NLV Mayor Lee on shake-up at city hall, future of APEX, plans for CD4

A personality conflict led to last week’s shake-up of North Las Vegas city hall leadership, according to NLV Mayor John Lee. That’s when then-city manager Qoing Liu fired assistant city manager Ryann Juden. Within hours, Juden was back in his job and Liu had abruptly announced her retirement. Juden is now poised to become interim city manager.

“I was on vacation and I came home, and there were some personality conflicts between the two upper leaders in the city on direction,” said Lee while filming Nevada Politics Today. “It just got very passionate. These are two brilliant individuals who are very determined for success for North Las Vegas with diametrically different views on how to do it.

“The city manager took it upon herself to fire the assistant city manager without anyone on the council knowing about it. It didn’t feel like there was enough disclosure going on.”

The dispute centered around plans to fund water development at Apex Industrial Park. Lee said there weren’t signs of conflict before that issue.

“There was nothing ever before that that has ever been a problem,” said Lee. “It just got down to that point of frustration. I don’t know if there’s something happening in either one of their family lives. I don’t know if I know that. It just came to a head. I just unfortunately wasn’t here when it happened, and maybe I could have helped dismiss some of the issues.”

Lee said Juden would be an interim city manager, but expressed his confidence that Juden’s experience would enable him to succeed. With a resume filled with government affairs work, not city management experience, Juden’s path to the top of Nevada’s fourth largest city was non-traditional.

“Sometimes the ways these are written — how you get your jobs here — they’re always skewed a little bit to people who have experience in those areas and they want to make sure they or their people continue to get those jobs,” said Lee. He then quipped that “Noah’s Ark was built by amateurs and that the Titanic was built by professionals.”

Lee continued to express optimism about future development at Apex. He said he was lacking one key utility — “water” — but that plans are underway to provide it.

Asked about a potential run for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, Lee said he planned to consider it after delivering his State of the City address on Thursday.

“I’m going to take a really good look and see if I have something that I can offer CD4,” said Lee. “There’s been a lot of phone calls that have come my way saying that I should do this. I will take a minute to take a look at it.”