs has gone into bankruptcy. And several times, I think, I don't know what the other outlying areas are doing. But it's tough. With the ACA, at least they have funding where doctors and urgent care centers can get funded. That's right, Nevada has been a huge beneficiary of the Affordable Care Act. It's a wonderful thing. I just don't think people realize how

Unknown Speaker 17:42
how sparse the population is and what the resources are, like out in those areas where lack of resources and to be able to

Unknown Speaker 17:49
have funding to care for folks is a wonderful thing. What are some of the most interesting things that you've been involved in as a as a commissioner so far? Well, every day is interesting. For that reason, we get a look at this in the last few minutes, we've talked about travel and tourism, aviation, traditional transportation, we've talked about the health care system, we've talked about development. It we've talked about law enforcement, community policing, just in a matter of minutes. And that's every day, you get to tackle all of these tremendous issues. But

Unknown Speaker 18:20
by comparison to any other body, I believe it's more hands on with more coverage. So I that's what I love about it. But what's been a significant priority of mine has been traffic safety. It's one of those things where,

Unknown Speaker 18:36
again, you connect the dots between the 38 departments that Clark County houses, and you start on the front end with our engineers, our Department of comprehensive planning and land use and zoning and the way that roads are designed and built through public works and how they're actually constructed. And then you take it one step further through the Clark County Fire Department, which we operate when there's an accident, and they're the first responders to the three ambulance companies that we have the franchise agreement with, to UMC trauma were pretty well, if you're in a bad car accident, that's where you're going to go in and should go want to go. And then you take it through, unfortunately, to the coroner's office, and then to the district attorney's office, and the prosecutors and, and the courts, and all of that all of those levers are in the control of Clark County, or some control of Clark County. So I believe it's an issue that we need to be focusing on. We need to be waking up every day to figure out how to connect these dots to solve the problem because we're now in our every year is worse. We're in, you know, the worst of the last three decades. The last three years have been and we've got to do something about it because it's a quality of life issue. Just yesterday, we had a 13 year old run over by a driver who's going 85 miles an hour in a 35 mile an hour area. Yeah, and you see these horrible

Unknown Speaker 20:00
accent so I mean 150 or 100 mile an hour accent, what what, what, I don't know what people are thinking when they are doing that kind of stuff. I don't know what they're thinking either. But I, I'm one of those that believes that there probably shouldn't be a residential road where you can go 150 miles an hour. So I think that's the first step but, but we've had some great success creating this Office of Traffic Safety. We're one of the first municipalities in the United States to have that office and then hit the ground running. And this office is looking at road design for safety purposes, it's looking at the full spectrum. So one, it's a regional approach. So we've already started a regular meeting with the six traffic captains from all of our jurisdictions that have a piece of traffic safety. So that's everything from Metro to Henderson to Boulder City to Highway Patrol, to school, police that do traffic enforcement. And then it's all the way following through, met with district attorney Wilson yesterday to talk about what what their role might be in this.

Unknown Speaker 21:04
Well, I would think

Unknown Speaker 21:06
road design is really important. And when you say it's getting worse, you're talking about traffic, where we went through this was a pandemic of its own. But in there, in the early days of the pandemic, when a lot of things were closed, you had drivers that had the ability to go at very high rates of speed. So while we saw the number of accidents go down, we actually saw the number of fatalities go up because of the great speed. But oddly enough, what didn't happen is when volume count started to go up on the road, people's behavior didn't adjust at the same rate. So you have people that are still driving as though there's nobody else on the road. And there's more people on the road now people more vulnerable road users, cyclists, pedestrians going to school and going to work. Yeah, yeah. Well, I

Unknown Speaker 21:56
think that's a wonderful idea and making roads safer. I suppose there's an educational component to that too, because you know, people, well, no education, you know, be safe.

Unknown Speaker 22:11
A couple minutes isn't going to make any difference get up earlier or something like that. Right. put cash in your car the night before you have to go to work. Well, hey, here's something interesting. You mentioned gas. We're there's some speculation that with the cost of gas going up, that might encourage people to drive a little bit more cautiously. They won't be stepping on the gas, gas as much. We'll see about that. Hopefully.

Unknown Speaker 22:34
Yeah, that's true. Well, you know, in the gas situation is another story, isn't it?

