Clark County Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

good morning our august 18th 2026 board of county commission meeting will come to order please stand for the invocation by pastor adrian doll followed by the pledge allegiance i would invite those who are comfortable to join with me in prayer

God of all grace, as we begin this day, we pause to give thanks. We thank you for the gift of this community, this place we call home. We thank you for the beauty of these lands and the resources we find in its soil. May we never take for granted the blessings you've entrusted in our hands. Give us wisdom and creativity to respond to the challenges and possibilities of our time. May we always welcome those who come to this region for employment, for opportunity, and a new beginning. As students across Clark County enter this fall semester, we thank you for teachers who share their talents, for volunteers who give of their time, and for safety patrol officers and walking guards who watch over our youth. We thank you for our elected officials and those who work tirelessly to serve our county and state. We pray that you would guide them in their decisions. We thank you for each of our commissioners. May they know the gratitude of this county and enable each one of us as public servants and ordinary citizens to look within ourselves and ask how we might make a difference for the good of all people. Amen. Would you join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Manager Schiller.

Good morning, Commissioner McCurdy and commissioners. Your first item is to present a proclamation recognizing August 31st, 2026 as International Overdose Awareness Day in Clark County and highlighting the importance of addiction prevention and awareness. Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

Well, good morning. This item is very passionate and important to me because as you all know that I've been through this myself. So this is something that doesn't discriminate but is something that requires education. THIS IS OUR SEVENTH YEAR OF RECOGNIZING OVERDOSE AWARENESS DAY. THIS IS AN INTERNATIONAL DAY THAT HAPPENS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. COMMISSIONER KNAFT AND MYSELF HAVE BEEN WORKING TIRELESSLY TO MAKE SURE WE GET IT OUT. ON BEHALF OF THE ENTIRE BOARD, bring some awareness, get the community involved, and really remind people you have to talk to your kids, you have to talk to your family members to know what's going on. First, we're going to start with the short video because I think the video is very sobering so that people understand why this is so important.

Every day, families across Nevada are affected by overdose. Behind every statistic is a family member or friend whose life has been forever changed. Through prevention, treatment, recovery and compassion, we can save lives and strengthen our community. On August 31st, communities around the world come together for International Overdose Awareness Day, a time to remember those we've lost, honor the families and friends whose lives have been touched by overdose, and renew our commitment to prevention, recovery, and hope. Here in Clark County, we know that preventing overdose takes all of us working together for better. Recovery is possible, help is available, and no one has to face these challenges alone. Every conversation can reduce stigma. Every act of compassion can encourage someone to seek help. Every connection can make a difference. Together, we can strengthen our community. Together, we can inspire hope and support recovery. And together, we can save lives.

Thank you for that video. So International Overdose Awareness Day is the world's largest annual campaign to end overdose, raise awareness about prevention, reduce the stigma. And I would say reducing the stigma is probably one of the most important things because this is something that does not discriminate, doesn't matter what your social economic household is, doesn't matter your race, it doesn't matter where you've been in life, what kind of upbringing that you've had, it's just a real thing that happens to so many. And we've worked very hard over the years to ensure that employers recognize that, that we have programs in place So that part of recovery is relapse and I know a lot of people don't want to hear that but that's the truth of what it is and we have to allow those people to get back on their feet. So today we've invited the Southern Nevada Health District, the Foundation for Recovery to join us. They'll be out in the hallways. If it's not you, you have a family member, you have a neighbor that you didn't know. It's just good to know where those resources are so that you can direct them. We're very fortunate in Southern Nevada to have a lot of resources to help people get back on track. And, you know, that is why Clark County is investing over $200 million in our Opiate Recovery Center that we'll be opening probably after I'm gone, but we'll be opening it because we know that people need that assistance and we know that We can't shut them off just because their insurance cut them off, right? So we have to be able to help process and help them get back on track and you know I Probably talk a little bit too much about it. So I'm going to try to stick to my talking points but what people don't realize is once you get off whether you've started with marijuana opiates and then it went to heroin then it went to Fentanyl is now what we're seeing today. Once you get off track, then you gotta start all over. That means you have no credit to rent an apartment, that means you have no job stability, and that means that your family has likely had to say enough already, right? It's the tough love piece of it, and that is probably the hardest piece that any family goes through, right? Whether you're raising grandchildren, whether you're trying to make sure they're safe at night, But it's really a hard path to go down. And if we don't educate people and people, you know, I like to tell the story that my daughter used to say to me, I'm going to out your mom because you're an elected official. You'll have all this negative around you. And I said, you know what? I'm going to out you. How about that? And so it was when I outed her. and there was no leverage because as a mom, that's the last thing you want to do is have a hard conversation with your child, that she got clean. And I am thankful and grateful to say that we are going on three years of her being clean, and she has her granddaughter back. So I'm really probably the worst person to do this because I've lived it and I know what families go through, but it's a thing and we need to really get rid of that stigma, talk about it. At fifth grade, I am telling my granddaughters, now here's the things you got to think about. I don't care if somebody wants you to try that vape in the bathroom, don't do it, right? Because that's where it starts. So... It is very passionate to me, so I'm sorry about that, but let's recognize the people that are doing yeoman's work every single day, but I really just want people to know that it does not discriminate and we have to do our part as a community to step up and protect our community. So the first one that we're going to bring up is Moms Against Drugs. So Brett Nedler was Debbie's son. It's a story we talked many years ago about this. He was an A student at Durango High School before a year-long opiate addiction that started with alcohol, marijuana, pain pills, and then heroin. He cycled through nine rehabs in eight years, and that is a real thing that happens, and it's a real cost. So she has been working tirelessly to bring awareness and prevention for many other moms who have had to go through this. Notable, you'll see the Light Our Country purple. We started during COVID, so everybody is wearing purple. If you do not have a purple ribbon, we'll get you one. But really, it's a great day. So we want to recognize her for keeping the light going for Brett. And we know how important that is because it's healing for the whole family. The second one is No Hero and Heroin Foundation. It's the Las Vegas nonprofit founded in 2013 by Joe Engel after he lost his 19-year-old son, Reese. to heroin overdose in 2011. And it is a common unfortunate thing that many people are younger that this is happening to. So it's not out of ordinary for a 19 to 25 year old to be in this situation. He started as a grieving parents meeting in his kitchen, and it's now grown to one of the most successful comprehensive addiction recovery organizations. You made history in 2016 by conducting Nevada's first layperson's Narcan training, going on to train over 1,000 community members. They've helped establish a Clark County School District Mission High School, which opened in 2017, and that's really so kids can go back in a high school setting so they can continue with their recovery. So if we could give them a round of applause for all that they do. And let me let Joe, you want to go ahead and speak? Got something to say? I said a lot, but I think you could add to it.

Thank you very much, commissioners. This is certainly a nice thing to have to look at, and we appreciate the recognition and your candor, Commissioner Kirkpatrick. That's how we're going to help. We're going to. Erase the stigma by showing up and saying, I'm a person in long-term recovery. I myself am a person in long-term recovery. I am a business owner. I pay my taxes. I vote. I am also a bereaved father. And I have a staff of 17 people that not only have we been able to save people's lives, I've been able to watch these people develop professionally. And that's been one of the joys of my life. There is a long way to go, commissioners, as signatories of the One Nevada Agreement. You guys know in the $200 million project that you talked about, we are awaiting it anxiously. It can't come soon enough. Please do what you can from your end. I know you guys have a lot of red tape that you have to go through, but please do what you can to help us save lives. Thank you.

joe you've done amazing joe's the one i lost my son eight years ago and joe was the first person to reach out to me and his organization is fabulous nevada has done amazing things in the past eight years but commissioner Patrick, you definitely hit on something big. It's the stigma. It was around eight years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and just last night I saw on social media we had an actress pass away this week. The official cause was not known, but it was some kind of overdose. And I could not believe the comments I was seeing on social media. It was the same theme everywhere. She doesn't look like an addict. She doesn't have the face of an addict. There's no way she was an addict. I was literally responding to every single post saying, what is your definition? Could you tell me what an addict looks like? And it's something we've done so much in our state, but we have to remember there is no face to addiction. It is the families. It is one in three families here in our state. It's your neighbor. It's your child. It's your sister. It's your brother. It's your doctor. It's your neighbor. All walks of life. And this is something... that we really have to focus on is the stigma. I was accused. I was blamed for my son's overdose. I'm thin, and everybody said I was an addict. I've had that for years. So thank you for mentioning the stigma, and that's something we absolutely must work on. Thank you. Thank you all.

THANK YOU AGAIN. IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE A SOMBER MOMENT, BUT IT'S MEANT TO REMIND PEOPLE OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY AS A COMMUNITY TO ADDRESS. SO PLEASE STOP BY SOUTHERN NEVADA HEALTH DISTRICT, THE FOUNDATION FOR RECOVERY OUT THERE, GET INFORMATION, JUST READILY HAVE IT AVAILABLE IN CASE SOMEBODY NEEDS IT, BECAUSE YOU WILL SAVE A LIFE. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I LIVE IN A GREAT COMMUNITY. WE DO GREAT THINGS. ON BEHALF OF COMMISSIONER KNAFT AND MYSELF AND THE REST OF THE BOARD, we can't thank this community for stepping up and recognizing this, so thank you.

Commissioners, your next item is to present a proclamation and recognize Roger Unger for 26 years of dedicated service on the Habitat for Humanity Las Vegas Board of Directors, Commissioner Becker.

So 26 years with Habitat for Humanity for Las Vegas. I think it's an incredible achievement. For those of you that don't know, Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and improving homes so families and individuals can have a safe, beautiful, and affordable home to live in. Roger Unger has proudly served on the Habitat for Humanity Las Vegas Board of Directors for 26 years, beginning in 2000. He's strengthened the organization's financial infrastructure through his work on the Finance Committee, and he served on the Executive Board as Treasurer But most of all, he's volunteered his time on Habitat for Humanity's construction sites, which I know has brought him tremendous joy. He's cherished participating in the home dedication ceremonies and celebrating families receiving their new homes. His service reflects a deep commitment to Habitat for Humanity's mission of ensuring everyone has a decent place to live. I want to thank Roger for his 26 years of service, his leadership, commitment, and dedication to Habitat for Humanity in Las Vegas. Thank you, Roger.

Oh, thank you. And did you want to say anything? Yes, just a few if I can.

Yeah, I'd like to say a few words. I have, oh, thank you. I have a lot of my friends that supported me over all these years. As you might not know, I grew up here. I went to John S. Parks. I went to John C. Fremont. I went to Vegas High School. So I've always wanted to give back to my community that I grew up in. I started my financial career here in 1988, starting with Ally Bank and then working all the way through. And I'm still in finance, working at America First. Each financial institution that I worked for donated lots of money to Habitat at the time I joined. I was at Bank of America, asked to be a volunteer in 2019, got on the board a year later. Before I knew it, I was on the finance committee and then worked my way up. You probably ask, how can you be on a board for 26 years? Yes, we do have term limits. But everybody didn't want me to leave because we didn't have anybody to be the treasurer, run the finance committee. It's a big responsibility, and I'm glad the burden is finally off. But Angela Phillips, the executive director, she helped with all this. She reached out to April. Thank you so much for that. I have my Lions family. I've been a member of the Los Angeles Lions for 37 years. Currently the president on that. So you can see I like to do things. I have my family. I have my good friends, people I worked with. Can you just stand up real quick, please? Just so I can recognize how many people came here to support me. I mean, it takes an army to support you. And they all showed up, and they're just loving, supportive. And my little granddaughter is taking a picture there, Harper. So I really appreciate getting back to this community because it gave so much back to me. And it's just been a privilege and honor to serve on the board for Las Vegas Habitat for Humanity. Thank you, Angela.

And it was an honor for me today to be able to recognize you and your service. And this is Clark County. These are the people that we have in this community volunteering their time and doing what matters and doing what they can to help other members. And it's just amazing. So it warms my heart. So thank you.

Okay, there we go. Commissioner, your next item is to recognize Clark County employees who have been selected as Clark County Value Champions.

On my team.

Hi, I'm Mercedes Urias. I'm the executive assistant to the county manager, Kevin Schiller. I nominated Will Covington as a value champion with an emphasis on service. Will consistently demonstrates service to everywhere he goes. He always lends a hand when needed, even if it's not his task, his district issue, or problem. He's always willing to help find a solution or provide support wherever he can. While he is usually recognized for his kind and thoughtful personality, he also has an extremely calm demeanor. Will is also a very dedicated employee to District B. He is always on the move to an event or to assist in off-site meetings for Commissioner Kirkpatrick and her team. He leaves no stone unturned for all the District B special events. Again, congratulations to Will Covington on being a Valley Champion.

Good morning, I'm Leslie Schell, the Deputy County Manager here at Clark County. I'm excited to nominate Jerry Gonzalez, our Employee Benefits Manager, as a Clark County Value Champion. She represents the value of excellence here at Clark County. Her superpower is connecting our employees to their health benefits when they urgently need them. You might not see her very often, but she is diligently working every day to make sure that employees who need those benefits at a time that is most difficult in their life get the best possible care. So congratulations, Sherry, for your nomination, and thank you for doing the hard work that you do every day to make sure that we all have access to the best quality care.

Hi my name is Carol Fox and I am having an honorable duty to thank Peggy McClain for being a valued employee and she's won an award and I just wanted to let you know just what kind of a worker she is and we have the experience to learn by her as a mentor. Here's a list of her to-do's daily. So you can see that she's very busy and she never says no. She's always happy and Her personality is just over and beyond. She's funny. She's a pleasure to work with. I am so happy that I was part of this for her. And the best thing I can say about Peggy is she is the perfect example that we rise above by lifting others up. Peggy, congratulations. We are so proud of you for being a valued champion.

Hi, my name is Ashley Silva and since joining the county I've been incredibly fortunate to have so many people willing to help me learn. But Marilyn, she stood out to me because she extended that support even though she wasn't on my team and really had no obligation to help me and she made herself available whenever I had a question. What impressed me most about Marilyn wasn't just about how much she knows, but how willingly she shared her knowledge, and she's patient, she's approachable, and she has genuine want for other people to succeed.

How about a hand for these department's employees? This is kind of a unique one. So I just want to kind of highlight a couple of things. You know, when you look at the departments, you know, we have commission staff, we got the public administrator when we're dealing with the states, you know, it's a lot of behind the scenes and also finance. Nothing happens without finance. in every conversation, almost every conversation I have every day, and then risk. You know, you're the quiet warrior back there dealing with a lot of the issues that we navigate. I want to highlight Will Covington. When I first came to the county, I met Will. He is one of the most genuine, courteous people I know. I don't think he's ever forgotten my birthday. a thank you card, which, you know, it's the little things, so I want to highlight that. And it's just, these are all examples of our great employees. Let's give them a hand. And I really want to congratulate all of you. I'm really excited to see you all here. It's really fun to see all the different departments. And on behalf of the board, I know we often are in high-level conversations and we're dealing with things, but it's an engine. You guys are all part of that engine every day. And if a piece breaks, it doesn't work. And we never stop. Today's agenda, just in the other recognitions, when you talk about an opioid treatment center, When you talk about Habitat for Humanity and housing, we did a site visit there and then modeled after that related to the subdivisions we're creating for affordable housing. And then you can't do that without budget, right? And then risk is always in there also. So we're always managing different pieces. So with that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Becker.

Wow. I mean, what else can I say? I'm just so impressed by the people that work here. Every day I get to come in and meet new people because if you didn't know this, there's, I think, over 10,000 employees at Clark County, and these are four of the top. So thank you for your service.

