North Las Vegas council considering move to even-year city elections

The North Las Vegas City Council took a step Wednesday night toward shifting municipal elections to an even-year cycle in an effort to decrease costs and increase local voter participation.

The council unanimously agreed to draw up an ordinance that would end the current off-year, springtime election schedule by 2020. The council will discuss the plan during a meeting at 6 p.m. Dec. 7 and consider final approval Dec. 21.

If the ordinance passes, candidates for mayor and council seats in Wards 1 and 3 during the election cycle would not serve a full four-year term through June 2021. Instead, those terms would end seven months early, so that the next election could be held in conjunction with the next presidential race in November 2020.

Wards 2 and 4 aren’t up for election until 2019, but winners of those seats also would see their terms cut to align with the November 2022 election, sharing the ballot with Nevada gubernatorial and midterm congressional races.

The city also has two municipal judges who serve six years on the bench, but those terms would be reduced by two years and seven months to align with even-year election cycles.

North Las Vegas is projected to pay $325,914 to Clark County to run the 2017 primary election in April and the general election in June, City Clerk Catherine Raynor said. The county would not charge the city if North Las Vegas moved its municipal election to even-numbered year.

Mesquite has already changed to even-year elections, while a similar move is under consideration in Las Vegas.

The council also agreed to end the practice of operating more than 20 polling places, and instead offer a yet-to-be-determined number of voting centers. The move is expected to cut payment to the county by 21.4 percent to $256,179, Raynor said.

Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter.