It isn't one of Byron Goynes' best moments. September 2001: A demure black couple is before the Las Vegas Planning Commission seeking approval for a church in a gang-plagued West Las Vegas neighborhood. They might as well have been asking to open a crack house. Goynes goes off, sermonizing from his municipal mount about the number of churches already there (95 in a five-mile radius), producing little discernible impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.
"What good do all those churches do?" he rebukes. "Who are they ministering to? People are still dying and selling drugs. Why not just build one church that everyone can go to? Who needs different churches for different religions?"
Possibly valid questions, the first two—long heavily churched, West Las Vegas has mostly been a spectator to the boom other parts of the Valley have experienced. But it was second pair of queries (Why not just build one church that everyone can go to? Who needs different churches for different religions?), how he asked them (disdainfully) and his animated protestations against the project (incredulous look, mouth agape) that had critics wanting to kill the messenger.
Thus began Goynes' tenure as the Planning Commissioner Most Likely to Get Himself Embroiled in Controversy. Over the next four years, Goynes would build that reputation, being caricatured as a shill for the moneyed and powerful, relentlessly promoting projects residents opposed. Goynes says he can explain every stance, every vote. And he's sure that once you've heard him, that you'll see what he sees: That he's the obvious choice as the next city councilman for Ward 6.
"I don't have to abstain," Goynes says with something resembling glee.
Sitting inside his northwest home, Goynes, dressed in a black jumpsuit over a red shirt, cuts a more temperate figure than the church protagonist. His 2-year-old son stares at the stranger quizzing his father, while his 11-year-old daughter dutifully does homework at the dinner table and his wife makes preparations for dinner. On television—the twice-monthly planning commission meetings are televised on Channel 4—the 42-year-old Los Angeles native can appear a tad goofy. Oval face. Gumby grin. Hairline starting in the middle of his scalp. In the publicity shot for the 1998 county clerk race, he resembles an aging Urkel, Coke-bottle glasses engulfing his face. But in person, he looks normal—tall and lanky. Dressed in a suit, he's even stately.
Goynes got into politics via his father, Theron, who was appointed to the North Las Vegas City Council in 1972 and served until 1997, when he lost a mayoral bid to current officeholder Michael Montandon. The younger Goynes remembers campaigning door-to-door for his father—"I walked every neighborhood in North Las Vegas at least three times"—and the gratitude from constituents who got the park they wanted or the school their children needed. After graduating from Bishop Gorman in 1978 (he says he was one of five black kids in the school) and from historically black Prairie View A&M college outside Houston, he returned to Vegas and began a job-hopping career path that included stints at the Nevada Test Site, the county's sanitation district and business-license office, the gaming industry (Hilton Hotels, Mikohn Gaming) and his current resting place, as customer-service manager for ATC Vancom, operator of the CAT bus system.
When family friend Frank Hawkins became a Las Vegas city councilman, he appointed Goynes to the Board of Zoning Adjustment in 1992, the precursor to the planning commission. "I was so proud, a Super Bowl champion asked me to do something," he says, smiling widely. In 2000, Councilman Larry Weekly appointed him to the renamed commission. Over the past 13 years, Goynes says he's attended 400 planning commission meetings, logged 5,000 hours of government meetings and 100,000 miles driven and met between 200,000 and 300,000 people, all of which, he says, makes him the best candidate for City Council.
"I know the issues."
Some folks say he's got issues.
Following the church tirade, Goynes was skewered by Downtown home owners living near the Stratosphere for unapologetically stumping for a third, scream-inducing thrill ride at the Stratosphere. In arguing that the Stratosphere needed the $10 thrill ride to compete with gaudier Strip properties, Goynes sounded like he was on owner Carl Icahn's payroll. He says he was trying to strengthen that area's largest employer. (A September 2001 Las Vegas Sun photo shows a cheesing Goynes eyeing a replica of the ride with designers). Residents saw the $10 thrill ride as less of a tool to spur Downtown redevelopment—as Stratosphere backers claimed—and more as a cash grab.
During a September 2001 planning commission meeting, the church and roller coaster requests appeared on the same agenda. Goynes succeeded in pissing off the pious (the couple seeking the church) and deriding Downtowners (roller coaster opponents). "What happened was totally unheard of before," Weekly said after the meeting. "I don't know what page he (Goynes) was on."
In 2003, Goynes was among three commissioners who voted for a 55,000-square-foot West Sahara Avenue office complex from a company managed by Gov. Kenny Guinn's son, Jeff. Four commissioners abstained because of ties with Guinn the Younger; critics said the other commissioners should've voted nay because the project didn't have the votes to pass—it died for lack of a supermajority. Goynes' recent return to the hot seat involved his aggressive support of a controversial high-rise condominium project on Alta Drive and Martin Luther King. Weekly, the man who appointed him to the planning commission in 2000, led the drive to kill it.
