Group gathers to discuss vision for west Las Vegas

About 15 long-time west Las Vegas residents and others streamed in and out of retired Assemblyman Harvey Munford’s home Thursday evening for a “private event to share your vision for west Las Vegas,” as stated on distributed fliers with official Nevada Assembly letterhead.

The evening began as a vague gathering for people to air their grievances about the lack of development and series of failed efforts to encourage development in their community, but it ended with a plan for mobilization. However, because of the trickle-in-trickle-out nature of the meeting, not everybody who attended left with the same take-away.

For example, former Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, who worked closely with Munford during his career, stopped by Munford’s home for about 45 minutes and left with the impression that the action plan is to find more investors for the community.

“We need investors and we need folks that have community interests in this community to write a check,” Fiore said.

While Munford agrees that it’s always about money, Katherine Duncan said that it’s not about more money, but rather about making the money stick.

Duncan, president of the Ward 5 Chamber of Commerce, has been working to attract developers to the area ever since the chamber was unable to come up with the funds to purchase the former Moulin Rouge casino site last February.

She argued that the community should rally behind one tangible issue, like transportation, or homelessness, to clean up the community, which she said will ultimately help to attract the right investors.

Homelessness ended up front-and-center.

“What we really need to do is work as as a people moving forward,” Duncan later told the Review-Journal. “We can’t even begin to develop any type of development before we clean up the homelessness in our neighborhood.”

She said the plan is to work with churches, the city, and the homeless shelter to provide a community support system.

The first step is to get everybody together and have a conversation, she said.

That may be harder than it seems, as the community needs to build their relationships, said Pastor Billy McCurdy, who also stopped by the meeting. McCurdy is pastor of the Progressive Community Church of God in Christ, as well as commissioner on the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority and a member of the city of North Las Vegas’ Parks and Recreation Commission.

“Why weren’t any elected officials at the meeting?” McCurdy said, adding that Munford and Duncan need to be more inclusive. “A lot of elected officials never received a letter inviting them to that meeting.”

Reacting to the plans that were discussed to have churches offer additional services for homeless people, McCurdy said neither he nor the bishop of his church is onboard.

“You got to be careful with the homeless people. You invite them into your church and sometimes they case your church and then break into your church. I tried to do that, I tried to help some homeless people,” McCurdy said. He said Munford and Duncan should work on building relationships with the Urban Chamber of Commerce as well as with more elected officials.

“They need to talk to the elected officials that have been elected to see what plans they currently and how they can implement the plans they already have,” he said, adding that he’d also like to see the city of North Las Vegas do more to alleviate the homeless situation, he said.

Contact Nicole Raz at nraz@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @JournalistNikki on Twitter.