Commissioners, you can now go to your first section, set aside for public comment.

Thank you, Manager Schiller. This is our first time set aside for public comment. Anyone wishing to come forward to speak to an agenda item on this agenda, please come forward now. Clearly state your first and last name and the item that you're speaking on. Please come forward. I do have an Adrian Brasi for agenda item number 34.

Welcome.

I am still looking for the actual item, but I understand there's a public hearing for the CIP allocation, some $5 billion or so that Commissioner Naft had appointed to have as a public hearing for $5 billion for this meeting. I haven't clearly found exactly where that's stated on here as an item. $5 BILLION IS A LOT OF MONEY. I WOULD LIKE TO ADVOCATE FOR USE OF A PORTION OF THOSE FUNDS.

I'M SORRY, THAT'S NOT ON THE AGENDA TODAY.

THAT WAS NOT PUT ON THE AGENDA. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE S.N.H.D. HAS A I think it's $100 million or something like that. We don't have that on here either. I didn't read that one, no. Okay, not a hospital.

No, it's not on here.

Oh, my gosh. I'm going to wait for somebody to speak, but I think it's like a lot of people, but I will find it.

Thank you. Welcome. If you want to just circle back, we have a nice one.

I can come back. Yes. Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning. My name is Randy Gao. I'm a short-term rental owner, operator, designer, educator, and today I'm forced to be an activist. So, good morning, city council members. I wanted to share a personal story about Airbnb. I first learned about Airbnb back in 2017, and at the time, it caused me to be, I was at a job that caused me to be miserable, depressed, and severely overweight. I was living in California at the time, and I saved up just enough money to purchase a home here in Las Vegas. And I could actually afford a home here. As fate would have it, my parents decided to downsize their home at the time, so I was able to get a lot of free furniture. All things pointed to me trying out this Airbnb fad. I decided to hire a cleaner, and the rest was history. The next year, 2018, was one of the hardest years for me. One of my closest friends passed away in the house that I was living in. And the job that I was trying to quit, well, they actually promoted me. And most people would be so happy, but for me, it felt like a death sentence. And this ties back to Airbnb, I promise. The very first Airbnb made just enough money for me to take a leap of faith and quit that job. It was a financial parachute that helped me land softly in Las Vegas. And when I landed here, I was so excited to share what I learned about real estate that I became a realtor. And I continue to learn more about the power of real estate. Throughout the years, I've helped over 100 families with buying, selling, or investing in real estate. And every home purchase for Airbnb actually creates multiple jobs for taxpaying citizens. During the setup period and consistently every month after. Our team alone uses over 30 different contractors every month with all our vendor partners. And every year we raise over $150,000 on just occupancy taxes. Today, and this year, I'm actually starting a foundation to help underserved communities. And it's all thanks to my Airbnb business. None of these impacts would have happened without that first Airbnb. And it may sound cliche, but that first one saved my life. And that's why I'm defending Airbnbs and short-term rentals like my life depends on it. Because today, short-term rentals is my life and my livelihood. So before we make any drastic changes that will affect livelihoods of thousands of citizens here in Las Vegas, let's just have the state supreme courts get settled first. Let's have a legitimate process for hosts to actually do things the right way and actually get a license. How can Airbnb and other platforms be checking for licenses if there aren't any licenses be given out? And if short-term rentals do get banned, I want to go on record to say that this may be a tipping point of a major real estate disaster. Many owners won't be able to pay their mortgages, so they'll be forced to sell. And adding thousands of listings in a market of oversupply and low demand is going to drive down prices for the entire city, not just Airbnbs. This decision has a lot of consequences, and I trust that you guys will make the right one. Two seconds left, so.

Thank you. We're going to ask that you keep the clapping down. It messes up the record, so you can snap or something else, but just please keep the clapping down. Welcome.

Hi, guys. Thank you for having me. My name is Ron Schneezy. I'm here to speak on agenda item 35 for future meetings. First off, as a person of long-term recovery, thank you for recognizing International Overdose Awareness Day. I am a person with lived experience with both substance use, carceral settings, and homelessness. It's come to my attention recently that the shower trucks that was direct county funding has been cut.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you, but you say you're on speaking title 35?

I'm sorry?

Item 35 is.

Item 35, things for future agendas?

Yes, that's for the commissioners. But you can stay for the second public comment period if you'd like to come up then.

Yeah, basically, when I was homeless, some of the very few things that brought any kind of dignity to me.

Yes, I'm sorry. The second public comment period, which is going to be reserved for the end of the meeting, yes. Just stay until the end. All right. Thank you. Welcome.

Hi, commissioners. I don't know if you guys remember me. I'm Gina Lynn Rem. I'm the crazy chicken lady who you guys helped have the legal farm stand and also be able to allow customers to pick up on site and do cow cuddles.

Which agenda item?

The one for short-term rental.

Okay.

Yeah, so I just want to share that I Really feel that so we have an attached casita. That's 312 square feet and We actually do this medium term rental, which is we do midterm rental where we are be able to bypass it, and then we also, in between those medium term, we plug in short term rental. And I'm just so worried, because I hate, as you guys know, I like to do things by the book, and I want to make sure that I do things in compliance. So my ask is that you guys are able to look at people who have short-term rentals that are attached to the house where we live on the property as a different category because we are able to control the noise. We're able to be able to make sure that they're not disruptive to our neighborhood. So I just want to ask that if you guys would consider allowing us to do short-term rental, especially because we want to be able to provide a community service where we could have people stay at the banana bungalow, which is what we coined our... our rental and they could have a farm experience and we've seen firsthand the impact that our cows have to this community and I just want to up it up a notch and have a overnight stay where people could come they could live the homestead experience and also we could give back to the community more because the short-term rental income from that would be able to help us do more community outreach that we do because we serve a lot of combat disabled veterans by providing free cow cuddles and also with select nonprofits. And also, I just feel that we should be in a different category because we do live on the property. I feel like since we are able to do what we should do on the property since we own it. So I'm just asking if you guys would reconsider that so I don't have to do things under the radar because I would love to do this and be compliant. And also, I'm coming back to you guys because I want to talk to you guys about the cottage food laws and also for homesteaders and farmers. So thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you. My name is Edie Dalton. I am number 29 for the Authorized Allocation of Economic Development Funds. Can I speak about it? I am launching a mental wellness initiative which is a part of what she just mentioned, turning real estate development into a multi-purpose ecosystem, which I have been communicating through the community and raised money with Broken Yoke Cafe. I am working with professors at UNLV to produce interactive customizable experiences for mental wellness as well as education experiences for children in schools, museums, and families in the community. I would like to share images of what that property can look like, but I'm also requesting the city of Las Vegas to give me a building to repurpose into my mental wellness initiative called Where We Started. My building looks like this. It's a sphere which is a home, a stage, a place that families and educators, children and artists can come and learn, educate, share and create their passions and turn them into businesses that can benefit the community as a whole. I have been asking the community to fundraise and Broken Yolk Cafe is fundraising with me, as well as Krispy Kreme Donuts. And I am working with doctors from Uganda, where I come from, over 30 doctors, as well as a doctor in Egypt, as well as a doctor in New York who is the CEO of SmileMD, and he has over 100 dentists that would collaborate with us to create an ecosystem of education for the children. I would like that these funds are allocated because I would like to launch this wellness initiative with a budget of up to $2.5 million.

Mr. Chair, a couple things, point of order maybe. One, this is not the city of Las Vegas where Clark County, unincorporated Clark County, number one. But two, if you're speaking about a specific item, YOU'RE GIVING US A SALES PITCH AND I JUST DON'T FEEL THAT THAT MEETS THE CRITERIA OF WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE THE ITEM THAT YOU REFERENCE IS A GRANT COMING FROM COMMISSIONER KNAFT'S OFFICE. SO I JUST DON'T THINK IT'S TO HIS DISTRICT. SO I JUST I THINK MAYBE YOU GOT TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION WITH HIS OFFICE.

DID YOU MENTION?

THAT'S COMMISSIONER KNAFT. SO YOU CAN SCHEDULE A MEETING WITH HIS OFFICE.

THANK YOU KINDLY. I WILL.

THANK YOU.

Good morning. My name is Adrian Brasi. That's B-R-A-S-I. I'm here to address Agenda Item 34, the proposed amendment to Title VII, which aims to enforce short-term rental laws. I'm born and raised in Las Vegas, 29 years old. Two years ago, I bought a condo in Spring Valley for just under three times what it sold for in 2017. I consider myself very lucky to be a homeowner during a housing shortage. It's worth going into the numbers here. According to the St. Louis Fed, housing prices in the Vegas metro area are up 370% since bottoming out in 2011. In that time, the median household income is up only 60%. New private housing structures are being authorized for construction at roughly half their pre-crisis rate, while our population continues to boom. AirDNA, the industry standard STR database, STR being short-term rental, Estimates around 22,000 short-term rentals are active in Las Vegas, not saying how many of those are licensed, which is more than double the current housing inventory listed for sale. So it's a not insignificant amount of short-term rentals. This volume of STR listings should not be possible. For example, in my small working class neighborhood, There are currently seven illegal short-term rentals operating in plain sight. Each one of these units are ineligible for short-term rental licensure, flat out, in several different ways. Yet, they are all actively doing business. These are relatively affordable homes that could be rented out or sold to ordinary working people. These illegal units are being operated instead as rogue hotel businesses in an area with strict residential zoning, by the way. This is why I think that the fair and expeditious administration of short-term rental business licenses is crucial because the vast majority of applications in my opinion would be denied. Failure of Clark County to handle applicants is the very thing keeping us locked in this higher court legal deadlock which for the record I understand is complicated. If the law could actually properly be enforced A small handful of rentals would be granted their licensure, as is their right, and thousands of illegal STR owners would be heavily fined and possibly forced to rent out their houses to normal people in a housing market which is in dire need of supply. We have people here advocating for the interests of short-term rental owners, and that's fair. They deserve their due process. I'm here advocating for the interest of the 750 or so thousand homeless people in the U.S. and the half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck in a runaway housing market they just can't catch. This is a housing crisis that poses an imminent risk to the working class. If we want our communities to flourish, we cannot treat housing as a zero-sum game. They are homes. I implore the county officials to consider this when deciding the amendment in question. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And I also would like to remind everyone who is here to speak on item 34. There is going to be a separate public hearing for that item when we get to it. So if you speak now, then probably won't need to speak during the public hearing. Okay.

Welcome. Jacqueline Flores for the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association. Just to be clear, right now there are no such things as illegal short-term rentals. There's a federal court injunction that prohibits the county from requiring a short-term rental license at this time. THIS ORDINANCE ITEM 34 IS NOT ABOUT LAWLESS PLATFORMS OR HOMEOWNERS. IT IS ABOUT PROTECTING THE RESORT HOTEL MONOPOLY. IF THIS WERE TRULY ABOUT REQUIRING LICENSES, YOU WILL BE FIXING THE BROKEN LICENSING SYSTEM. YOU WILL BE STREAMLINING THE PROCESS. YOU WILL BE CLEANING THE BACKLOG OF APPLICATIONS FROM HOMEOWNERS WHO APPLIED ALMOST FOUR YEARS AGO AND ARE STILL WAITING FOR AN ANSWER. YOU WOULD OPEN THE PROCESS SO NEW APPLICANTS COULD EVEN APPLY. You have done none of that. Instead, you keep a system that is deliberately closed, slow, and inaccessible while claiming the problem is unlicensed hosts. That is not regulation, that is control. The people breaking the law here are not the widows, the veterans, or the young families trying to earn extra income from their own homes. The entity breaking the law is Clark County. You are enforcing regulations that courts have already found constitutionally defective. You are violating property owners' rights under state and federal law. And you are deliberately depriving average people of the ability to earn a lawful living from their private property. This is not public safety. This is not neighborhood protection. This is economic protectionism for the largest hotel interests in the Valley. You have a choice today. You can continue defending a monopoly at the expense of residents, or you can start treating property owners with the same respect you give corporations that lobby you. We will keep showing up until you choose the latter. Thank you.

Thank you. Also a reminder, please keep the clapping down. It messes up the record. Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning, my name is Crystal Abbott. I'm speaking on STR as well. I'm one of the lucky 90s babies who actually managed to become a homeowner. I served five years in the military, did two deployments, and this is the reason, my military service is the reason why I was able to become a homeowner in the first place. I own and live in one single modest house built in 1963 in a very working class neighborhood, and even this comes with a mortgage of nearly $3,000 a month. Yes, you heard that right. I would love nothing more than to have my entire home all to myself and my family. But since losing my job last year in an economy like this, I need to use every reasonable tool available to provide for myself and my disabled partner and our rescued and adopted fur babies. Regardless of our individual circumstances, homeowners need a fair path to compliance before the county creates a system that cuts off our ability to earn extra income that we desperately need. How can the county call this a fair system if licensing is completely unattainable? Personally, I am deeply invested in keeping my neighborhood clean, peaceful, and well maintained because it's where I live. Whether it's parking or disturbances, please regulate actual issues. Hold problem properties accountable. I want that too. We want that too. We are not asking for no regulation. We're asking for fair, workable regulation and a genuine path to compliance. Las Vegas already has a massive hospitality industry. The casinos will be fine. Families like mine are trying to hold on to the one home that we have. For my generation, the American dream is hard enough to reach. Please don't make it harder to hold on to a tiny piece of it that we have. Please protect our neighborhoods without punishing the people who live in them. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for your service.

Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Jimmy Johnson. I'm a lifelong resident of Clark County and a native. I'm also a retired 27-year employee of the Clark County Fire Department. I also hold a master's degree in public administration, so I understand the community. I understand the concerns for safety and also the need for public policy. It's my understanding, I own property. I don't run a short-term rental at this time, but I would like to. I own property on the Vegas Strip, and I would like the ability to do so. I've tried to comply with the open window that was open for like one month, I believe. He gave 220 licenses or so. Hasn't been open in years. People have been waiting on that, me included. And I'm just gonna echo the sentiments of everyone else here. We're not against regulation. We would just like the opportunity for A, a pathway to licensing so we can be in compliance. And I understand that you guys have outlined public safety measures and that's good. I'm all for that. But yes, we need to have a pathway to compliance and a greater number. because that will also prevent the black market from operating, which I think is unsafe. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hi, my name is Pius Segu. I'm speaking on behalf of the Greater Las Vegas Short Term Rental Association and all their members in favor of an open and unambiguous licensing process. I want to ask a fundamental question. What problem is our current policy actually solving? Consider this. What is the tangible real world difference between a guest staying for 29 days versus 32 days? Does the physical structure change? Does the neighborhood impact fundamentally transform over 72 hours? Of course not. That's absurd. On day 32, that stay is completely lawful and with zero red tape. While on day 29, the county treats the same homeowner as a violator subject to $10,000 a day fines and property liens. If the impact is identical, isn't the regulation entirely arbitrary? We hear claims that STRs cause the housing affordability crisis, but if STRs are depleting local housing stock, why does MLS data show months of unsold single family inventory sitting on the market across the valley? Elevated mortgage rates and lending costs are driving the market, not local homeowners who have already purchased their properties. More critically, everyone in this room needs to remember, Clark County is currently under federal preliminary injunction. The US District Court already examined this enforcement regime and ruled that homeowners demonstrated a clear likelihood of success on the merits under the 14th Amendment. The federal court satisfied the legal standard for injunctive relief because it recognized that levying life-altering fines, life-altering, we're talking 100 and something thousand dollars for some cases, That is cruel and unusual punishment. The punishment should equate the transgression. The federal court satisfied the legal standard for injunctive relief because it recognized that levying life altering fines and property liens while keeping the licensing portal backlogged for years is an unconstitutional due process violation. The county is federally barred from issuing these punitive fines because you cannot punish citizens for not having a license that you refuse to allow them to acquire. With international trade tensions, airline capacity cuts, and rising resort fees squeezing visitor budgets, why continue spending public resources defending unconstitutional enforcement in federal court instead of processing lottery winners who complied with everything they were asked to do and still have not received their license? There's no excuse for that. We want some accountability from our public servants, and we would like some representation as property owners of this county. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Cassandra Martinez. I just want to share a little bit of my story, and I'm here to speak on behalf of Short-Term Rental. Since I was a teenager, around 18, 19, I wanted to transition to male to female transsexual, and it pushed me to prostitution. I was arrested for three times, and whatever money I was able to make, that's what helped me to get my first home in Las Vegas. Doing short-term rental, I was able to complete school, prepare myself, and now I work for public health. It's still not enough money. Short-term rental has been helping me, my family, and giving employment to others. And we care for our neighbors. This is not about affecting neighbors. We care for our neighbors. And each of us here, we have rules and policies within inside our home. And also, we want to be five-star host review. So we review the guests. They review us. And this is the only platform that allows us to have a trusty business. And we want to be able to, Clark County, to look at us and meet us halfway. We want to pay... taxes, fees, regulations, just like Uber, Lyft was pushed back at some point and now they're able to operate and it works with the tourist flow, we want to be the same way. We want to have the opportunity to use our properties and to be able to assist with the economy here and employ others. We don't want Clark County to look the other way. We want them to look at us and be able to help us with licensing. That's what we need and that's what we want. It's changing lives. It changed my life to do Airbnb. I love customer service. I love to welcome guests and everything. And this is one way that I can do it. I really want you guys to open up and help us to regulate and to have an easy process to become a short-term rental license. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hi, my name is Shirley Amiduri. I'm here to speak on the short-term rental association issue. So I'm just going to be very candid. I'm somebody who has, was able to get out of, somebody mentioned I'm a 90s baby. Well, I started doing this business at 21 years old when it was still fresh and new on the block when I was in New York City. It had dramatically changed my life as a struggling student in debt to somebody who could afford, I was a musician at the time, somebody who can afford my lifestyle, somebody could afford my lessons, somebody could afford living in New York at a young age of 21 years old. I would eventually move to Las Vegas in 2020, not because of COVID, just because I was ready for a new market. And this had unlocked a lifestyle beyond just vanity reasons. It was a place that was able to open me up to accessing goals, to being a better human being, to being healthier, to buying better food. Right now, I am recovering from a relationship like we all do in life. But I had lost everything at the young age of 26 years old. I ended up in a psych ward, and then I was at my parents' house. And then the Clark County Association or whatever was going on had put a restriction. So somebody who had just lost everything and now I had no way to make profit, all of a sudden I had to go, figure out work, but the economy had changed drastically at the time. I pushed a rack into reinvestment. I was able to get a small town home here and recover from a serious medical crisis. And even though I only make with one room, because it's just a two bedroom town home, I have myself and I have a room. I mean, it's not, it jeopardizes neighborhoods. Like somebody had stated earlier, I'd been doing this for many years. If anything, I found that it adds resources to a neighborhood indefinitely by just bringing more money in. versus the, if we're talking about a capitalistic country to begin with, why does it matter that regular everyday citizens who are working everyday jobs, why are we restricted from access of income where the people are making billions of dollars who do funnel much money into Nevada itself, but they're building what, a hard rock cafe guitar right now while somebody is talking about we can't get licensing and it's our constitutional right as homeowners to be able to do what we want with our property. So it's not jeopardizing everyday citizens. It has helped me get out of a severe crisis. And I hope to be able to expand on that to be able to be able to be in this world. It's not random, it's just extra income and sometimes that extra income makes a significant difference on the quality of your life. So I beg you to at least wait until the injunction is decided upon or come up with actual regulations that work for the neighborhood person, the hostel style person and of course our high class person who is into investments because that's what this money, this city runs off of. We can do it for everyday people, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome. Morning, Commissioners. I'm John Wong, and I'm here speaking, representing the local short-term rental homeowners and operators. I want to address what this proposal really means for property owners in Clark County. These are our homes, our properties, our investments. We pay the mortgages, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, and employees and contractors who keep these properties running. Yet year after year, short-term rental homeowners face additional restrictions that make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to legally operate. Now the county wants Airbnb, Vrbo, and other platforms to block reservations and platforms for properties the county cannot verify as licensed. But how can you impose that requirement when the county itself has not provided homeowners with a functional licensing system? The application process has not even been reopened since 2022, and some homeowners who applied years ago are still waiting for final decisions. You cannot close the door to licensing and punish people for not being able to walk through it. And we have to ask, who benefits from eliminating short-term rentals? It certainly isn't homeowners. It isn't our cleaners, landscapers, pool companies, handymen, and other local small businesses. And it isn't travelers who want alternatives to traditional hotels. The hotel industry benefits when travelers have fewer choices. Whether intentional or not, the cumulative effects of these policies are clear. Independent homeowners are being pushed out of the short-term rental market, while large hotel corporations face less competition. Property rights have to mean something. To understand that reasonable regulations can protect neighborhoods and address legitimate problems, but regulations should not become a backdoor method of eliminating an entire class of lawful property use. If the county generally wants compliance, then give every qualified homeowner a fair opportunity to become compliant. Reopen licensing, process the applications that have been sitting for years, build an accurate real-time verification system, and establish meaningful due process before anyone's livelihood can be shut down. Homeowners, please don't let government regulation become a tool that protects large corporate interests at the expense of Clark County homeowners. You give them an inch, they will take a mile. We own these homes, we have property rights, and local homeowners deserve a fair opportunity to operate them responsibly. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning. My name is Madeline Durbin. I am 28 years old. I've lived in Las Vegas for about four years, and I really love it here. And I'm super blessed that I was able to buy my first home almost two years ago. But it's definitely been a challenge. As a single woman, I'm not married. I live alone. So I'm doing it all by myself. And my mortgage is over $3,000 a month. Last year, after I went through a really big family emergency, I realized I've got to get on top of things. And so I started to think about doing a short-term rental. I love hospitality. I got a lot of rooms in my house, so why not? I started to look into it, and I realized that there was a catch-22. You need a license to operate, but there's no way to get a license. I reached out to the county and found out that the window was closed, and there was no plan of reopening it. This, to me, didn't feel fair. I looked into it more and found out about the federal court and the injunction and everything that's going on, and I thought, wow, this is crazy. If I had bought a home in any other city in the country... I would be able to run an Airbnb out of my home, but right now, There's limitations. So I really want to implore you guys to consider that this is a freedom that we all are entitled to. And as many other people said, we are residents here. We are homeowners. We have families. We're just trying to support ourselves. And I also just want to say I don't think that there's a real competition between Airbnbs and the strip hotels. There's always going to be people that prefer one or the other. But the short-term rentals, the Airbnbs, they actually help support the people who really live here. And so, you know, I think that this is a much bigger issue. And since there is a federal court situation going on, that should be decided before any other actions take place that would inhibit people to operate their businesses right now. And yeah, that's all. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Welcome.

All right.

My name is Riley Krebs. Thank you for being here. I know that your job is tough. I'm actually a product of the Clark County School District. I went to John Romany Elementary. I went to Helen C. Cannon Middle School. I went to Silverado High School. And I am here to speak to you in favor of short-term rentals. I have three children. I have a bachelor's degree in computer science. I have a master's degree in... real estate development. I understand the economics and the things that are related to STRs as well as housing crisis and all those different kind of things. I'm also building stuff in Taos, New Mexico for affordable housing. But I think the thing with short-term rentals here in Clark County is I would please as a representative for us please help us find a way to be able to legally rent out our homes. None of us here, I think everybody has spoken eloquently on all of the different things going on around it, but I would just beg you for a path. instead of making it impossible, there is literally no way for any of us to be able to legally run an Airbnb if we wanted to. And I think that's a fair right in property ownership. We always talk about Las Vegas. I think Las Vegas is one of the greatest cities in the world. And I think that there is an economy in things that short-term rentals provide especially as we are struggling through this economy right now. And all the hotels are going to be fine. They've been there forever. All we're asking for is to be able to have a livelihood and to be able to live in this area legally and to function legally. And anyway, I'll leave that with you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome. Thank you.

My name is Lance Gonzalez. Um, I've lived in Las Vegas for over 20 years. Um, and this same residence that I'm in now, I've raised my family there. Uh, I have eight immediately supporting neighbors around me for an Airbnb. There's no impact on parking from when I had children in the home and they had a car. As we reach our golden years, we find that there are fewer and fewer jobs out there that want elderly people. when AI or a computer or a robot can take its place. And so that has an impact on an individual's income. Excuse me. The property we live on, we live there with our Airbnbs and there's no noise. My wife is a super host and she has over 1,000 five-star ratings. I've lived here since the 70s and I've watched Las Vegas grow and I've seen the history be imploded. It's not affordable like it used to be. and that's why people are choosing that come here to stay in an airbnb they love las vegas they want to spend their money here but they're thinking of a better financially way they can do it i have uh... an illness which most likely caused me to leave this life before my wife and We would just like to stay in our home, raise our grandchildren there from time to time, have family activities, not be a burden on our children who now have children of their own and they don't need one of us coming to live with them. the stories that you can read about online on her airbnb's airbnb comments some of them would be when a child has found their parent that they never knew and they came to las vegas newly married people that have stayed in the airbnb because they could afford that and we try to make it as nice as possible for them we've had people that were terminally ill come stay there until parent would pass. COVID.

Thank you. Please keep the cap clapping to a minimum. It messes up the record. Welcome.

Hello, my name is John Marshall. I'm here to support STR and all the acts that you consider, the value that we actually bring to the community. I'm a host and also a small business and vendor. Working with short-term rentals, I have been able to really grow my business and scale and also employ a dozen people here in the city. And I'm also speaking for other vendors that rely on short-term rental business for pool maintenance, landscaping. Pretty much everything you can think of that brings working community to this city. I have been able to take people by employing them from Section 8 and food stamps to being able to buy homes for their house to truly support them and give them a future that they can rely on. And this will critically impact them and their families along with everyone here that are owners and hosts. So I just really hope that you consider, you know, before making your decision, the true value that we bring and potentially how many unemployed people that this would cause by, you know, stopping the process and everything. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning. Good morning, my name is Sidmarie Quintaliano. I'm employed in one of the telecommunications company. I have three kids and we started Airbnb in 2020, mainly because our eldest, went to college and we have to pay apartment in Reno. So we thought of converting her room into an Airbnb. But before we did that, we have to make sure that we provide security for the two other siblings who are still in the house. So we made sure that our guest has their own private entrance and they cannot get into our house. And we want to make sure that we do not inconvenience our neighbors. So we have to make sure that they have a spot in our driveway. And so Airbnb has helped us a lot, paying for that apartment for our eldest. And now our eldest kid already graduated. We still have two in college. Our second son is at West Point, so we don't have to worry about him. But our youngest one is in North Carolina. So the Airbnb still provide for her apartment for rental. So back in 2020, we applied for license. But then I was required to show a one million liability insurance. And we were thinking, we're trying to make computation. We are not operating 100%. Because during summer, December, spring break, we closed down our Airbnb because our kids are coming home. So we needed that space. And we are only hosting one person. It's like we are not competing even with the hotels because we only accommodate one. It's just to make both ends meet. So we will not, you know, we allow our kids to graduate with less student loan as possible. So that's all I want to share. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Shirley Woods. I'm a host. I've been a host for eight years. I was just listening to the wonderful things that are going on in Clark County, such as Habitat for Humanity, helping the addicted people. Well, helping people is a lot what the hosts do. Like myself, we allow families that would not be able to get a place to stay and bring their family for a summer vacation. We allow that. I've done that. I've made a lot of people happy, had repeat families come again and again because it's affordable. And this is some of the reasoning that I'm coming to you to say that please take into consideration what we do. We're not all party hosts and all this kind of thing. I understand that you guys need to have some kind of regulation, but that's with anything. So that's okay. But to just... shut us down and not allow people to benefit from something where it's two-sided. You're helping the economy and also you're putting a little income into your pocket that you may not otherwise get. Right now, I'm just thinking, I signed on for this little part-time job. I'm not gonna mention where it is. They reduced my hours to three hours a day, four days a week. How can I live on that? So please consider what seniors like myself are doing. They're opening up their home and making a little income. As long as everybody's OK with it, the neighborhood, the community, the restaurants, everyone's benefiting, please take that into consideration. I know that you guys have your job, and you have people that in one ear are telling you to do this, and another ear are telling you to do that. But just consider the stories that you're hearing. They're real stories. And we really need to keep going forward with our incomes. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hello, commissioners. My name is Juan Salazar. I'm with the short-term rental. I have a four-bedroom house. I live in, I stay in one of them. I stay in my master bedroom. So I have three extra bedrooms that are extra large. I'd like to be able to do short term on those without restrictions of you can't live one mile away from a casino, half a mile from a casino, two miles away from the casino. My house was there before the casinos were ever built. My house is, like I said, extra large bedrooms, and I see no reason why I should not be able to get a permit to do short-term rentals. And so I'm here just to ask you to approve us, give us a chance. The money we make, the money that I make, goes back into the community. I don't like to cook. So I go out for lunch and dinner just about every single day. Where do I go? I go into the community. Where do I go grocery shopping? I go in the community to the grocery stores, Vons, Albertsons, Smiths. I do travel around the neighborhoods. Gas is expensive. Food prices are high. The money that we make from the short-term rentals will help us live better, buy more clothes. I need a brand new shirt. I need some clothes. The short-term rentals will help me buy clothes, spend more money in the community. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Welcome.

I'm on behalf of my HOA and it's the condo community that is a CIC with 327 units. And our governing document does not allow short-term rentals. Our rental guideline is minimum... Can you state your first and last name for the record? Oh, sorry. My name is Pete Amby. I'm on behalf of HOA. And we have... I'm in a CIC, and we have 327 condos. And our governing document does not allow short-term rentals. But we do have about... over nine units, they've been renting short-term rentals for over 10 years. And so much violations, and our hands are tied because when we do a violation, they say, oh, he's rented for six months. And our guideline, rental guideline, is minimum 30 days. And it's an ongoing issue, and I think the SGR guidelines should be very strict. And we have about eight units owned by a very wealthy family out of California. They have all the units in different family members' names, and it's all 100% occupied. So when that's a violation, we ask for a rental agreement. They produce a dummy agreement. They're renting it for 30 days. And if you need some evidence, am I allowed to produce some documents?

Yes, and give a right to your right to the clerk. And I'm going to ask you to say and spell your first and last name so they can record it.

Okay. Pete, P-E-T-E, and the last name is A-M-B-I. I am the H.O. President for the past 20 years, and this is an issue for over 15 years. Thank you.

Thank you.

Would I still have three minutes? Would I still have three minutes, Vice Chair?

YOU STARTED WITH THE, YOU GOT ABOUT TWO MINUTES.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I WANTED TO MAKE SURE. AGAIN, ERIC KING, LONG TIME RESIDENT. I WANTED TO SPEAK TO ITEMS 9, 15, 16, 23, 24, AND 33. THEY ARE ALL RELATED, AND I'M GOING TO SPEAK TO WHY THAT IS. THERE'S $22 MILLION, $22.9 MILLION ON ITEM 24. 999,000 PLUS, JUST SHY OF A MILLION DOLLARS ON ITEM 23. and 1.9 million on substance abuse for families impacted by substance abuse. That's a lot of money. We earn tax dollars, give some of it to y'all. And where does it go? Well, it's going to really good programs that all of you fine leaders have helped engineer and bring about funding for. And we have 67,000 more trees planned right now, as I understand it, to be planted. Most of that is 60,000 for the city of Las Vegas making up shortfalls. Trees are actually related to every single item I just spoke to, most of which are parks, monies and funds and donations and even safe key programs for our kids who have higher suicide rates more alienation from their environment and families, and lack of belief in their future and all the angst that goes along with that, which will cost enormous amounts of money if not addressed more effectively. Yet, in places like Japan, THEY HAVE A UNIVERSITY WITH A FOUR-YEAR DEGREE ON FOREST BATHING AND ALL OF ITS VALUE ADDS TO THE SOCIETY THAT THEY'RE SEEKING DESPERATELY TO PRESERVE WHILE THEIR AGING POPULATION OUTSTRIPS THEIR ABILITY TO HANDLE THE FUTURE. THE 350,000 THAT'S PLANNED TO ADDRESS THINGS LIKE AB 96 BILL, I'LL HAVE TO CONTINUE THIS. THANK YOU FOR HEARING ME.

THANK YOU. All right, seeing no one else for public comment, we'll move to Section 4. Mr. Schiller.

Commissioners, we're going to move to your agenda. Your next item is approval of the minutes of the regular meeting on July 21st, 2026. I move to approve the minutes.

We have a motion by Commissioner Segerblum. Cast your vote. Motion is adopted.

Commissioners, your next item is approval of the agenda with the inclusion of any emergency items and the deletion of any items. Staff does not have any emergency items, deletions, or changes.

Move to approve the agenda. We have a motion by Commissioner Segerblum. Please cast your vote. Motion is adopted.

Commissioners, we can now move to the approval of your consent agenda consisting of items number 7 through number 33.

Move to approve the consent agenda.

We have a motion. Cash or vote? Motion is adopted.

Commissioners, it's now past 10 a.m., so we'll now move to the public hearing section of your agenda. Your item is to conduct public hearing to approve, adopt, and authorize the chair to cite an ordinance to amend Title VII, Chapter 7.110 of the Clark County Code by requiring that licenses abide by the duties set forth in the chapter as a condition of licensure or renewal of a license, clarifying the basis of calculation of the annual business license fee, prohibiting licenses from accepting or facilitating the payment of compensation for the rental of a short-term rental unit, STR, unless it has verified that the STR is properly licensed and requiring that verification by means of an electronic verification system, If such a system is established and maintained, requiring licenses to include certain information on STR listings authored by the licensee, requiring licensees to deactivate an STR listing when the STR is not properly licensed by the county, clarifying that licenses may only collect transient lodging taxes for an STI, requiring the retention of records by licensees relating to the submission of transient lodging taxes in lieu of monthly reporting requirements, revising the procedures governing the service of subpoenas, clarifying the procedures and basis for revocation, suspension, condition, limitation, or non-renewal of licenses, providing for the issuance of notices of violation and civil penalties for violations of section 7.110.030, 7.110.080 and 7.110.090 of this chapter, repealing provisions governing enforcement actions which are duplicative of Title I of this code and provided for other matters properly related thereto.

Thank you. Mr. Keone.

Hello, Mr. Chair, members of the commission, Vince Keona, Director of Business License. So this ordinance amends our accommodations facilitator regulations chapter 7.110. These are regulations that govern short term rental platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and others. I just wanted for the record that this ordinance is for the platforms only. Staff will come at a later time for the actual short term rental licensing application and process. So this is just for the platforms. So the ordinance accomplishes three goals. First, it cleans up some of our existing regulations to provide greater clarity. These are detailed in the agenda item development report that's part of the back of the agenda item. Second, it fixes the concerns raised by the federal court's injunction. Specifically, the amended ordinance imposes no obligation on platforms to verify listings before publication, to monitor listings for content, or to deactivate or remove listings on their own initiative. It also makes clear that when the county asks the platform to deactivate a listing because it's not in compliance, the platform does not need to remove the listing. Instead, the platform must only remove the capability of the platform to process a rental transaction for the property. So in other words, the listing can remain posted on the website, but no one can book on the platform. And then last, the ordinance also introduces a new regulation, Section 7.110.080A. As amended by this ordinance will now require platforms to confirm that an STR has a county business license before processing a booking transaction. This new verification requirement can take place at the point of sale or before. It's basically entirely up to the platform. This regulation was adopted from a similar regulation in New York City. After this implementation, the platform began actively preventing illegal listings from being activated. And as an example, the city reported that one platform alone saw a number of active STR listings dropping from 38,000 active listings down to 3,000 active listings as a result of the law. This type of regulation has been reviewed by courts in other states and found to comply with federal law. We're hopeful that this regulation will protect licensed STRs from unfair competition posed by unlicensed STRs, keep our neighborhoods protected from the proliferation of unlicensed STRs, and ensure adequate supply of long-term housing for the residents of Clark County. And I've also heard some comments on the implementation of the verification process. So I just wanted on the record that our goal is to make it as simple as possible for our platforms to verify county licensing. And we're already working with some platforms on the timeline for compliance. And we'll be more than happy to work with any other platforms that want to work with us. That concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anyone would like to come forward at this time who has not already spoken, please come do so at this point. State your first and last name. Welcome.

Again, Eric King, longtime resident. I have not spoken on this subject ever, I don't think publicly, in a long time since I spoke to anybody about it. Not being a particular STR owner myself, yet understanding very much, having talked with lots of developers in my time, planners and such, that one of the ways to help spruce up a property is to cut down trees or remove large portions of them so that you get a better frontage view and imagery to show off X Y & Z house to hopefully charge more for rent and or purchase given that that is the normative function of most people who approach development and or transactional real estate development I'd like to advocate that there's consideration by you very smart people who care a lot about the future health and well-being of this hot rock that we live on, which will definitely become hotter before it becomes cooler, to help apply and prove in some fashion with language that supports it that these people who would like to do all these things find that they wanna do what they wanna do with their property and I think there's greater wisdom that could be applied and encouraged by governmental agencies and enforcers that say it's not a good idea to cut down a mature tree that acts as at least two AC units annually to cool its equivalent BTU cooling power of one mature tree which will take 20 to 50 years to then be replaced if said homeowner or corporation that owns property would even put another tree in its place once cut down or somehow ruined. If we don't do those kind of things, the shortfall of the 350,000 plus trees planned right now, in addition to the 67,000 I mentioned, to help bridge large gaps of what heating will happen here, urban heat island effect, global climate change, warming and all the things related to why people die and go to the hospital more often now. in more cities than ever in the history of humanity. All those problems, as they escalate faster here, which they already have than any other city in America, those things can be prevented to some degree by the language I'm talking about, to help people become aware of a part of them owning property here in this very hot rock we live in. And I thank you for hearing me on this. I really hope these words come through clearly and so that there's realization of people doing whatever, including STR treatments of properties. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning. My name is Andre Dixon, that's D-I-X-S-O-N. I support strict regulation of short-term rentals because I am pro-affordable housing. At one point in time, the median house cost three times the median household income. Now it's over six times, and short-term rentals are part of the problem. Every house that becomes a short-term rental is a home denied to a Las Vegas resident or family. I also chose to speak today because I'm tired of short-term rental platforms and hosts trying to frame this issue as them in a righteous battle against corporations. I am here to speak for the majority of Las Vegas Valley residents who want affordable housing, who want community in our neighborhoods, neighbors in our neighborhood, not tourists. Many hosts don't even live here. They are not part of our community. They want to consume our housing to enrich themselves, and the average Las Vegas family who just wants a place to live cannot compete. We need restrictions on short-term rentals to promote and protect affordable housing, and we need swift enforcement when platforms and hosts try to skirt the law. The fines and penalties must be substantial in order to be an effective deterrent. Platforms and hosts will continue to operate illegally until the cost of doing so is greater than the money they're making. Airbnb is a $100 billion tech giant. They have the means to check the listings on their website against a county database. They are not helpless to stop illegal listings and bookings. They are complicit. They want to profit from illegal bookings, and we must hold them accountable as other cities and countries do. Just a few weeks ago, Airbnb lost their federal appeal on short-term rental laws passed in New Orleans. The same fight for affordable housing is going on all over the country and around the world. For property owners, buying a house does not mean you get to do whatever you want with it. That is a fallacy. There are many kinds of businesses you cannot legally run from your house. Short-term rentals are not being unjustly targeted. Hosts and platforms have proven laws matter little without sufficient enforcement, so if the county needs a larger code enforcement department, let's get that going. We could also launch a program where residents can support suspected illegal short-term rentals. Clark County investigates, and if it's confirmed, the county fines the host, fines the platforms, and gives the whistleblower 10% of the fines collected. Whatever promotes swift enforcement and serves as an effective deterrent to breaking the law. Residential housing should be for residents to live in. Affordable housing serves our community. Short-term rentals take housing away from the community. It's that simple. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning. My name is Malise Simpson, S-A-M-P-S-O-N. I am speaking on behalf of the Short-Term Rental Association. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge Louis Korndike, who passed away on Independence Day. able to attend his celebration this past weekend. He served our country, he served for the United States Post Office, and he served as a co-founder for the Short-Term Rental Association, so I just want to acknowledge him. I did have a, my son had a medical emergency this morning, so I barely made it down here, but I felt it was important to come anyway, but I didn't prepare ANYTHING BUT A COUPLE THOUGHTS THAT HAVE COME TO MIND. I HAD A CLIENT THAT HAD APPLIED FOR HER LICENSE FOUR YEARS AGO. SHE CALLED ME LAST WEEK AND SAID SHE JUST GOT HER INSPECTION AFTER FOUR YEARS. I walked into her house, her rental, after four years to see it a little bit run down because of the long-term rental. So she'll probably have to put a little more money into that property to get it up to short-term rental standards. Personally, myself, I had a property that I had to do long-term. After a year, she quit paying her rent. She was due. I had to go to court to get her out. I then had to put $30,000 to repair the property, only probably to turn around and rent it long term again. What I see is that the midterm is definitely an option for us, for some of us, the issue. And there's a demand because there's many emergencies with local families that have a flood, and the insurance pays for them to stay into another home, which is usually two or three months. So that's midterm. We can do that. The issue is that we can't have... HOME SITTING AROUND EMPTY WAITING FOR THAT SO THERE IS SOMETIMES A SHORTAGE OR THEY CAN'T FIND THE RIGHT HOUSING BECAUSE WHILE WE'RE WAITING AROUND FOR A MIDTERM WE'RE PAYING OUR MORTGAGE OUR UTILITIES OUR OUR LANDSCAPING EVERYTHING LIKE THAT SO UM I JUST DON'T THINK YOU KNOW OVERALL WE'RE NOT MAKING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS DOING THIS WE ARE SEVEN COMMUNITY Also, one last story real quick is I was doing a midterm in one of my properties, and I don't know if you guys saw it on the news, but I had a guy from the poker tournament in my property for midterm. Ended up on the news because he was robbed in the property. He's now personally suing me for that robbery of his cash that he had. I'm sure you guys saw this story. SUE AND ME PERFECTLY FOR THAT. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LISTENING.

THANK YOU. WELCOME. GIVE IT TO THE CLERK.

GOOD MORNING, COMMISSIONERS. I AM A LEGALLY LICENSED SHORT-TERM RENTAL OPERATOR HERE IN CLARK COUNTY. I'm speaking today regarding agenda item 34. Short-term rentals themselves are not the problem. My wife and I have been hosts for years, and we've never had a single issue with our neighbors, noise, or enforcement. When run responsibly, SCR is our benefit to the community. Opening up licensing so more responsible hosts can operate legally will only help the county. The real problems with the unlicensed property operating at the moment. Look at how this county successfully handled rideshare. We created a clear legal licensing path for Uber and Lyft, which benefited everyone and brought in revenue, while maintaining strict rules and penalties against unlicensed drivers. Short-term rentals should be treated the exact same way. Right now, compliant business owners like my wife and I are paying for licensing, strict insurance, and local taxes. We follow the ordinances to ensure our property is safe, yet we are forced to compete with illegal operators who cut corners and pay no fees and operate at a fraction of the cost. It is unfair competition that punishes those who play by the rules. I support the enforcement measures in item 34 to stop illegal hosting, but as we enforce these rules, I urge the commission to expand access to licensing. Give a good faith host a clear fair paths to get licensed, pay their share, and contribute positively to Clark County, just like we did with Rideshare. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Welcome. My name's Mike Hoffman, for the record, community member. I'm not completely against Airbnb, however regulation is required. The licensing system backlog, sure, that slowed it down. Having to verify distances of 660 feet or 1,000 feet here in Clark County from other STRs and verify 2,500 feet from a resort would also slow down this process. The legislature put distance requirements in AB 363. Also, too, STR cap of 1% of housing is reasonable. That might only be a small fraction of the occupancies, yet it is impactful. I have trust that there will be a better licensing system with proper enforcement of ordinances. Down the road, more strict ordinances may be required. I'm not sure if the number of applicants for the RNG lottery were even the capacity of licenses that could be issued when that lottery was happening. Given the fact that we live in Clark County, where Las Vegas is, this notion of short-term rentals needs to be regulated to a high standard. Any cap on STRs and stringent ordinances are needed. Cap on STRs trenches ordinance are needed people running out one or two rooms to supplement incomes should get privy or preference to the share of the 1% of these licenses well the 1% of the possible housing Maybe we should take a look at other municipalities and their ordinances on the matter. Thank you for your time Thank you Welcome

Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Rajvijay. I'm a Clark County resident since 2014. Do you need the address?

No, if you could just say your first and last name one more time.

It's R-A-J is the first name. Last name is V-I-J.

That's it, six letters.

I want to address the repeated claim that short-term rentals are a major cause of Clark County's affordable housing crisis. That claim does not hold up to the numbers of the facts. The facts are that Clark County has roughly 900,000 to 975,000 housing units. Even the highest estimates of short-term rental listings in the Valley represent only a small fraction of that total, and that total being well under 2%. The county's own ordinance already caps licensed short-term rentals in unincorporated areas at just 1% of housing stock. In practice, the county has issued only a couple hundred licenses and has kept the application process largely closed for years. In fact, while I was sitting down, I researched how many licenses have actually been approved, and it appears to be around 209. The idea that a tightly limited number of short-term rentals is driving the housing crisis is simply not credible, as the previous speaker also noted. The real drivers of housing unaffordability in Southern Nevada are very well documented. Nearly 90% of the land in Clark County is controlled by the federal government. Developable land is scarce, and the process for releasing it is slow and bureaucratic, as we all know. Population growth has outpaced new housing construction for years. Zoning restrictions, high construction costs, and limited multifamily development further constrain supply. These are structural problems that existed long before structural rentals became common, and they will remain long after any further restrictions are imposed. Study after study has found that short-term rentals have only a small effect on rents and home prices. Studies that have heavily restricted or banned them have not seen meaningful improvements in vacancy rates or affordability. The housing shortage is measured in tens of thousands of units for low- and moderate-income households, not a few thousand short-term rental listings, many of which are owner-occupied homes, spare rooms, or occasionally used properties. So blaming short-term rentals as a convenient political narrative, it allows attention to be diverted from the harder work of increasing housing supply, reforming land-use rules, and addressing the federal land bottleneck. It also unfairly targets ordinary homeowners, seniors, veterans, working families, individuals who are trying to just use their own property to make ends meet. If the goal is more affordable housing, then focus on the actual causes. Stop using short-term rentals as a scapegoat. The data does not support the claim. The people who live in this community deserve way better than false solutions. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hello, my name is Molly Gabay. I'd like to share another perspective. Las Vegas should offer visitors choices. Not every family wants to stay in a casino. Not every parent wants to walk their children through gaming areas or expose them to cigarette smoke. Responsible, licensed, short-term rentals complement our tourist economy, I believe. They don't have to compete against it. The answer to any concerns is reasonable regulation and enforcement. Not creating a licensing system people cannot access and then using their lack of license to shut them out of the market. Short-term rentals broaden Las Vegas' appeal as a destination. Regarding another gentleman's comment about not having enough housing, I am a real estate agent, and there's actually other things that are mainly affecting that, which is current homeowners are locked, most current homeowners who are locked in 3% mortgage rates during the pandemic refuse to sell their homes, especially in this market where the market rate is 6.7%. This has frozen the real estate market, keeping active housing inventory low. As well as a massive wave of people are moving from California to southern Nevada to capitalize on the lack of state income tax. These buyers arrive with high incomes and home equity, and they bid up homes in the market as well. And another fact that many people may not know is that over 80% of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government. The Las Vegas Valley is physically boxed in by federal land, mountains, and conservation zone, so fairly limiting how much new housing development can build to keep up with the population growth. As well, I'd like to state that the federal court expressly recognized that Nevada real property ownership implicates the rights to possess, use, enjoy, control, and dispose of property, and held that the opportunity to obtain a short-term rental license was a protected property interest under the circumstances. And I just stand here today for the record, just for our property rights. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, this will be our final comment for the public hearing. Welcome.

Good morning, Commissioner Stephanie Phillips. I'm here to share my personal experience with a short-term rental and I know many others in our community who have endured similar or even worse situations. When we purchase a home, we expect the peaceful enjoyment of our property. Homeowners should not be forced to endure parties, excessive noise, traffic and disruptions caused by tourists every weekend. We have a right to privacy, safety and the quiet enjoyment of our homes we have worked so hard to build and maintain. I know firsthand how damaging and improperly managed STR can be because I lived next to one for three years. At the time, I was a single mother with two young children. Nearly every weekend, I worried about what might happen to my family, my property, and my neighborhood. One night at approximately 1.30 in the morning, an STR guest began spinning donuts in the street directly outside my home. He could have lost control and driven into the front of my house where my children were sleeping. On another occasion, nearly 50 guests gathered next door, and they decided to move into my front yard, stood on my grass, gathered under my tree as though my private property were a public park. Other incidents involve yelling, fighting, loud music and disturbances in the middle of the night. Each time I went out to confront them, tell them to knock it off, get off my property, turn down the music and put myself at risk doing so as the police weren't timely in responding. I repeatedly called the police, documented the incidents, took photographs, compiled stacks of paperwork, and went to court three separate times. During those three years, I was threatened, yelled at, and harassed on my own property. No homeowner and certainly no single mother should ever have to live that way. Just a few weeks ago, another STR, one street to the north of me had a raging party with at least 50 people outside loitering in the streets. At least eight cop cars were there and the police helicopter overhead was for quite some time. It was outrageous and should never have been tolerated by homeowners who actually live in these neighborhoods. The right of a STR owner to profit from a property does not supersede the rights of neighboring homeowners to feel safe and peacefully enjoy their homes. I respectfully urge the county to adopt strong enforceable protections. If police are called to a licensed STR three or more times within a six to 12 month period for verified disturbances, that property's license should be revoked. The county should also establish and strictly enforce reasonable occupancy and parking limits so these businesses do not overwhelm residential neighborhoods. I also ask the STR owners to consider whether they would tolerate these conditions next to their homes and families. They surely would not. Please protect the residents who live in these neighborhoods every day, invest in their homes, raise their children there, and contribute to the community year-round. And for reference, I am a real estate broker and have worked in real estate here for 33 years. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now close the public hearing and open up to the board for comments. Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple things. So this is for legal because... I feel like the ordinance before us is not anything that we've heard about, and I think Section 7 of the ordinance is important for us to talk about. I think it has to be reiterated that this is the first step of addressing our current ordinance. Is that, can you... I have heard a lot about short-term rentals, but I've heard nothing about this ordinance, so I want to understand. I want to make sure I understand, because I think this is important, and I think Section 7 says a lot of that.

Thank you, Commissioner. Jeff Rogan, Deputy District Attorney. Yes, you're correct. This ordinance, as Director Keanu mentioned in his presentation, solely relates to platforms. It does not relate to the regulations of short-term rental operators.

So can I ask this? Because people that are listening at home, what is a platform? I mean, right? So we can dumb it down so that for other public comment that we're talking about the ordinance that's before us.

Sure. So the platforms are the companies like Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia, any type of website or app that processes booking transactions for short-term rental operators. So those are the folks that that actually hook up a tenant with the short-term renter operator, process that transaction, take a fee, remit transient lodging taxes to us, the things that you would think about that are part of any type of short-term rental transaction. So this is regulated by Chapter 7.110 of our code. There's a separate code, Chapter 7.100, that governs the short-term rental operators. sent out for business impact statement and changes in the near future. This is solely with regard to those platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo. With regard to Section 7, which is on page 7 of the ordinance, you're correct. That's where the bulk of the changes are coming from. But by way of background, what the federal court had issues with with regard to our platforms regulations was the suggestion that our ordinance required these platforms to police all listings, deactivate listings that didn't meet our regulations, and things like that. And they found that that violated a federal law. So what we did, rather than continue to fight that, is look at what other jurisdictions that have confronted this same issue, and there are many that have confronted this same type of litigation from Airbnb and others, is what we're doing here, which is amend this to remove any suggestion that they have a responsibility to police their own listings to remove or deactivate any listing that's noncompliant. That is our obligation as the county, and that's what we will do. Other jurisdictions, and this is directly related to Section 7, 7.1100.80A, what they have found has worked for them is requiring platforms at the point of transaction or before to verify that the short-term rental has a license. And that's been upheld by the courts. The courts have found that that does not violate the same federal law that's at issue in our injunction. Um, and so those have been upheld. So that's what 7.1, 1 0 0 8. Oh, a does just like other jurisdictions have adopted in the recent past New York city being the most predominant one that, uh, director Keanu touched upon in his presentation. Does that answer your question commissioner?

Yes, because you remember that I asked when we first started, are the fees high enough to cover the additional staff that we need? And so the answer was yes, right? So I just want to... Just want to make sure that people understand you've got to have the infrastructure first before we can get the rest of it done. And I think this was tied up for a lot of reasons. But now if we have this in place, then we can continue to move through the other process relatively quickly in our world, right? but you've got to have the infrastructure first. So I think this is a good fix. I don't have to love it, but if what other states are doing, this is what we should be doing, so we're consistent. So thank you. So with that, if no one else has any questions, I'm happy to make a motion to approve it.

We have a motion by Commissioner Kirkpatrick. Please cast your vote. Motion is adopted.

Commissioners, we can now move to the business section of your agenda. Your next item is to identify emerging issues to be addressed by staff or the board at future meetings, receive updates on the activities of various regional boards and commissions, and direct staff accordingly.

Anyone with any emerging issues? Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

Sorry, ate my Wheaties. I have plenty today, so. Okay, so a couple things I want to start with. So I recently met with the City of Hope, which you all know that they are, they do a lot of research with cancer and different things. And I know that they're applying for an application with the state. And so I would like to ask the board if they would agree that we could send a resolution as a letter of support, that it would be great for our community to have this option. and so i did speak to commissioner naft and he was not opposed but i wanted to get the rest of my board and maybe then direct staff to write the resolution and so they can include it in their application i do think that it's a win for clark county as a whole and um i think we should support it okay nothing looks like that's a good one okay so my uh second thing is remember last uh January, I reminded you all about how much fun the PJ Pajama Run was. So registrations are open. So we're looking to add 500 people to this. It's a fun time. And most importantly, the proceeds go back to our foster kids right here in the community. So all the pajamas are collected, go back to our kids. So I'm asking my fellow commissioners, which some of you agreed to last time, that to join us. And maybe we can have an internal contest amongst the departments if they want to send people to join. I'm looking at you, Mason, because I know you're going to find me some people. But it really is, you get to go through the glittering lights. Everybody does wear their pajamas. It's fun. We've seen a lot of people... Wearing the same pajamas. We've seen people having animal pajamas. But most importantly, they're doing tons for our foster kids. And it's another way to who doesn't love a new pair of jammies, right? So putting that out there. And as I talk about that, look, we're fortunate to have the value champions that we have. But we have a lot of great employees across all departments that we have and our agencies that we work with. And I would like to see the commission, not necessarily the staff, but the commission kind of put together some activities that we can embrace the entire county of, regardless of where they are. So some of the things I think about are, and I know that we have like the talent show coming up, and that's the A team, To be honest, I think the commission needs to be more engaged and closer to our employees because I think that it's hard right now. And when I started at the county commission, it was a no brainer that you could take the summer off because it was a slow time. That is not the case. We are 24-7, 365 days a year. And whether you have vacation time or not, you can get burned out pretty easily because it's a negative environment. People come to us because they need help, because their life is in turmoil or Things are not going well, and I think we as a Commission need to wrap our arms around our employees, give them the support, give them fun. I believe in laughter, even when I have my worst days. If I can call a friend that'll make me laugh, it might change my entire day, and I'll get through it the rest of the day. So I would like to see us, Commission, maybe pull together things like maybe a chili cook-off in the fall across the ballot across all of our departments and we do a secret shopper surprise and see who has the best one. Maybe it's another, maybe it's National Peach Pie Day and everybody brings in peach pie. I just feel like we have to do that. I feel, for me, my heart is the fullest when I can see the end result of the things that I do, right? Because During COVID, it was dark times, but we had a lot of amazing employees who did exactly what we need them to do. And we need to keep ensuring that the health and wellness of our own employees are first. And I think the commission needs to be part of that. And it doesn't have to cost money either. We can all do different little things. So any thoughts from the commissioners? Listen, y'all, trust me, I'll have an agenda at the end of the day if you guys don't tell me what you're interested in.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. We've been doing a lot in my office with the employees, and I think that as much as we can do to celebrate and honor the folks who are making Clark County work, we should do that.

I support your ideas, but I would go one further and say we should have paid maternity leave and we should have childcare.

We're in cost containment and I'm trying to find things that we can do to get us through these rough times. But thank you for your input.

Mr. Vice Chair, I fully support doing more to highlight our employees and recognize the tremendous service they provide to our community and really provide some additional activities for them. With my RTC hat on, I want to make sure that the public is aware that starting on Sunday is our new service changes, and we've got a big one coming that I know Commissioner Sagerbloom is very excited about, which is the implementation of our Maryland Parkway bus rapid transit project, the red line. And so if you need more information about the new service routes, particularly the Maryland Parkway BRT, which we'll be doing a formal kickoff on next month, then you can go to rtcsnv.com.

All right, anyone else with any emerging issues? All right, seeing no one, we'll turn it back over to Manager Schiller.

Commissioner Kirkpatrick, what's the date of the run?

The date of the run is November 15th. It's a Sunday. It's at 4.30, and it's always a little bit brisk, which is why those warm jammies matter.

Commissioners, your next item is to approve, adopt, and authorize the chair to sign a resolution requesting the Board of County Commissioners of Clark County, Nevada to issue general obligation limited tax hospital improvement bonds ADDITIONALLY SECURED BY GROSS HOSPITAL PLEDGE REVENUES IN THE MAXIMUM AGGREGATE PRINCIPAL AMOUNT OF $45 MILLION, $770,000, PROVIDING CERTAIN DETAILS AND CONNECTION THEREWITH AND PROVIDING THE EFFECTIVE DATE HEREOF, SITTING AS THE UMC CENTER OF SOUTHERN NEVADA BOARD OF HOSPITAL TRUSTEES. I BELIEVE WE HAVE MASON HERE TO SPEAK TO YOU.

Good morning, everyone. Mason Van Howling, Chief Executive Officer of University Medical Center, and I'm joined with my colleague, Ms. Jennifer Wakem, who's our Chief Financial Officer. On particular items 36 and 37, they're actually related. Just want to update you as sitting as the trustees of UMC. As you know, we've been going through our master plan. Got a little put on ice there with the pandemic, but we picked up. And as you know, UMC has been able to kind of beautify, unify, revitalize the campus. And so we're moving to some of the next phases of our master plan. These two items cover two important projects for UMC. The first I'm gonna cover is at 800 Hope Place, which is our trauma center, our children's hospital, our children's emergency room. But on the fourth and fifth floor, Those have always been more administrative offices, more support, more ancillary. So we've got our case managers, our social workers, some of our Medicaid eligibility, some of our state workers that partner with UMC. So we've vacated those fourth and fifth floor, and we want to turn that into patient care. And particularly, we want to create an inpatient acute rehab. So on an annual basis, almost close to 1,000 patients, after we get them taken care of in the trauma center, pediatric trauma center. We have a great orthopedic program. We do hips and knees and joints. We are now one of the four comprehensive stroke centers in the Valley. So often we'll get them back. They get to know and love our nurses, our doctors, our therapists, our PT, OT, speech. And then what we do is pass them off to another provider in the community. So we want to be able to take care of those patients at UMC, have that continuity of care. So we're looking at moving the fourth and fifth floor into 29 inpatient acute care rooms. So we'll be able to continue to treat those patients, be able to discharge them directly from UMC back to home instead of transitioning them to some of the other providers that are out there supporting us. So that'll take about a two year project. We've gotta put two more elevators on the external part of the building. We're gonna move out the trauma center a little bit more. create some more waiting room space for our first floor. But again, an important project for UMC and be able to really take care of our patients on the full spectrum. The other project is one near and dear to the employees of the hospital of UMC. So as you can imagine and you all know, the medical district is a hot, area to grow, and doctors, and nurses, and UNLV, and UMC, and everybody's kind of growing in that neighborhood. So we've had a parking issue for a long time. And as UMC's demands for the highest level of care in Nevada, parking becomes a challenge both for our employees, but also visitors, patients coming in, both on the inpatient side and the outpatient side. So what we want to do is take one of our surface lots that's kind of backed by the ER and the trauma, kind of back a house of the hospital. We want to build a five-story garage, 808 spots, move all of our staff to there, and then on Shadow Lane, we have a three-story garage. We want to make that all patient and visitors. We've got complimentary valet, but we also want to run golf carts to be able to shuttle people right there, but that's right on the main entrance of UMC for our patients. So we'll be able to move all of our employees in the back, provide all that for our guests and patients and visitors visiting their loved ones at the hospital. The garage only takes about a year. The inpatient rehab takes about two because we've got to plummet with medical gas and other things to be able to convert that into. But we've already done the RFP on the inpatient. It's a great combination of SR construction and Rafael coming together on that particular project. And then we'll find the builder of the parking garage. Our chief financial officer is here to answer any questions, but open to any questions you may have.

Are there any questions? Well, I'd just like to say that I'm extremely excited about these two projects and would like to thank Jennifer and also Jessica and her entire team as well as our manager for getting us to this point. So thank you. I entertain a motion.

I'm not sure if I can do this, but I would move to approve 36 and 37. Can I do them separately?

Yeah, separately. You guys are sitting as the Board of Trustees currently. All right.

So I would move to approve 36.

We have a motion. Cash or vote? Motion is adopted. Thank you.

And now I move to approve 37.

Do I have a motion to cast your vote? I think it has to be read into the record.

Yeah, let the county manager read it into the record.

