I shouldn't be here. I'm in the governor's office conference room around a beautifully polished table with eight other people, on a speakerphone with a similar group in Carson City. Apparently, we're going to make plans for choosing the design of the Nevada quarter.
The state treasurer is eyeing me suspiciously. I want to tell him the truth—that I hadn't planned to sneak into any closed meetings, that I certainly didn't mean to impersonate anyone who was actually invited—that my arrival here on the fifth floor behind two closed doors was an accident that anyone could make.
FOOTNOTES The Other Story |
1. There were 126 traffic fatalities in the Las Vegas metropolitan area in 2003. More than 40 have occurred already this year. 2. Kincaid-Chauncey was indicted by the feds for allegedly taking bribes from Jaguars owners to benefit the club and damage competitors. Reid's law firm does work for the limited liability company affiliated with Jaguars. 3. The Lied Children's Museum recently opened a castle-themed exhibit. The museum, funded by donations since opening in 1990, has hosted more than a million children and adults, according to its website. Over 400,000 children have participated in school field trip programs in connection with their curriculum. In the bigger picture, though, Las Vegas has consistently ranked among the worst metropolitan areas for children to live, according to the most recent Kids Count survey by UNLV. More than 48,000 children in Nevada live below the poverty level. Clark County saw an 8.5 percent increase in child abuse and neglect reports from 2000 to 2001 and in June 2004, a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Nevada's child welfare programs are insufficient in providing foster children adequate access to education and health care. Nevada has the sixth-highest rate of uninsured children among states in the nation, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. 4. In April, UNLV and Clark County counted 7,887 homeless people in the county, an 18 percent increase since 1999. 5. The number of books checked out from the Las Vegas Clark County Library District has grown 85 percent in the last four years. Funding for the library has remained stagnant. The illiteracy rate in Las Vegas is 18 percent, according to Literacy Volunteers of America. 6. More than 90,000 people moved to Clark County in 2003. Nevada has been the fastest-growing state in the nation for 17 consecutive years, according to the U.S. Census. More than 4,500 new home permits were received by Las Vegas home builders in May. The median price of a new home is roughly $240,000. 7. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has 1.7 officers per 1,000 citizens. The national average is 2.5 per 1,000. The local crime rate has increased 12 percent in each of the last two years. 8. The chukar pheasant is not indigenous to Nevada. In 1934, a hunter paid $600 for 100 chukars in Calcutta and had them shipped here to shoot. Nevada hunting fees went up this year for the first time in eight years after it was determined that license revenues were not keeping up with the cost of maintaining wildlife. 9. Under city zoning ordinances, an area may be designated "historic" if it includes a substantial concentration of buildings that are 50 years old or older and reflective of the city's cultural, political and economic past. Once designated, property owners need to receive approval to remodel or make major landscape changes. Property values within a historic district generally increase. 10. Forty percent of bus riders are under 25, while another 40 percent are senior citizens according to the American Bus Association. More than 150,000 Las Vegans a day ride some of 300 CAT buses in Clark County on some of more than 50 routes. Twenty-five new double-decker buses are slated for use only on the Strip. 11. Nevada's 2004 general fund budget is $2.3 billion, according to the state budget office, and it is one of seven states that does not have an income tax. 12. Nevada is slated to receive shipments of the nation's nuclear waste to store in a repository northwest of Las Vegas in 2010. 13. Las Vegas has only one trauma center that handles some 4,000 trauma cases a year. Nevada ranks last among all states with respect to the number of registered nurses per 100,000 people: 528 vs. the national average of 782, according to a study commissioned by the Nevada Board of Regents. Twenty-five percent of Nevada's adult population is uninsured—only three states have higher percentages of uninsured: Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 14. Clark County is in violation of the Environmental Protection Agency's Standard for ground-level ozone, which contributes to smog. The county has until 2007 to submit a plan to the EPA for curbing smog before it will lose some of its federal highway funding. Clark County is also in violation of EPA dust standards and has submitted a plan to reduce inhalable particles; the EPA will determine whether the plan has worked in 2006. |
But at this moment, with such pressing business at hand—the Nevada quarter will only be designed once!—I'm having trouble extracting myself from the opportunity to stay quiet and stay put.
