Mayor should praise less, bully more
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman's second State of the City speech was a vast improvement over her first.
She was funnier. She was more confident and clearly more knowledgeable about the city, as she admitted.
She was her own woman, moving out from under the shadow of her husband, former Mayor Oscar Goodman.
Instead of spending much of her time looking backward at his accomplishments and vision, she focused on what happened in the city in 2012 and what may happen in 2013, which was the right thing to do.
She even took a sharp dig at Nevada's education system and at charter schools.
But she was still too damned long-winded Thursday.
Despite cutting last year's 80-minute speech down to 60 minutes, she was repetitive and overly exuberant about how great the members of the council were. The best ever? Praise them, but don't oversell to the point of ridiculousness.
If she can shave another 20 minutes off next year and bring it down to 40 minutes, she should win unrestrained kudos next year. I could help her cut the parts where she repeated herself because I must resist that myself.
She used humor to warm up her audience, pulling out a timer and joking there was an over-under for how long she would talk.
"When the bell's gone off," she said with a pause, "it's an indication the bell's gone off."
Judging from the positive "hmmmms" from the woman behind me, among the more interesting tidbits dropped by the mayor included an expansion of the Las Vegas Premium Outlet Mall downtown by about 30 stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue, and the possible development of a Spanish Village in East Las Vegas similar to Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road.
She revealed that the Mob Museum is returning $400,000 in tax credits to the city, money the city had given the $42 million museum for opening operating costs. She didn't mention how many people have gone to the museum, one of her husband's pet projects. So afterward, I pried it out of Executive Director Jonathan Ullman, who said that it was more than 200,000 and that final numbers will be out soon.
That is fewer than the last estimate of 300,000 and vastly fewer than Oscar Goodman's earlier estimate of 800,000 visitors the first year. The opening of Zappos downtown and the Downtown Grand (the former Lady Luck) are expected to boost attendance next year, City Manager Betsy Fretwell predicted.
As an aside, the $235 million Springs Preserve estimated attendance of 600,000 but draws about a third of that.
Goodman's sharpest comments were aimed at Nevada's education system.
The early education advocate who founded Meadows School waved two baby dolls around and said, "Businesses are not coming here because of the educational quality. Investment is held up. Physicians won't come. If we don't do something, our workforce will be ill-prepared."
Calling for a legislative fix, she said, "Something's wrong when Clark County gets $8,200 per pupil and Esmeralda County gets $17,000.
"It doesn't take rocket science to figure out you put the best teachers, the best equipment, in the inner city schools. And every time you create another charter school, you are taking that little $8,200 and putting it in that little charter school."
Goodman had to know she would raise hackles . She always said she will use her bully pulpit to improve education, even while admitting the city has little to do with education.
If she can tighten her remarks so that the edgiest education parts don't get lost in the laundry list of city accomplishments, Goodman could have more impact in her 2014 speech. Maybe council members won't be seen trying to suppress yawns.
Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call her at 702-383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Morrison.