Goynes easily deflects the criticism, which is why his detractors say he doesn't get it.
For instance, he could've better explained his opposition to the new church. Four years later, he's unrepentant.
"You say one thing negative about churches and everyone jumps on you ... you want to know how come there is no development on the west side?" he asks. "Developers look at rooftops and per-capita income. All the land is zoned for civic uses—churches. That means there's no way to bring in more rooftops. And if you can't bring in rooftops, you won't bring in business. Look, I've talked to the regional directors of stores and they don't want to invest in areas where they can't get a return on their investment. The Vons that closed last year? It had more cash flow in government assistance than in cash. Vons has bills to pay, too. Light bill, electricity. And it can't pay those with food stamps."
If only he'd tactfully said as much then.
Goynes' line on the Stratosphere debacle: He was looking out for the city. Without unique attractions—say, a thrill ride swooping over Las Vegas Boulevard—Downtown will fall behind. "Nobody comes there anyway," Goynes says. He amends the statements after it's noted that Barrick Gaming has bought five casinos, the first phase of World Market Center is nearly complete and Las Vegas Premium Outlets is doing gangbusters business. As far as claims he was too buddy-buddy with Stratosphere lawyer John Moran III? Nonsense. They're friends.
"I wasn't paid by the Stratosphere," he says. "I've always had another job so I didn't have to line my pockets."
Goynes is at his most animated talking about the furor over Ambling Development Co.'s towers, retrieving a stack of papers the size of two phone books—Ambling's file for the June 27 planning commission meeting. "This was an approvable project," he says.
Residents disagreed. So did Goynes' colleagues. Initially. At the October 21 meeting, they expressed concern about the traffic and safety impacts of building 300-foot towers 20 feet from single-family homes and an overcrowded school when zoning rules stipulated a 1,200-foot setback. By the November 4 meeting, during which Goynes led questioning of a traffic engineer working for Ambling, who was dismissive about the impacts, commissioners reversed course and backed the condos. Goynes says his colleagues changed their minds because they're concerns were allayed, not because he lobbied them. Weeks later, the City Council killed it. "Beautiful project, wrong location," Weekly told Ambling officials.
Goynes ignored citizen concerns, residents claim, and showed up at a meeting between them and Ambling to stump for the condos. Goynes says he tries hard to make him available to everyone and blames residents living outside the city's 750-foot notification area for pressuring the council to deny Ambling. "What they [residents] don't know is that Martin Luther King Boulevard is going to be a major thoroughfare with an overpass," he says, standing up, arcing his arms in the form of an overpass. "It's no longer going to be a residential corridor. They're trying to revive Downtown and you can't do it with all those apartments there."
The Ambling discussion ends on a curious note: "Ambling closed escrow on the property, they paid $2 million. I don't have any inside info, but I bet they will come back with another project, scale it down and meet with residents for approval."
Two days later, Ambling unveils plans for a truncated project that residents appear to support.
Goynes is absolutely right. He knows the issues. Perhaps better than some folks on the City Council, which relies on the planning commission to vet projects coming before the council.
What the televised commission meetings don't really show is how intelligent Goynes is. Whip-smart, especially as it relates to planning issues, able to recite section and verse, this requirement or that, zoning regulations falling from his mouth like song lyrics. In that respect, he may be right: He may technically be the most qualified of the 11 candidates for the Ward 6 seat. Since 2000, he's been a member of the American Planning Association. Since 2004, chairman of the Downtown Overlay District Board and a member of the Centennial Hills Architectural Review Board. By no means a dummy. Certainly, he's got the intellectual chops for the council job.
But it's still hard to shake the idea that, if the Stratosphere got its ride and Ambling got its 300-foot condo towers, that Goynes would've been at the groundbreakings, smiling like a kid on Christmas.
His focus now, he says, is marshalling grass-roots support from his neighbors, the parents whose children he's coached in soccer, anyone he's helped, "like the people over on Rancho and Craig who I worked with to kill that Budget Suites project."
For anyone reading, he wants to reiterate that he's been a public servant for 21 years, that he's more than the sum of negative headlines ("when there's controversy, I get calls, but when I'm doing what's right, no one writes about that"), and isn't backed by big money—his campaign will consist of mailers and signs. He urges voters to be wary of candidates with big war chests. "Every politician whose been backed by big money gets into ethics problems—Michael McDonald, Janet Moncrief, the list goes on," he says. "I'm not for sale. I've always had a job. I'm not beholden to anybody. I'm not trying to be a career politician."
Win or lose, Goynes isn't going anywhere. The day before he filed, the council changed an ordinance requiring planning commissioners running for office to resign. His term is up in 2007.