Commissioners, this is to approve, adopt, and authorize the chair to sign a resolution concerning the financing of hospital projects related to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, directing the county clerk to notify the Clark County Debt Management Commission of a proposal to issue Clark County Nevada general obligation limited tax hospital improvement bonds additionally secured by gross pledge revenues in the maximum aggregate principal amount of $45,770,000, providing certain details in connection therewith and providing the effective date.

All right, now I move to approve 37.

And there is a motion. Cast your vote. Motion is adopted.

Commissioners, your next item is to receive the Clark County School District fiscal year 2026 annual report. Excuse me, commissioners.

We'll have to recast the vote on 37.

We missed one. There is a motion by Commissioner Segerbloom. Please cast your vote. Motion is adopted.

Commissioner, your next item is to receive a Clark County School District fiscal year 2026 annual report of air quality penalty fund expenditures and approve the CCSD fiscal year 2027 annual spending plan of available air quality penalty funds.

Good morning, commissioners. Marcy Henson, the director of the Department of Environment and Sustainability. So the item in front of you today is to receive a report on the school district's expenditures of the fiscal year 2026 penalty funds that were transferred and to approve the proposed spending plan for fiscal year 2027 expenditures. This year we have just over $637,000 that were collected in civil penalties for violation of the air quality regulations. And we have about 280,000 in funds that rolled over from 26 and are being proposed for expenditure in 27. The majority of these dollars provide continued support for the pollen monitoring program in conjunction, carried out between the school district in conjunction with UNLV. It also continues support for the Las Vegas Science and Technology Festival, academic instructional support and curriculum support, support for professional development of STEM teachers, and a couple of projects related to capital for an energy management program and continued work on a pilot program for the HVAC system to improve indoor air quality. And with that, I would note that the carryover's now 280,000. You might remember, many of you were on the board when that was nearing a million dollars, and so the school district has taken our feedback and put it into action, and they've gotten that rollover down to $280,000, and they're continuing to work on it. Any questions?

Are there any questions from members of the board? All right, thank you for the report.

Commissioner, your next item is to, Clark County is going to present a foster care recruitment data and strategies. This is in follow up to our meeting 30 days ago.

Good morning, commissioners. Thank you for having me today. My name is Stacey Dastrup, and I'm the director of Clark County Family Services. So as County Manager Schiller had mentioned, this is a follow up from about a month ago when we had presented to you all. Right here, I just wanted to share some analytics that we keep track of. We always want to keep track of households that attended one of our information sessions, households that fingerprinted, and any new and reopened licenses that we have. We like to know where we are losing people at. We also want to know kind of what the trends are. And you can see on the net gains for 2026, we're already on track to license more homes than we have in the past years. But with this, it just shows that year after year, we do license more homes than we lose, which is good. In three and a half years, we have gained 132 regular licensed homes, and that equates to 380 beds. This summer has been a great summer for us, and the trends that we have noticed is that when we have a PSA saying that We need homes. We do get people involved. The last time this happened was January 2023, and that's how we can say that it measures up to the PSAs that have gone out. So in July of this year, we had 517 attend information sessions, 191 attend, and just this month, we had 22 families complete the expedited training. You know, when we talk about PSAs and advertisement and things like that, it's really hard to pinpoint exactly what is going to get families interested in helping our youth. It takes years for people, it could take years, it could take years, but it's multiple touch points that people have that get them interested in fostering youth. It could be they saw one of our billboards. They saw an ad. They talked to a foster parent. So they have to get interested in it. And that's why it's hard for us to say this is the route we should go. We should just do Google ads. We need to do multiple touch points to get folks interested. Because it's a big decision to open up your home and take care of these children. As far as what we have working on right now, the paid marketing, the family services, that is all going to be covered with the grant that we receive. There will be no county funds for that portion of it. So we are really going to boost up September through December because that's when the grant is good for. And then we have a great partnership with communications and strategy Lisa and Jen are fantastic And so we are going to be putting different banners and billboards and signage over on different County buildings on fire stations construction sites Jen's team has already worked up with that will look like we are partnering with faith-based recruitment as well. We met with Fostering Hope, Every Church Every Child. It looks like when we worked with them a few years ago, it kind of fell off because we didn't have specific people to work with. So we are going to co-host an event with them in November and get some interest that way. We have about eight different visits that we're going to hold with different churches set up, and then we are going to partner with Fostering Hope and use their Promise 686 platform to use to train people and get people interested in fostering. Let me go back. Sorry. Some other supports that we have are obviously with the county. So we're partnering with Department of Aviation. They are going to allow us to use our graphics on their digital monitors in their break rooms. They're going to discuss foster care during their shift briefings. And they're also going to let us participate in their health fair on October 7th. We are also going to do pop-ups in the pyramid on the last Tuesday of every month. There will be popcorn there too, so pop up with popcorn, come on down, and then County Manager Schiller is going to help us out and speak to some big people, bigger than me. He's gonna talk to the Vegas Chamber, different sports programs, and the school district to see what we can do with them to help them get involved. So as of right now, this is kind of what we have in the works right now. Everything that's highlighted, so the signage, as Commissioner Kirkpatrick had mentioned, that would do with the county building, so we have that in progress. We are applying with a grant with CASA. That'll be for 350,000 to partner with CASA to get the word out there. We're in process with the faith-based programs. And we're going to host online and in-person hours to help assist with the application. And then we're also going to do, I know we had mentioned the Super Saturday and Kirkpatrick had said, you know, what about Fabulous Friday? We're going to do it and figure out how to get everybody, get everything done in one session that they need. And then we also working with parks and recs to have community based meetups where they can talk We are also going to be doing some caregiver infomercial podcast working with with communications and strategies with Carlos and he's going to Get we're gonna get with some caregivers to get the word out that way as well. Oh That was really quick any questions I

Thank you. Commissioner Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I appreciate Ms. Daschrup, the work that you and your team have put in over the last 30 days to really provide us with some concrete work and examples and particularly excited about the grant funding so that we have less out of pocket that we have to come up with to do the things that we've already identified. So thank you for the update and for the progress that's been made. Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

Thank you. And again, thank you. And if there's anything that we can do, maybe if Parks needs a place to do pop-up preschool or to do pop-up playtime so that while the parents are there taking on more children, that we can entertain their other children, I'm happy to help with that. We have a lot of kids that like community service. It's a great opportunity. But if there's things that we can do to be helpful, please don't wait to ask, right? So that we can help it be as successful. And I did ask Gabby yesterday what she was working on for like a flyer that I could put in my newsletter on a regular basis. And not the one that you have, but... something a little more with a little more detail right so when i talk to people i just say we provide that we provide that too oh and we provide that too right so if there's ways that we can make it fun but not overwhelming but short and sweet to know that it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg we're going to wrap you with the resources to make sure kids can have that i think that we'd be happy to put it in our newsletter that way and get it out

Absolutely, that's definitely something we can do. And as I shared last time, anything that you all are involved in, we get double the interest. So that would be great.

And it might be worth calling, maybe I'll call when we do the PGA Pajamas to have a booth there. Absolutely. Booth for thoughts.

Mr. Chair, just real quick, I forgot. Did you mention the success of the recent expedited licensure?

22 this month already.

Let's keep doing that.

Yeah.

That's great work. Thank you. Commissioner Segerblum. I don't know if I missed it, but are you talking to the cities about working with them, too, and trying to get maybe their employees involved?

I think that's going to be part of County Manager Schiller's discussion with the Chamber.

I'd like to be there when he meets with the city manager. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you all.

Commissioners, your next item is to receive an update about the Clark County Broadband Programs and direct staff as appropriate. We have Director Bob Leake here.

Welcome, Director Leake.

Good morning. My name is Bob Leake. I serve as your Chief Information Officer, and I want to provide an update on the Clark County Broadband Program. A little bit of history. So a little over five years ago, you all supported and commissioned an effort around broadband and established three overall goals. Let me make sure I get to that slide. Three overall broadband goals. First and foremost, increasing access to the Internet. expanding broadband infrastructure to underserved locations, increasing consumer choice, and connecting county facilities to middle-mile infrastructure. Our second goal was around digital skills and adoption. So the work that we're doing with Clark County residents around affordable internet plans and low-cost device programs, improving digital literacy, providing telehealth access, especially in our rural communities, and working on workforce readiness for the jobs that are coming that are based on the digital economy that continues to grow. And then lastly, county capacity. So developing those digital tools, establishing an internet offer finder tool, and activating a coalition of organizations for program delivery. So that served as the basis for our program when we started those efforts five years ago. And we're happy to share that we've had a number of wins Part of our approach was to not own and build our own infrastructure. We wanted to ensure that the internet service providers and this market drove the increase in infrastructure. We've had new ISPs that have entered into this market. They've been granted franchise agreements, and they're beginning to lay fiber infrastructure and other solutions, including Google Gigapower, which is working with AT&T, and T-Mobile. There have been other investments that the existing ISPs have made in the market, both the incumbents that have been here and the smaller organizations, and we really celebrate that the market is reacting to the opportunity to improve the infrastructure here in Southern Nevada. The second is that through that effort, we developed our broadband program. One of the first things that we worked on was the affordable connectivity program. That was a federal program and we facilitated signing up families to take advantage of subsidies that were available through the federal government. And over 200,000 households here in Clark County were able to take advantage of that program while that program was available. During this period, we also partnered very closely with the state. The state got funding through ARPA funding and through the Infrastructure Act funding to build and expand their high-speed middle-mile program. And the partnership that we did with the state was that for the long runs of fiber infrastructure around the state, the state would pay for the initial investments that needed to be made, and we would identify what, for our own purposes, for our facilities, what we would call the last mile to our facilities. So let's say there was an area where the state needed to pull fiber across a 15 or 20 mile run, they would pay for that, and if our building was 500 yards away from that, we would pay the 500 yards. It's a great example of working closely with the tremendous infrastructure investment that the state made that we here locally were able to take advantage of that. In addition, the federal government had a program for bead funding. Those bead locations had certain eligibility criteria. That program was administered through the state and we worked closely with the state to identify bead locations here in Clark County so that as that construction gets started, We're able to ensure dig once as an approach so that we're not tearing up the streets multiple times, that we're finding where those locations are and correlating them with the underserved areas that would take advantage of those infrastructure investments. And then we applied for and were awarded as one of 24 organizations from over 700 applications for a grant program, the Digital Equity Competitive Grant. We did win that grant and we began to develop a program around community outreach to address the goals for broadband adoption and community engagement. That grant, unfortunately, was subsequently rescinded. We've reconstituted that program and I'll talk about that in just a few minutes. And then lastly, we're now at a place where we're ready to do a last mile program. With the new entrance into the market, the areas around Southern Nevada that are being built with new infrastructure, we know that there are still gonna be underserved areas. They'll all get addressed over time, but it may be three or four or five years before some of those areas get addressed. We've qualified 10 firms that we wanna work with, and I'll talk through the specifics of that program in just a couple of slides. We also have a first in the nation pilot that we're trying to work on related to multi-dwelling units working together with Sunra to bring an opportunity to leverage the existing wired infrastructure in a building We know that when we have to do remodels, especially in some of our older buildings, that might activate things like asbestos and lead abatement and so forth. There are new technologies that are available where we can leverage the existing wiring in a building, bring high speed access to the building, and then provide options to the residents of those facilities with low cost plans. And so we have a facility that we've identified together with Sunra, and we should be close to being able to launch that by this fall as a pilot program. And again, to our understanding, that might be the first in the country where we could bring that to scale and bring that across the other affordable housing units throughout the county. So let me transition then. With those successes in mind, we're ready for this next phase. And we divided that into two sets of work. One is the continued development of infrastructure. And the other is the work that we're doing under the Broadband Adoption and Community Engagement, or BASE program. What you see here is some data that we've collected that shows it is true that over 96% of the homes and businesses and locations here in the county do have access to the internet. So this isn't a question of whether there's access or not, but what we focused our program on is high speed and affordable access to the internet. And so what you see here on the left-hand side is that there's a lot of green dots, and those represent all the locations that have access to the Internet through the various options that are available, mostly through cable television and the infrastructure that was built in the 70s, 80s, 90s. In the middle area, you see high-speed internet availability. And what this shows is that for all those yellow dots, those are individuals that really only have two options. And they tend to be cable TV plant and then wireless options. And on the right hand side, what we show is that for over half a million households, or 71% of the county, there's really only one reliable high speed option that's available to them. And so the opportunity for competition to drive cost down and to provide options for residents is an area that we think we can focus on. What that means is, is that of the 710,000 locations here in the county, a little over half of them use the highest speed available to them is the cable television connections. And that about 300,000 homes and businesses have access to fiber. And then you can see the smaller numbers associated with fixed wireless options and then satellite options. We do have an image of this that connects out to the more rural areas around the county, and as you can imagine, because of the cost of investing in that infrastructure in those rural areas, their primary connection to the Internet is going to be through the cable television plant that was built and is part of the aging infrastructure that we do have in those rural areas. So we thought we would take a look from an affordability perspective and look at the various types of plans and pricing that are available to consumers. This is not a median or any type of aggregation of the plans. It's simply meant to illustrate the wide variation of costs and that lower speeds equal lower quality. For any of us that have home internet connections that we take for granted, we know that video, streaming, working from home, kids being at home, doing telehealth, all of that requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth and speed. And so while the low-cost plans are available, they operate at a speed and at a level of quality that doesn't really support the modern digital economy and the digital lifestyle that many of us expect and deserve. And as you can see, for those higher speeds, as you move up this chart, where we end up with are extremely high costs per month for those plans. We believe there are opportunities to work with the internet service providers here in the market to bring higher speeds and lower costs. In other words, deliver on the promise of high speed, affordable access to the internet. So what we've done over the past about 12 months or so is we built an index based on unserved and underserved areas using a number of different factors, things like free and reduced lunch families, areas of lower infrastructure availability, and issued in late 2025 a request for qualifications and qualified 10 firms to work with us to potentially make investments in particular areas around the county. But we wanted to direct those investments into those unserved and underserved areas. So we've created these 18 project areas. This is a methodology that the state used in order to qualify for the infrastructure investments that they were making, making sure that there was an equitable approach to those infrastructure investments. And what you see outlined here are 18 project areas that we've identified. The ones that are bolded with a black border around them are in unincorporated Clark County. The ones that aren't are within the cities. We'll work together with the cities on the opportunities within their jurisdictions. but our focus is on uh the clark county the unincorporated clark county areas and potentially there's a hundred thousand residents and commercial locations that could be serviced by that program sorry can i just mr lake did you say that the ones that are bold around them are in the cities the ones that are bold are county okay well number one is for sure an unincorporated clark county so We, okay, we may have flipped that then. So the, I appreciate that clarification. We'll make sure that we clean this up. But the point that we wanted to make is is that we're gonna focus our county program on the unincorporated Clark County areas and then work together with the city leaders on the areas that are within the city boundaries. Then we took an opportunity to look at and collect the cost of plans, so the median price of internet plans with at least 100 megabit download speeds, and that averages out to about $88 a month. And we layered that across the medium household income for households throughout the county. And what you see is the dark red areas pay a higher share of their monthly income for access to the internet using that pretty simple metric. But you can see that what we've tried to do in our project areas is to align those to the areas where we feel affordability is something that can really be addressed through the investments around our last mile plans. We then, as I mentioned earlier, have been working with the state and our own facility program to bring infrastructure to our own facilities. And through that effort, we estimate that we're saving about a million dollars a year in our internet costs for our own buildings. And through the construction that we've been doing, we're bringing higher density fiber availability to the front doors of our buildings. We connect the buildings that would benefit from that connection, but the real intent was to help to invest in that infrastructure so that as we address the last mile program for homes and businesses, and help work with the ISPs to put that infrastructure in place that we leverage the investment we've done. So all the purple dots that you see on this map are locations that we've identified that are county-based locations and that we're building fiber infrastructure to be proximate to those locations. And you can see that most of them overlap to the project areas that we identified for which we're gonna work with the ISPs to make those investments. So here's the program in a nutshell that we're proposing to move forward with. We want to make sure that we're bringing residents affordable broadband choices by contracting directly with these pre-qualified ISPs. We have an existing process within the procurement guidelines that let us work with those organizations. And we want to ensure that the programs that we create provide guaranteed broadband service for those households with 100, 100 megabit per second or better, so higher speed, and at an affordable cost of $50 a month or less. and that we want 99.5% of the households within those project areas to be covered by this program. That way we can hold the internet service providers accountable and partner with them on providing access to everyone within that project area and not just selected particular areas. Why have we done this approach? The direction that we got is not to have the county end up accountable for the infrastructure and the maintenance costs of a fragmented set of investments. So we wanna work with the ISPs who will then carry the construction and the ongoing operational risk related to those investments that need to be made. And that we're leveraging existing contracting methodologies that will help us do this quicker. That's the program for our last mile efforts in a nutshell. We think that this is going to bring an economic impact. We believe that around 19,000 families that are living in poverty are likely to save money on their internet bills. We'll track that as we work with them. We believe that there's an opportunity for people within those project areas to get jobs that are remote work from home types of jobs that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get because that infrastructure isn't available. They can't afford the plans or the speeds of their connection doesn't allow them to work from home. And then lastly, especially in the rural areas, in working with the Southern Nevada Health District, we may be able to bring more telehealth options to those communities than they otherwise would have because now they would be able to do doctor visits remotely over the internet, avoiding having to travel in or take time off of work to do that. And for many of those rural locations, their closest clinic may be an hour or more away. And telehealth provides them a very viable option for them to get the kind of healthcare that they expect and deserve. The timing of our work is I'm here today to share the readiness for us to take these next steps with our program, working the last half of 2026 on going through that work with the ISPs, get their responses, negotiate with them on what that effort would look like, and then beginning to work on deploying that infrastructure in early 2027. So that's the infrastructure investments. The other part of our program has been the base forward program, or the broadband adoption and community engagement efforts. And we're really centering on three areas of work. First, we're working with social services, family services, and juvenile justice, and all the caseworkers that are out in the field talking to families, working with them on the various assistance programs that we already provide. And we're gonna build a toolkit for them so that when they meet with those families, they can ask, Is access to the internet a barrier to your quality of life? And if so, we will bring them options, we will show them the plans that are available to them, we will help them sign up for those plans, and really try and overcome systemic barriers that may exist with respect to their access to the internet. The second is, you'll remember that I mentioned the digital equity competitive grant program that we qualified for. We've reconstituted that program. The core of it was to work with community partners that deliver services to the public already and work with them on various types of grants and services that they could provide to the public. An example of that is the Clark County Library System that does loaner programs for devices or for internet hotspots. There are a number of those programs that we've identified and we've pre-qualified those partners to work with and now we're ready to activate that program and begin to work with them on more outreach to the community and scale those programs up. And then lastly, we're working with the College of Southern Nevada on a program to train local individuals to become fiber technicians. It's a 12-week program. CSN can set that up really quickly for us. We want to put a cohort through that, do some lessons learned related to that. And it's our understanding that those jobs potentially are $60,000 a year jobs. The ISPs do bring people in from outside of the region because that workforce doesn't exist here in Southern Nevada to the levels that are necessary. And the ISPs are going to partner with us so that when those certificates are issued to those individuals, they may have a path directly into employment with the local ISPs. So that is the effort that we've had underway. I wanted to highlight some of the successes that we've had over the past five years and that we're ready to take next steps with these two efforts, infrastructure and the community engagement program and happy to answer questions.

Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

Thank you. You've done a great job on a lot of things, but I have a little angst. I heard ISP more than I heard community in your presentation, and banking on them is like someone banking on someone to lower the housing cost to $300,000, right? And I'm going to tell you why. I've met with three. In my office, they bring me these amazing maps. The one person I said, please, please get out because you've given me a map about the city of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. Not beneficial, not even my district, nothing I can do. And you don't know what you're talking about, right? The next one came in. They want to talk about, oh, we want to help the poor communities in your district, but you need to change all of these rules in order for me to do it. You need to let me rip up the sidewalk. I can't afford to do it. So I want to be at that negotiating table, because I got a thing or two I'd like to say. If you look at your own map, the wealthier areas are doing fine. And my rules are fine. You know why? Because they have a TV station, and they are light years ahead. I am so exhausted. I started this conversation in 2007 when we broke up the phone, the cable, all those people. We put fiber. I could tell you. It's in the bill, Section 15. People thought I was crazy trying to put that in there. We've been doing this, and in my district, no difference. No difference. I don't have any competitors in my district. You know, your map, ironically, the hot spot is my house. It's my house. I don't live in an underserved area. I live in an older area. So at what point are we going to execute and demand. The cities are ahead of us by light years. So I just want to understand because the people that are coming to talk to us, they're not in it for the same reason I'm in it, right? You heard me say When you want them to put them, you could put your own map back and I could show you where you can move them. I could show you that people have to hug the community center to get radio service. I could show you, ironically, at Lone Mountain Park, there's no service either. And that's at the top by 215. I just wish there was like a, for me, I'm at 30, 60, 90 days. What are we doing in 90 days? What are these people doing for me in 90 days? Because... We could talk to all these other agencies, but $88? That's not my bill because I'm in the red spot, right? I got to have a booster. I got to have all these other things because I have no option. Imagine my constituents that live on Lake Mead as far in the saddle. They got nothing. And I keep asking, so I am... This is not a plan I could agree to because I want a 30, 60, 90 day and I want to be at that table with negotiating because they are not our friends. They're from out of state, they come here, we give them our right of way, we do all these things and they just want to tear up our sidewalk. They just want to do it their way and it does not work. It does not work for us. As much as we don't want to maintain that, We get the calls. We got to maintain the sidewalks. We got to maintain the boxes. We got to maintain tying up the lane for a month because they're calling us. So I've been fighting for this for a long time. And I got to tell you, by the time we get done, there's going to be something new out there. And we're going to have to start all over. It's not you. You guys have done a great job. ISP people, they're not my friends. I promise you, they're not going to my office because we show them the maps that they're wrong. I don't care that this is how they do it in Texas, Arizona, or whatever. Nevada, this is my district. So I don't, I would, I'd like to see a shorter plan, 2027, six months away, then it's another nine months away to go through purchasing, then it's another nine months away to execute. I'm long gone, but there will be something new. You know this. You got an award from NACO that we're the cutting edge, but we've got to execute the cutting edge because we can. Listen, no one wants to be at a negotiating table with me because I'm hard, I'm mean, I'm direct, all of those things. But at the end of the day, my constituents are going to get what they want. So I just want to understand, ISPs, tell me what they're going to do, because the people that we've approved all their contracts, they've done nothing so far, nothing, except ask for the rules to change. So I'm nervous for older neighborhoods.

Commissioner Sandberg. That was a rhetorical question. I wanted to ask, is everything in the ground?

Yes, all the infrastructure that we're going to work with the ISPs on is in the ground.

Great, thank you.

Yeah.

All right, thank you. Great, thank you. It doesn't require a vote, correct?

Commissioners, we've got to go back to item 38. We need a motion to approve the fiscal year annual spending plan.

All right. I entertain a motion for item 38.

I'll make that motion to approve.

Motion by Commissioner Kirkpatrick. Please cast your vote. Motion is adopted.

Did we get the vote? I'm behind. Oh, okay.

I'm just checking. I'm just checking. Motion is adopted. There we go.

Commissioners, your next item is to receive an update from the Nevada Association of Counties, NACO, regarding activities supporting Nevada counties.

Welcome.

Hello and good morning. Thank you for taking the time to have me here today. My name is Amy Hein Sutherland. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself as NACO's new chief executive officer. I'm newly appointed in this role. I've been serving in the interim role since April of this year, but not new to counties. I served as a health and human services manager for NACO prior to being given this great responsibility, and I'm honored to serve you all in this capacity. I'm also joined here today by NACO's government affairs manager, Jennifer Berthiaume, over here in the audience. And she is based here in Clark County. She coordinates very closely with your fantastic government affairs team, Joanna Jacob. And we do this coordination during and outside of session. She also participates in a number of statewide work groups on behalf of counties. And so I'd like to focus my goal today on giving you a sense of who NACo is, how we work on behalf of counties, and how I hope to strengthen our partnership with Clark County into the future. I'll start briefly with our mission and governance. Our mission is to encourage county government to provide services that maximize efficiency and foster public trust in county government. This mission is really at the center of how I think about NACO. It's why I'm proud to work at NACO and proud to work with you all as elected officials of your county. We're not just about advocacy. That's an important part of what we do and I'll share a little bit more about that in a second. But really it's our goal to help counties be more effective. to give county leaders the tools and relationships they need to do their jobs well and serve their communities well. We also have a role in making appointments to Nevada's boards and commissions. This is also a critical function that we perform because it gets the county voice into state policy making and so we think that's a very important role. We're 100% county membership organization. Every county in Nevada is a part of the association. We're enabled in NRS and we serve as the collective county voice. Our board of directors consists of county commission representation from every county. We have two Commissioner Kirkpatrick and Commissioner Gibson serve on our board of directors. Our counties have differences, we know this. Clark faces challenges that our other counties do not, but there's also a tremendous number of issues where we share common challenges and interests. And so it's our job at NACO and now my job at NACO to bring those county perspectives together and to make sure that when decisions are being made, policymakers understand the practical implications for local government. So we serve as the collective county voice in a number of ways. On the slide here, you can just see some of those opportunities that we have. So we have our board of directors meetings where we convene and share information. Our annual conference, you all hosted that last year. What a tough act to follow. Thank you for that hospitality. We have policy round tables and we have NACO committees. Not listed here on this slide, we have a public lands and natural resources committee, but we also have a legislative committee and two new committees. Thank you so much, Commissioner Kirkpatrick, for your leadership on our Housing Solutions Committee and also our UNR Extension Committee. The collaborative function of these committees is actually incredibly important. We can get a lot done when we have collective county pressure on partners or agencies to really show results. And so I'm very proud of the work that we do through the committees, and we welcome all of you to participate in those. Some of the things that I want to really continue strengthening at NACO is we need NACO to be a place where commissioners can say, we're dealing with this issue in our county. How are other counties approaching it? And when I think of it that way, I don't think of it just in terms of how are other Nevada counties approaching it. That's also important. But how are counties in other states that are like in size and challenge and opportunity tackling issues? And so NACO is really a forum to bring those ideas together, both at the Nevada Association and also nationally. I'd like to touch briefly on our legislative advocacy, both at the state level and at the federal level. This is one of our primary responsibilities to you all. That work happens year round and not just during the legislative session. As I mentioned, we have a legislative committee that works on bill draft requests. NACO has five of those, I'll address those in a moment. We convene policy working groups, we monitor interim committees, and we provide information and presentations to legislators and legislative committees on issues that affect counties. During the interim, legislators and committee chairs frequently ask us for the collective county perspective on the issues that they're considering. Often we are giving them lots of perspectives, because as we know, each county is unique. But that is an important role that we take on and that we take very seriously because we want to make sure the policymakers understand what are the operational, financial, and administrative impacts of the policies that they're considering. We also coordinate with state leadership and agencies throughout the year, and that helps us to be more successful when the new budget build comes into play. Another role that we serve is coordinating with Nevada's congressional delegation and federal partners. And again, they're serving as a collective county voice. So something I want to highlight here, we have 100% state membership in the National Association of County Human Services Administrators. That enables counties to have, Nevada's counties to have a board appointment to that national board. So it also allows us to have a stake in federal policymaking in that human services space.

So Amy, I think it's important for people to understand the importance of a 100%. So I serve on the Board of Directors nationally as well as one other. So with 17 counties, because we have a 100%, we get the two positions, which is equal, if not better, than some other states. But should one... one county drop off then we lose an entire seat and so many other things so i mean it is is important on the um federal level to that we all kind of work together to keep everybody together because at the end of the day nevada gets a lot of attention on national naco because we are truly a postage stamp of the entire country we have very very rural mid-rule We have a mid-urban, then large urban. So between all of us, all 17 of us, and I think Clark County gets an extra seat and Washoe gets an extra seat, we actually are on every single committee that there is on the national level. And that's super valuable. So Jessica will tell you that recently the OMB, there's this new rule that they're putting in place, which could make a county nightmares a bigger nightmare. But National NACO has stepped up in helping all the counties and so there's some true value on both the state side and the federal side. I just like to highlight that because people don't realize, even the smaller rural counties, why it's so important that we work on the stuff we can agree to agree on and The things we disagree on, we got to move on, right? So it's beneficial.

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much for raising that. And on that note, in addition to those two spots that we have on the National Board of Directors as a result of being 100% member state, we also have two... spots on the Western Interstate Region Board of Directors, and so that is the group that serves a conglomerate of Western states that have West-specific issues. A lot of that has to do with public lands, and I will speak to that in a moment, but we have a lot of legislative advocacy leverage as a result of being a 100% state, and so it is very important for us to continue to maintain that. I do want to share a little bit how NACO is a forum for collaboration and education. So we host newly elected official training workshops and forums and webinars that are on issues that are important to county governments. On the slide you can see just some of the programming that we've done just this year. This is also an area where I see a lot of opportunity for NACO going forward. Of course, county commissioners and county managers do not need NACO to tell them how to run their counties. However, what we can do is create opportunities for commissioners and staff to learn from each other and from subject matter experts in a context where counties are the audience. So oftentimes we'll see presentations at the legislature, webinars that don't have a county county operations in mind. And so we try to make sure that when we have educational forums, they're really focused on the issues that you all have to consider at the local government level. We've held educational forums on topics ranging from receivership, secure rural schools funding to child welfare, Medicaid county match, energy infrastructure and data centers. These forums are really about bringing the right people into the room so that you all can ask the questions that are most important to you. And this is the kind of forum I want NACO to continue being, a place for collaboration, education, and problem solving. And something I really want to emphasize is that these are member-driven in terms of topics. So when we know there's something really important, like, for example, the OMB rule that was just referenced, we brought the chief government affairs officer from the National Association of Counties to do a Nevada-specific educational survey. session with our county members on what those impacts are likely to be or could potentially be and how we should plan for them. So when we know about something, we'll host something on it, but we also get feedback from our members. I really need to learn about secure rural school spending, for example. And so that's why that one came up. child welfare is a child welfare reform is huge and for Nevada and also nationally right now and so we host educational and roundtable opportunities as well as work groups with state staff to try to move that conversation forward so Amy it's probably important to note and I know I'm kind of belaboring this but listen I spent a lot of time on NACO and NACO is super valuable to this board but you don't have to actually have a seat on the board to bring

member items up if there's something that anybody on this board is concerned about we can put together all of those folks we've done that with commissioner jones on foster care and some other things and you don't have to not participate i get a lot of grief to be honest from my colleagues across the state why clark county has never had anything in it because we work so it's a full-time job plus so are there committees that we can be on 100%. There is a list of all kinds of committees. There is national conversations. There's opportunities to forums that we could talk about. So I just think I love NACO because I think that it's really worth its weight in gold on every organization that we belong to. This one matters the most, I think, because we have so much access.

