Thursday, August 07, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics

Viva Las...meanest?

The National Coalition for the Homeless and local advocacy groups released a report this week that decries the criminalization of homelessness and names Las Vegas the meanest city in the nation.

Las Vegas ranked ahead of San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and 15 other cities in meanness to homeless people. The report, "Illegal to Be Homeless," cites numerous homeless deaths in Las Vegas, as well as the city's penchant for "sweeps"--rounding up the homeless and shooing them along to the next crack--and for new ordinances and petty arrests targeting, as the report says, "basic life-sustaining activities such as bathing, sleeping, sitting, cooking, lying down, urinating, or storing personal belongings in places where people are forced to exist without their own housing."

Last year, the coalition did a similar "meanest city" ranking of the nation's "dirty dozen." Las Vegas didn't make that list, but was mentioned as an honorable mention. How'd it soar from unlisted to top of the list? Public Leadership Alliance of Nevada's Liz Moore says, "The sweeps have escalated, and the Crisis Intervention Center's been closed." The report blames the mean cities for spending more tax money on arresting and jailing people than on providing adequate shelter. "A recent study of 27 U.S. cities found that in 2001, 37 percent of all requests for emergency shelter went unmet because of a lack of resources--a 13 percent increase from the previous year," the report says.

The report offers solutions: affordable housing, health care, livable incomes, education, civil rights protection.

But who do we blame? Here, Moore says, Mayor Oscar Goodman's a good place to start. "He's the leader," she says. "He's leading the way in disregarding the human rights and humanity of the homeless. The mayor and police have been so proud of their sweeps of the homeless people. It seems like maybe they think it's helpful to help someone get a criminal record. Like, maybe it helps them re-enter society."

The mayor, in a faxed response, said the report "has factual errors and misrepresents the support the city has provided to homeless persons. The city of Las Vegas is the only place in the valley where a homeless person can find shelter."--HW

Professor moron

Academics are more likely to get a pat on the back from the Mercury than a slap in the face. Unlike some newspapers that believe an eighth-grade education is more than sufficient, the Mercury believes in gettin' some advanced learnin' from the well-informed folks who populate our institutions of higher education.

However, there's an exception to every rule, and the latest is Jack Miller, author of a University of Wisconsin at Whitewater study ranking "America's most literate cities." Miller's "study" revealed that Las Vegas is the 13th most literate city in the nation--tied with Boston.

Boy, what a revelation! Didn't know we had so many bookworms here. Turns out it's complete crap resulting from a fatally flawed methodology. As the Las Vegas Sun reported last week, Miller's rankings were based on 1990 census figures, which makes Las Vegas look a helluva lot better than it is. What's more, Miller's ranking of bookstores per capita included adult bookstores, another bogus boost for Sin City. Unless, of course, literacy is based on reading for the pictures.

If more recent census numbers are used--meaning a doubling of the local population--Las Vegas probably doesn't even make the top 50 most literate cities. It may not be pretty, but at least it's honest.--GS

Desert blooms

Ninety-six men died during the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. They're commemorated on a plaque at the dam: "They died to make the desert bloom."

The men were fulfilling a charge of the Bureau of Reclamation, which in 1902-speak (the year the Reclamation Act was signed) was to "reclaim" the desert by making it Midwest-green and watery, and thereby encourage settlers to the West. The plan worked: The steady stream of settlers and their babes has now reached flood proportions. And the bureau's goal has shifted from blooming to simply finding enough water for everyone to drink.

Conservation is integral to this new water mentality, especially now in the worst drought on record. Clark County's water purveyors are offering incentives for people to replace their lawns with desert plants--which, despite what people think, bloom profusely. Even the bureau's Boulder City office is reclaiming two acres of grass on its property across from Wilbur Park and replacing it with pretty desert plants. The conversion is expected to save 400,000 to 500,000 gallons of water a month and reduce maintenance costs, says Bill Manning, the bureau's director of management services.

"As water masters of the Colorado River, we're trying to set a good example," Manning says.

Still, when the bureau announced its plan in June, "there was more or less an uproar," Manning says. "Some people don't like it. They think we're taking out the whole hill, or even the park. But we're not. We're just taking out the flat areas on top of the hill."

