Council approves $8.5 million for F Street project

Citing their experience in a neighborhood that for decades has borne the brunt of racial discrimination, residents of historically black West Las Vegas beat back an attempt to halt a street project they say will breathe new life into the area.

During a City Council meeting Wednesday, several residents lashed back at Councilman Bob Coffin, the former legislator who opposed a plan for the city to spend $8.5 million to reopen a portion of F Street closed four years ago as part of an Interstate 15 improvement project.

The residents' pleas to rebuild the freeway underpass resonated with the rest of the council, leaving Coffin on the short end of a 5-1 vote to authorize the funding, which represents the bulk of the city's share of the proposed $16 million project.

But not before Coffin presented evidence to undermine long-accepted arguments that neighborhood residents weren't properly notified in advance of the 2008 closure.

The residents argued, however, that the issue of reopening F Street is about more than the law. It's about respect for a community that has been ignored and targeted by racially motivated street closures in previous decades, they said.

"The money has been moved around too many times," said Arby Hambric, a longtime resident and advocate of undoing the closure. "I know this country has this money, and I know they owe it to us."

The effort to undo a blockade built four years previous was the result of a decision by the 2009 Legislature to approve Assembly Bill 304, a response by legislative leaders to critics who accused the city and the Nevada Department of Transportation of failing to properly notify westside neighborhoods of plans to close the street.

Reopening the street, argued many closure critics who attended the meeting, is a matter of respect for the neighborhood that has in the past been cut off from downtown Las Vegas.

Mayor Carolyn Goodman said reopening the street was important to ensure access to Symphony Park, an area downtown the city is reviving with a new concert hall and other developments.

Though both D and H streets provide access from West Las Vegas to downtown, Goodman said restoring the F Street connection is important because of past attempts to segregate the neighborhood from more prosperous parts of the city.

West Las Vegas is the area generally bordered by Carey Avenue on the north, Bonanza Road on the south, I-15 on the east and Rancho Drive on the west.

"I find it offensive the community was closed off," Goodman said. "Psychologically you cannot close off members of our community from one another."

Coffin stuck to his position that spending more money to reopen the street would be a mistake.

Although he supported AB304 when he was a legislator in 2009, he said he learned he had been misled by the bill's backers, a group that included Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford D-Las Vegas, into thinking the community hadn't been warned about the project. Coffin also said there were threats that if the bill failed, city-supported bills and city funding could be harmed.

"Everybody developed such a dug-in position they couldn't change," he said.

After joining the council and researching the issue in detail, Coffin said he was able to document that the project was properly noticed despite assertions from lawmakers, activists and in a lawsuit by the F Street Coalition that was withdrawn after AB304 was approved.

Horsford didn't attend the meeting Wednesday but submitted a letter to the council stating he still supports reopening. Coffin said previously that Horsford rebuffed a request to meet on the subject.

Assemblywoman Dina Neal, D-Las Vegas, told the council that the legislative record showed neither Horsford nor any lawmaker threatened the city or its funding sources.

But Coffin told Neal, who was not yet in the Legislature in 2009, the action was out of the public view.

"It wasn't in the printed record, but I can tell you firsthand (city staff and lobbyists) in Carson City were being abused verbally, and the threats were not easy to take," Coffin said. "You need to know what the legislative process is like; it is pretty darn ugly."

Even people who said Coffin made a convincing case against spending more taxpayer money on the project voted in favor of redoing it anyway.

"I think you added dimensions to it that we hadn't quite heard before," Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian said. "This is a tremendous waste of money, but we have a moral obligation for those (residents) for what was done to them."

The state has agreed to fund its share, with $4 million in petroleum cleanup funds, $2.5 million in federal transportation funds and another $1.4 million labeled generically as "state funds" in backup documents.

Assemblyman Harvey Munford, D-Las Vegas, who supports reopening the street, said he will remain skeptical, though, until the work is complete.

Munford said new scrutiny prompted by Coffin's efforts could lead others to question the state funding portion, especially if there are delays that carry the project into the 2013 legislative session.

"I think it will be revisited, I really do," Munford said. "If there is an economic uncertainty and we have some problems with funding things, they'll say what about that money."

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@ reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.