Unknown Speaker 22:41
So that's interesting. i You are also involved in the Las Vegas Convention authority. I am I have are the myself and Commissioner Gibson serve as the county's seats on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that was a commissioner Gibson doing I've known him for a number of years. He's doing great. I really enjoyed working with him. He was we elected him our chair. Okay. He's a fine lawyer, you see is so what do you what kind of interesting things is the convention authority doing at this point? Well, a lot. And we they've really transitioned and embrace this whole notion that we are the greatest Arena on Earth, we're activating Las Vegas Boulevard more so than ever before, which I think is to the benefit of, obviously, the resort corridor, but also the people who work in those resorts. And you're seeing the the, you know, I'm not sure anybody, even those who were really involved in making the stadium happen, fully anticipated just how successful that would be. And what a tool that would be to draw people here, you're seeing the addition of the fourth day, add on from the traditional weekend, you're seeing, you know, we've hit surpassed 400,000 people in that building that was at one point of projection for a full year, that was in a couple months. And you're really seeing our reputation developers the greatest Arena on Earth. And when you say the greatest arena you are, you're not just talking about the Allegiant state. Oh, I'm talking about Clark County and the Las Vegas Strip and everything we do here and that's kind of the hashtag that they'll be CBA has worked on and I think it's been very successful. You look at the events, we you know, next month, we're gonna have the NFL Draft. We've got the Super Bowl in 2024. That's amazing. And as you know, it was only a few years ago that using the word Super Bowl was banned in Las Vegas. Yeah, verboten because you couldn't have that no gambling stay away from Las Vegas. Exactly. In my meetings with the NFL, something I'm really excited about are the the focus that they put on Small Business and Entrepreneurship coming out of that and I want to really expand on that they do a good job with it everywhere they go. But I think we should put a tremendous focus to make sure that not only are the institutions or the national players benefiting from hosting a Super Bowl in Las Vegas

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Not only will the brand of Las Vegas and the destination benefit, but so so to should the small entrepreneurs and businesses and women owned and minority owned businesses, they should have a big seat at the table. And I think they will. Well, you know, these big events and people come in Las Vegas, the tourism industry is really supported by Well, you have the large casinos, but you have these many, many, many small businesses that really provide the services that tourists are looking for the ancillary businesses that benefit from from, you know, events, like with all the Pro Bowl Pro Bowl is a perfect example, is tremendous. Well, not only that you have a lot of collegiate tournaments here that are conducted in Las Vegas for basketball, for example. Exactly right. And that's a wonderful program. Starts Here at Palmer smack and works its way out your UNLV alumni or you know, I am I was a political science student here we both we both work. Is that how you met Dina Titus. It is I met her I met her and my now wife on the first day of school. So that was a big day for me. Well, that worked out pretty good. I went on to work for her for 13 years. And I had married to my wife now for three years. I remember Dina Titus, when she was teaching public administration.

Unknown Speaker 26:21
And I don't know if you know where the professors are as Jerry Semaj. Yes. Those guys still see Dr. Simmons from time to time. Well, you have to say hi to him. He's a great guy. I loved his glasses. Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 26:34
what about one of the things I've been curious about on the

Unknown Speaker 26:39
on the Las Vegas Strip, and it was sort of discussed. I want to say, five, six years ago, they're talking about all the condominiums and they were going to have this large residential area. And the concern was traffic, how do people get around on the strip? And it seemed to be that public transportation was the way to go, that you had to have a really good people mover system. And it seems to me for tourism, and also for the quality of life in the community. That that's really important. What is the county talking about? Are the commission considering in that respect? Well, we, we we recently approved I believe it was 56 stops for the potential boring stage, boring project. They're the ones who are now operating at the Las Vegas Convention authority. The LVC VA was the first to have three stations built is that the Tesla thing? Yep, those are the underground Tesla's so what they've done is it's it's

Unknown Speaker 27:34
this, they'll be the first to admit this, the the technology, technology is not revolutionary. But what they've done is figured out how to bore a hole cheaper and faster than anybody else. And that is pretty remarkable, because the cost of tunneling can be tremendous. So they, they have that system in place. Now at the convention center, it's met the ridership numbers. It's performed very well, from what I understand and all the customer feedback surveys that we do with the LVC VA, in the convention center. It's like the only thing that's gotten five out of five consistently so it's performing well. Have you been on I have been on in a couple times. It's an efficient system of transportation, I think we'll see as that expands out, you know, the hope will be that they continue to improve, they're efficient. So it's not like Star Trek, you don't stand in a transmitter room and

Unknown Speaker 28:24
know it right now. You just get in a car and you drive. It's it's pretty, you know, unremarkable yet remarkable in many ways. I've gotta go and check it out. It's open to the public, you should and pretty soon there'll be the first point to point system to Resorts World and then moving on from there to West Gate. But the system that we approved, the 56 or so stops includes a Step Out at the airport, which many people have wanted out of the monorail forever, and then also Allegiant stadiums on the list. And

Unknown Speaker 28:56
so the city of Las Vegas will, will have to approve their own franchise agreement that's in draft form right now. And I think it's going to be approved or will at least come before the council very soon here. There's always seem to be at Las Vegas has got the city of Las Vegas and Fremont Street in particular, has kind of gotten left out on movement of tourists coming in from the airport or coming into southern part of the strip. I think this connection would would help them certainly it'll take it beyond Sahara. Downtown also to the arts district and I believe they're talking about my friend Councilman Knutson is working on getting a getting a stop as well at the Medical District. I was your friend. Councilman Knutson represents my ward. And he's done a fabulous job. I'm very happy to see that he's in that position may tell you i He's been a really good partner at the city. We were. We just worked together at an event a couple days ago. So we're, we're we're we're a good partnership. We're you know, I've really enjoyed talking

Unknown Speaker 30:00
To You know, it almost seems like my, the time that I have to spend with you isn't enough you have some many interesting things to discuss. I hope that means you'll invite me back sometimes I would love to I would love to meet you. Thank you so much for sitting with us and gosh, what a what a pleasure. It's been a real pleasure and thank you for all you do for our community.

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