It started on a Tuesday. I identified more than a dozen meetings I would attend in three days, a dozen events that would shed light on how things get done in Clark County. So many of us never attend public meetings, and then bitch about the way things are done or left undone, I thought it would behoove me, as an average citizen, to check out a slate of community meeting agendas and dive in. How hard can it be to tap into the action? Surely an open government or quasi-government meeting is an enlightening, accessible platter of information just waiting to be shared.
And so with this absurd premise, I set out.
At 9:09 a.m. I'm mired in stop 'n' go traffic
1 and thinking about alcohol. This serves a motif that foreshadows my entire week. But at this stage, I'm half-awake and still coddling a piece of naivete that says I'm about to fully and rewardingly engage in civic life. At the liquor board.
I arrive late, and it clearly doesn't matter. In the cavernous Clark County Commission chambers, four Liquor and Gaming Licensing Board commissioners are sitting up front, staring blankly. There's a droning roll call going on—it may have been going on since dawn, or the dawn of time, who knows: The clerk calls a business, a person walks up to the podium and states his name and address, and the board groans a unified "yea" to approve the license. Repeat, ad nauseum.
There is a 49-page agenda that includes 185,000,000,000 of these no-discussion approvals.
Commissioner Rory Reid calls in to vote by telephone. "I'm sitting in the parking lot they call I-15,"
1 he tells them. When it's time to vote on a liquor-license matter for Jaguars, Reid and Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey abstain,
2 which seems like a promising turn of events here—yes! abstentions!—but within seconds we're back to that list, no discussion.
I'm early for the Library District Special Board of Trustees' 11:30 a.m. meeting at the library on Las Vegas Boulevard. Channel 3 is shooting video of two men in full knight regalia having a mock sword fight
3 out front. Homeless men gather to watch.
4
Behind a buzz-back door and up an elevator, I am welcomed to a beautifully-appointed sixth-floor conference room by a library staffer and three trustees. I am the only member of the public present.
As we wait for a quorum—enough board members to constitute a voting majority, in this case six—trustees slip one by one into an adjoining room and come back with plates of fried chicken. I'm very hungry. I peruse the library bulletin while they chat about someone's family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and gnaw on chicken bones.
At 11: 42, they have a quorum and start the meeting.
Someone says, "I move that we go into executive session to discuss the annual review of Executive Director Daniel L. Walters."
At 11:44 they ask me to leave.
The gentleman who ushers me to the door says, "We'll be out in about an hour."
And yet, I'm given a press release that says what the board will say when it emerges: Walters is great and will get their stamp of approval.
5
I want to stay to find out what they were doing in there, to see whether they in fact came to the same conclusion as their press release, to see if there was any extra chicken, but the life of a meeting-goer is rigorous and unforgiving.
Soon, I'm in the Winchester Community Center theater, where a dozen or more members of the Clark County Community Growth Task Force are eating boxed lunches. I take a seat in the audience with about 40 others and wait while the officials chow down, crinkling wrappers and chewing into their microphones. It is here, with a growl in my belly, that I develop Thesis Number One about meetings: There is food somewhere at every meeting; you must know how to finagle it.
The agenda calls for discussion of "urban containment"—sprawl, revitalization of older neighborhoods and the attainability of housing.
6 But first, this: "Many of you felt perhaps 'urban containment' was not the term you wanted to use," a staffer tells the committee, most of whom have finished their lunches and are wiping their mouths and clearing their throats. Some suggestions for alternatives to "urban containment" are written on posterboards: urban design; urban growth patterns, urban development patterns.
A decision on a less-confining word than "containment" is not imminent, so they move on to the main issue. On the overhead projector, the word "issue" is printed along with a definition: "The more development patterns are spread, the more inefficient it becomes to provide urban services such as mass transit, parks, public safety, schools."
"Does anyone have issues with what the issue is?" the foolish, foolish moderator asks. Hands shoot up.
Thesis Number Two: Some people have been waiting all of their lives to speak to a captive audience in a public forum about absolutely nothing, and, once started, will be difficult to stop.
At 1:15 p.m.—an hour into this shindig—UNLV historian and task-force member Hal Rothman, who is among those struggling with the issue issue, decides, "As an abstract, I can live with it. But we'll have to come back to it."