Since then, the bureau has put up a display of the project at the BC credit union and held more public meetings. People appear to be calming down, under the steady reassurance from the bureau that the city's historical nature, and "clean, green" image, is not in jeopardy.

Isn't that nice?--HW

Save the Holsum clock!

The Neon Museum boasts some classic Vegas icons among its collection of more than 100 neon signs--the Silver Slipper's namesake shoe, the original Las Vegas Club sign--but it's currently setting its sights on a more unusual piece: the Holsum Bread clock. Along with the Holsum Bread Co., the building at 299 W. Charleston Blvd. was recently purchased by distribution giant U.S. Foodservice. Now the Neon Museum, a nonprofit group, is in talks with U.S. Foodservice in hope of scoring that signature timepiece. U.S. Foodservice is in negotiations to sell the building to an as-yet-unnamed party.

"The clock is such an icon. It's part of the public art of Las Vegas," says Neon Museum executive director Sandra Harris. "If the new owners [of the building] utilize the sign and keep it on site, we'd be happy to see that [as part of the organization's Living Museum program]. The current owners know we're interested in the sign, so we're hoping to continue that dialogue." Harris meets with the owners again at the end of this month.--AK

NOW hear this

The "Hunting for Bambi" videotape hoax may have another good result. If you go to the website for the National Organization for Women, you find an article by NOW communications director Lisa Bennett, "Hunting Bambi: Violence Against Women for Fun and Profit." At the top it says, "NOTE: After this story was posted, Las Vegas officials confirmed that the live 'hunts' were staged as a scam to sell videos. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that no 'hunts' have ever been sold and no 'Bambis' have ever been shot with paintballs." But it still makes the important point: "The 'Hunting for Bambi' furor has demonstrated that the exploitation of women, and even violence against women, continues to pass for entertainment in our culture." Bennett also writes, "The question of real or fake hunts aside, there's one thing we can be certain about: 'Hunting for Bambi' is not alone in its blatant contempt for women. Women are objectified in the mainstream media on such a regular basis that most people hardly notice it anymore." If the "Hunting for Bambi" video increased that awareness, its creators accomplished a far better thing than they thought.--MG

A penny here, a penny there

Nevada's utility companies will fork over money for a new payroll tax imposed by the Legislature, but they actually won't pay the bill.

You will. The estimated 0.7 percent payroll tax will be shifted to ratepayers as of Oct. 1, bypassing the usual review by the Public Utilities Commission. But spokespeople for two local utilities say not to worry.

"We have been talking about pennies a month," says Sonya Headen of Nevada Power Co. Just how many pennies isn't yet known. The payroll tax is estimated to generate $181 million as part of the Legislature's comprehensive plan to raise an additional $836 million over the next two years. Headen says the total figure for her company hasn't been worked out.

"We're still analyzing it," Headen says. "However, we do believe the effect on the average residential customer should be minimal. The inputs our representatives in Carson City did make to the [tax] dialogue were principally intended to minimize the impact on our customers."

It's the same story at Sprint, where Detra Page, media relations manager, says the implications are still under study. "We're looking at it," Page says. "We believe this is something that will be passed on to the customers. We don't have a number, but it's extremely minimal."

But the tax bothers Tim Hay, the attorney general's consumer advocate, since it bypasses PUC review. "It allows utilities to pass through increases in tax liability to ratepayers," he says. "It's automatic, not through the PUC process."--LW

Paperless city

The city of Las Vegas, as it prepares to go almost entirely paperless--switching to an electronic documents management system as early as next fiscal year--has come up with some justification that proves creating, copying, filing and retrieving paper documents can be costly.

In a report distributed recently by the city's Information Technologies Department, the cost/benefit assessment section states that more than 4 trillion paper documents are produced in the United States each year and the total is growing at 22 percent each year; professionals spend 5 to 15 percent of their time reading information, but up to 50 percent of their time looking for it; and nearly 75 percent of the time spent working with paper-based information is wasted in searching and filing.

It goes on to say, "The average company spends $20 to file a document, $120 to find a misfiled item, and $220 to reproduce a lost document. Also, 7.5 percent of all documents get lost [and] 90 percent of corporate memory exists on paper."--FC