It's 2 p.m., and Norma Phillips is choking on a gummy bear. She's sitting in her official seat at the Clark County Commission chambers as a member of the Metro Citizens Advisory Committee. Someone rushes to get her some water. Before they return, she manages to dislodge the bear from her throat with a good cough.
"It was right here," she says, pointing to her throat, red-faced.
Tragedy averted, the board views videos that will be shown to police and corrections job candidates
7 to see how they handle tough situations.
In one scene, an officer's police partner steals a handful of candy from a bulk bin at the grocery store. Would you a) confront him and tell him to pay for it; b) pay for it yourself; c) let it go; d) arrest him?
I choose "a)" and wish I had that candy. Norma has polished off all the gummy bears. The portion of the video we see doesn't tell us the correct answer. I'm still wondering.
Six p.m. Tuesday.
It says right here in the Review-Journal that there is to be a Clark County Wildlife Advisory Committee meeting at 6 p.m. in commission chambers. But the door is locked and nobody's there. I check the parking lot—pretty empty except for a roly-poly guy changing shirts next to a van, displaying copious body hair.
Seven p.m. The meeting starts as officially scheduled. There are two board members present and a few employees of the Wildlife Department, and one member of the public: an angry hunter. He begins chiding the board about the doubling of his hunting license fee. It's now $43, and he can't find a chukar pheasant to shoot anywhere.
8
I've never loved an animal-slayer so much. After a day of mind-flattening nothingness, of torturous, ass-aching hours in which I have yet to hear anything substantive, I want to leap from my seat and hug Mr. Scott Melder, a middle-aged white man in khaki shorts and shirt who apparently has a pulse and thing for popping pigeons.
"What am I getting for my money?" he shouts across a nearly empty chamber to the half-present board. "My license fee went up 100 percent and I'm not getting anything! Where are the birds?" He's red in the face.
After some argument, the chairman tells him they'll look into the matter. He storms out.
By Wednesday morning, I'm dubious about my mission to connect with functioning government through open meetings. I'm not encouraged as I sit in the City of Las Vegas Development Services Center waiting for a quorum at the Historic Preservation Commission, a citizens' committee. Members who've showed up pass around a baby photo of one of the staffers. The only other attendee, a middle-aged Hispanic man wearing socks embroidered with U.S. flags, waits quietly in the chair beside me.
Fifteen minutes pass and the chairman decides that the rest of the board isn't coming, so the meeting will have to be rescheduled. Al Gallego, who has waited patiently, decides he would like to speak nonetheless. He stands up and begins spewing venom: His neighborhood has been ignored by the committee, its houses were built in the 1940s and should be recognized.
9
"I'm not very happy with what's happening here in Las Vegas," he scolds them. "I'm not happy!"
Commission Chairman Bob Stoldal gavels him down—actually pounds a gavel into the table until Gallego stops his rant—and tells him he should come back next month, and they will address the issue with a full commission.
Thesis Number Three: It can always be addressed later.
Half an hour later, at the Regional Transportation building, a woman in a wheelchair is trying to use the water fountain but having trouble reaching. A female janitor comes up and asks, "Do you need help?" She lifts the stranger from her chair to the fountain.
Just as I was about to write off humans as a species, I am renewed by the underlying bit of humanity here: people trying to cooperate, trying to help make situations better. Still, the necessary evil of meetings does seem to turn sunny intentions into pure crap.
To wit: Down the hall, more than two dozen people gather for the Regional Transportation Commission Older Americans/Disabilities Transportation Advisory Committee. As they assemble—in wheelchairs, on walkers, with sign-language interpreters, with assistance dogs—they hug one another, smile, chat warmly. They're wonderful.
When the meeting begins, they devolve instantly, diving into an all-out argument about Robert's Rules of Order. Someone is pontificating about the nuances of voting by proxy, another about bylaws. I want to cover my ears and run screaming from the room.
I hang in. I must pay attention. It's my privilege and burden as a member of a free society. Must. Pay. Attention.
Everything is starting to blur now, motions and consent agendas and votes and the numbness in my rump. Any other questions or concerns? There being none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes. There is some discussion of double-decker CAT buses
10 ("Will there be room for service dogs?") and something about building an "oasis" bus stop ("Is this really something we need?"). I drift off, or fall over, or run out and throw myself under a bus, I don't know which.
I find myself out in the fresh air, on the 1,800-mile walk from the Regional Transportation Commission building to the closest parking spot I could find, and somehow, I start to see the bigger picture of a community at work.
Here, in these abhorrent little conference rooms and echoing chambers, hundreds of well-meaning people are trying to solve the community's issues, however they finally decide to define them. They're working piece by piece—a liquor license here and a flock of pheasants there, a bus stop here and an incentive for urban redevelopment there—to make Clark County livable.
In a moment of heat-exhaustion/desperation to find something redeeming in my journey, I salute them.
Having heard of the Nevada Quarters meeting at another meeting, I walk into the governor's conference room, help myself to a bottle of water and take a seat.
State Treasurer Brian Krolicki is running the gig; he's very friendly, clean-cut, excited about quarters. He asks us to introduce ourselves. Our Carson City compatriots on the speaker-phone give their names and résumés. After they're finished, Krolicki asks them, "You don't have any members of the Fourth Estate roaming around back there, do you?," and then adds something about some reporters trying to get into this meeting, and how it's really not subject to Open Meetings Laws.
Hmmm.
My first attempt to speak up and identify myself gets caught in my throat like a gummy bear. Krolicki keeps talking about how there's nothing to hide, but that this is a private organizational meeting of an appointed board.
"Brian," I finally blurt out. "Is it all right that I'm here, then? I'm with the media."
Apparently Krolicki had mistaken me for someone else. He'd even shaken my hand earlier and told me to help myself to the handouts. I'd told him my name, and looking back, there did seem to be an awkward pause. But not nearly as awkward as this one, now being broadcast to Carson City.
To his credit as a diplomat, he politely invites me to stay. For nearly two hours I bear witness to the inner workings of the critical governmental business of picking a theme for the Nevada quarter. A picture of a miner? Hoover Dam? Something touristy?
Board members come up with this idea: Ask the feds if Nevada can put a drop of silver
11 in every quarter—the Silver State!—or a drop of nuclear waste
12. Battle Born.
Thursday morning, a line of people stretches into the parking lot at the Health Department. It's not quite 8 a.m.; they're lined up for services. A homeless couple approaches as I walk up, asks if they can wash my car windshield for cash.
4 I am cashless, so I apologize.
Inside, the well-dressed are rapidly filling the conference room for the County Board of Health meeting. There's a table of pastries and coffee. I take three—two for the homeless couple outside, who will be gone, as will the pastries, by the meeting's end. We stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. It's the third time I've pledged my allegiance in as many days, although the first time with a danish over my chest.
The meeting includes a discussion of the legal definition of solid waste and a brief update on the plans for a new truama center.
13 At one point, Councilman Gary Reese says to a speaker, "Sir, if you've got some points to make, make them. I think you're just kind of rambling on." I think we're all relieved, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
By 9, the meeting has broken up and the line outside disseminated.
One-thirty p.m. Thursday. The Review-Journal says there's an Air Quality Hearing Board meeting in the commission chambers at 1:30 p.m. Nobody's here. I check with the Air Quality department4. No meeting today.
Two p.m. The R-J says there's a Las Vegas Traffic and Parking Commission meeting in the city council chambers at 2 p.m. The doors are locked. I ask a woman at the information desk whether there is any such meeting. She looks over her schedule and says no. On a hunch, I ask about my next meeting—the R-J says there's a Las Vegas Planning Commission meeting tonight at 6.
"No." she says. "There was one last night from 5 to 9."
My week of meetings has come to its fitting end—an incomplete, unsatisfying finale based on an error in information. And, as Jane Citizen, I think I've fallen a smidge short of getting a solid picture of my community or connecting with its officials. My hunt for information on the sweeping and superficial landscape of open meetings recalls Melder's where-are-the-birds? battle cry.
Where is the substance? In theory, the point of having all of these public (and one not-so-public) meetings is to serve the people; in practice, it may be to pacify those who engage in the near anachronistic action of showing up. One always has to be willing to look elsewhere for the catch.