Thank you, and actually I'm gonna advance the slide and share a little bit about this because in addition, so we have policy committees and steering committees at the NACO, the Nevada NACO level that everyone can, that you all can participate in and we welcome you to. If you have key county staff that you would like to have participate in those based on subject matter expertise and making sure that the Clark County view on that particular policy or area, they can also participate. And then through the National Association of Counties, I linked these on purpose so it was easy to find it, but also I'm happy to facilitate that for you all, there is a link to the National Policy Steering Committees. You have Brenda Barnes from your Southern Nevada Continuum of Care, your Homeless Services Director. She is currently serving on some of the National Policy Steering Committees related to that subject matter area. It's a great place for commissioners to engage on policy conversations, but also key county leadership. And then I'll go back real quick, just briefly on the NACO committee side. So we do have the Public Lands and Natural Resources Committee, but also these four, Legislative, Housing Solutions, UNR Extension, and also Emeritus Committee. And so happy to share more with you about each of those. Okay, and so we did talk a little bit about the NACO Board of Directors and the Western Interstate Region Board of Directors, but I just want to emphasize that is a place where national policy is being decided and how that American County platform and policy agenda of the National Association is set. And I just want to give an example from our most recent one to give you a sense of how Nevada really can impact that policy agenda. So at the recent National Association of Counties, um we had a county commissioner commissioner hendricks from lyon county through the public lands policy steering committee submit a proposal that would enable revenue sharing for counties on any commercial development on public land because there is now a discussion about commercial development such as data centers on public land Separate from the issue of where they should or should not go there, the idea with that policy is just that just as HR1 last session got us renewable revenue sharing for counties, when a new renewable project goes on BLM land within your county boundaries, Similar, any other new commercial development that goes there, there would be a county share to help us mitigate local impacts. And that was adopted unanimously and is now a part of the American County platform. So there's a real opportunity there to be involved and shape national policy. There's a couple links here, the last three I want to highlight. The Energy Counties Exchange, this is relatively new. It's a National Association of Counties portal where you can find best practices, draft ordinances, WHITE PAPERS AND EDUCATIONAL BRIEFS DEVELOPED BY UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER STATES SPECIFICALLY FOR THEIR COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS TO UNDERSTAND THE ENERGY LANDSCAPE AND WHERE IT'S HEADED. AND SO AS PART OF YOUR MEMBERSHIP, YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THAT THROUGH YOUR COUNTY EMAIL. THERE'S ALSO THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR PUBLIC LANDS COUNTIES. DR. GREGORY NELSON STAFFS THAT. YOU ALL FUNDED THAT IN PART. COUNTIES NATIONALLY FUNDED THAT, AND THEY'VE BEEN AN INCREDIBLE PARTNER TO NEVADA. They host office hours that you can really just ask any question. You can talk to them about lands bills or local government preemption, which is happening in a number of states and is something that they're studying closely to help us better understand that landscape. So I just want to highlight those resources. And then finally, NACO Edge. This is like the business side of National NACO. They've done some revamping of that programming. And so there's retirement solutions there. There's purchasing solutions. And I look forward to getting to speak with you all about those. Finally, I just want to end with some upcoming events and conferences. So as I shared, thank you again for hosting the Nevada Association of Counties Conference last year. Our upcoming conference is at South Lake Tahoe, hosted by Douglas County in September. The National Association also has their legislative conference every year in February in Washington, D.C. We highly encourage our county commissioners to participate in that. We'd love to host you as we go there. We also have local government day at the Nevada legislature tentatively scheduled for April 22nd. We're awaiting LCB to confirm that date with us. So more news forthcoming. And then finally, the western interstate region that I mentioned, that group focuses specifically on western states' issues. Their conference will also be hosted in Nevada in Douglas County in May of 2027. So if I could just close, I just want to emphasize that NACO is here to be a resource for Clark County. We want to make sure the county leaders have a seat at the table when decisions are being made that affect local government, and that's at our state legislature and then also federally. Clark County brings an incredibly important perspective to that conversation, and I want to make sure NACO is responsive to the issues that matter most to you. And as I step into this role as CEO, one of my priorities is to make NACO an indispensable partner to every county in Nevada and make sure that we're including our largest counties so that you can see real value in your membership and really understand all the opportunities that are presented to you through both your Nevada Association membership but also your National Association membership. So thank you again for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions or hear from you about what you'd like to see from NACo moving forward. And I believe I did not hit on our five BDRs, but it was indicated to me that you might like to talk about those, so I'm happy to share those as well if you'd like.

Thank you for the presentation. It seems Commissioner Kirkpatrick said we can speak to the five BDRs. Great, thank you.

Okay, so the first one is on, so NACO gets five bill draft requests. These are vetted through our legislative committee and through our staff over the past six, seven months. And counties bring us ideas, and we also present ideas to the county based on issues that we've seen come through the association. So one that I think will be the first two I'll share I think are very important to Clark County. One is emergency management based funding. So this proposal would provide at least $250,000 per biennium to each county for core emergency management services. And it would also provide a lesser amount based on population size to jurisdictions within the county that have established emergency management programs for their core emergency management functions. And then also a million dollars for emergency alert systems. And so the goal here is really to ensure that as there's federal shifts to how emergency management is funded, We counties are still protected in having the baseline services that they need to respond to emergencies. And the second one I want to highlight is really focused on cost containment in the Medicaid county match program. And so I want to thank Jessica Colvin and your team for that leadership and really helping us understand SOME AVENUES THAT WE MAY HAVE TO CONTAIN COSTS THERE. THIS ONE FOCUSES ON MEDICAID PHARMACY REBATES. WHEN COUNTIES SPEND ON THE COUNTY MEDICAID MATCH POPULATION FOR WHICH COUNTIES ENTER INTO AGREEMENTS WITH THE STATE TO DO SO, IT'S THE LONG-TERM CARE PROGRAMS AS WELL AS THE WAIVERS ASSOCIATED WITH LONG-TERM CARE. The state is able to recoup pharmacy rebate funds from those expenditures. And so what this proposal does is it enables the counties to receive back the share of pharmacy rebates that are earned on county spend to offset the cost of county Medicaid match. That's one piece of it. There's two other provisions. One enables a kind of a waterfall approach. So in any given year when the state has a surplus in pharmacy rebates, a percentage of that would then come back to counties to offset the county Medicaid match costs. There's an additional provision there where we're asking for a one-time general fund appropriation to contain the county Medicaid match program costs. so that we can work on solutions together with the state to potentially change that delivery model or figure out how we're going to wrap our hands around the increase in costs for those programs. We also have a proposal on continuums of care. So as you know, Clark County has a strong continuum of care. Washoe County does as well. Through HUD, Housing and Urban Development, there's what are called balance of state COCs. And so in a state like Nevada, what happens is all the other 15 counties GET GROUPED INTO A BALANCED OF STATE COC. WE HAVE NOT HAD A DEDICATED LEAD FOR THAT. IT HAS SHIFTED BETWEEN AGENCIES MOST RECENTLY AND CURRENTLY AT THE DIVISION OF PUBLIC AND BEHAVIORAL HEALTH. WE BELIEVE IT IS GOING TO BE MORE EFFECTIVELY HOUSED IN THE NEVADA HOUSING DIVISION. THIS BDR WOULD MAKE THE NEVADA HOUSING DIVISION THE DESIGNATED LEAD FOR THE RURAL COC. The benefits to Clark and Washoe are significant when we have all three, like statewide basically, and all three CoCs operating well together and coordinating. We don't have any one jurisdiction kind of bearing the weight of those housing and homelessness challenges. WE HAVE AN ERRONEOUS BILLING. THIS PROPOSAL REQUIRES A LOCAL GOVERNMENT THAT SUBMITS AN ERRONEOUS BILLING FILE TO A COUNTY TREASURER TO REIMBURSE THE COUNTY FOR ANY EXPENSES INCURRED BY THE COUNTY DUE TO ERRORS IN THAT BILLING FILE. BDR that would remove a sunset provision from a state statute that enables counties to institute a 0.25% sales and use tax to support open space preservation. So it would remove that sunset. Happy to answer any questions on that or anything else in the presentation.

Any questions? Thank you so much for the presentation and the work that you do. Thank you. This is the final time set aside for public comment. Anyone wishing to come forward at this time, please state your name for the record. First and last name for the record. Welcome.

good afternoon again eric king long time resident i wanted to continue describing some what i think are very valid concerns for not only the well-being of our existing citizenry but certainly those to come that haven't been born yet and we'll be experiencing over the next 10 to 20 30 years and more uh further Discontinuation of the climate that their parents and grandparents may have grown up with here. Much done by our own hand making this an even hotter rock as we build more concrete structures and sidewalks and asphalt terrain and so forth along with steel and glass. All of it holding on to a great deal of heat AND OUR URBAN HEAT ISLAND EFFECT BEING THE GREATEST INCREASE OVER THE LAST 20 PLUS YEARS OF ANY CITY IN AMERICA. I MENTIONED SOME OF THE NOTED ITEMS EARLIER, 23 MILLION FOR PARKS. I BELIEVE IT'S THE IMPROVEMENT FUND MONIES. I THINK MENTIONED ON THAT ONE WAS PROBABLY SUNSET PARK. I guess it was Hollywood Regional, yeah, and Sunset. But to not get into the weeds of all these programs that are allocated and do have funds for some trees and maintenance and so forth, I wanted to talk pointedly about what I consider, and I think there's plenty of science to say that it is still a shortfall, adding to the 67,000 trees planned with 60,000 of that from City of Las Vegas, I THINK 4500 FOR THE COUNTY INTENDED RIGHT NOW AND THEN WE HAVE THE BILL AB96 WHICH I UNDERSTAND THERE'S POSSIBLY 350,000 USING SOME METRICS which I won't go into right now, of some national, international metrics measuring organizations, talking about equity for canopy cover and things like that. That 350,000 trees doesn't take into account whatsoever future hotter temperatures across the globe in deserts around the world and certainly in our neck of the woods. does not take into account those. It's what is existing right now, numbers. And that's why I'm advocating for a million-plus trees, because that will... hopefully bridge the gap of what we'll be experiencing in another 20 years heat wise and by the way Forest bathing is a real thing And I look forward to talking to you more about that to help our youth our seniors and everybody else have less stress Thank you for hearing me Thank you welcome

Hi, my name is Saturn Starshooter. I'm a local DJ, visual artist, and harm reductionist. I wanted to talk about action item 35 for things to think about in the future to include the Fresh Start and Wellness Shower Trucks that was recently funded by Clark County. The Wellness Shower Truck occupied many different areas, including libraries, community centers, wellness centers, et cetera. The shower trucks was a service that was heavily utilized by our unhoused population, and a few of those folks included personal friends of mine. In addition, the shower trucks did have employees who were actively participating and showing up at all of these locations with the best energy to serve the community. The way that the shower trucks were defunded was sudden and unexpected. All of those workers were laid off within a morning's notice. It had pained me to see my friends walk away from the job that they have loved and to tell unhoused folks I know that now that they have yet another barrier to survive on the street. I volunteer helping those who are unhoused and I am left wondering where are these folks able to shower? I am left wondering whose responsibility is this and I'm willing and I'm comfortable to say that this is Clark County's responsibility before a public health crisis. A few reasons why I state this. The first is skin diseases, atopic dermatitis, Cerebic dermatitis and contact dermatitis. You may say that this is not fatal, but when the skin becomes infected due to a lack of treatment, we run the risk of running up emergency rooms and not responding to those who may be dying for skin diseases on the street in addition to other health complications that they have already been dealing with. Second, feces risk. Researchers at the National Center for Biotechnology Information state a gram of feces contain 10 million viruses, One million bacteria, 1,000 parasitic cysts, and 1,000 worm eggs. One sanitation specialist estimated that people who live in areas with inadequate sanitation ingest 10 grams of fecal matter every day. Perhaps it is not surprising that then approximately 80% of the world's illnesses is caused by fecal matter. So diseases also include hepatitis A, hepatitis E, E. coli, neurovirus, all of these resulting in death if not treated. This is all sourced from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Let's go back to 2019 when Las Vegas had a hepatitis A breakout, costing the city a lot more money as well. This horrifies me as a citizen knowing that we are running the risk of fecal matter transition between each other. There's no way that this won't impact the community at large. Unhoused folks are in our community and we interact with them every day. Three, more community costs. Sanitation costs will skyrocket. When you think of street sanitation from urine and feces, in addition to more money that would need to be invested in local community centers to upkeep the needed demand of showers and proper sanitation, I wrap this up very quickly to say that I am pleading with the county to prevent future financial and health risk. I think it's important that we save the city money, and I think it's important that we save the people that are here every day. Most people, if not all of us in this room, had access to a shower this morning, and I will tell you I enjoyed mine. And I just hope to see that our people are able to get access to these before we have future health crisis, which will cost the city way more money and will be another docket up on the things to resolve. Thank you.

Thank you.

Tim Ross, 2537 Dayspring Street, Las Vegas, Nevada, speaking about North Las Vegas hangar land leases. Commissioners, as you know, I've made a speech earlier that I've said that if we don't have hangar land leases by August 30, the end of this month, that I will gather a petition for the termination of Jim Chrisley. Jim Chrisley apparently wants to antagonize us at this time because we have a lawyer, Jeff Lustig, that's been working with them and helping them, and he made some transfer of ownership paperwork for them, and it was good for both parties. Both parties were aware of this, and now we've just found out that they started slipping in the old paperwork. They changed it to the old paperwork, which is unacceptable to the owners. So, I don't know if you were advised of this or if Mr. Schiller was advised of this, but they've changed the ownership transfer paperwork. Okay, that's the first thing that has been changed. And as I said, they've hired a consultant. The one consultant that we said was unacceptable to us, he hired them. And as I said in a previous meeting, that consultant should make his reports in this open meeting. It is subject to open meeting laws. He's hired with federal, he's hired with county funds, he's hired to make county policy, and they have a private meeting set up for next week. I don't know if the county manager is aware that they have a private meeting set up with the consultant next week. But our lawyer, Jeff Lustig, was wanting to attend any of these meetings. And without prior notice, they set up a private meeting. That's setting county policy. That's against the open meetings laws. And they should be meeting in this chamber. So all of us, all of the owners, are aware of the reports being given. That's unacceptable to us. If they meet, I'll have to file an open meetings evaluation with the Attorney General, and we'll have to go from there. but there's no reason for all of these problems. We have a simple solution. We could get together and write this lease up, but Mr. Chrisley wants to hire this consultant, wants to antagonize it with changing policies without advising anyone, without talking with us before he makes any changes, and it's just getting more and more confrontational, and we need some oversight of this. or we're going to have to get more serious about some of these things. And it will get more serious. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon. Kevin King, 10697 West Centennial Parkway, talking about the North Las Vegas hangar land leases. Commissioners, the Clark County Department of Aviation is doing work right now that makes every single one of you less electable. Ben Kozinski had a meeting about one year ago in which he kicked the press out so that he could safely declare... that he wanted a corporation to come in and build and manage hangers for them and just give the CCDOA their cut of the money. The CCDOA didn't want to manage hangers or accept the payment directly. Then someone asked that those hangers would revert to the ownership of the airport at the end of the lease, to which it was replied... The reversion clause would transfer ownership of the hangars to the airport at the end of the lease. Now this policy of bullying hanger owners and taking their personal property for a cut of someone else's money certainly sounds adjacent to a racket, but that is what the CCDOA is trying to do. And although his puppeteer Jim Chrisley has said repeatedly that he doesn't want to own our hangars, He hired a consultant for $106,000 of taxpayer money to create a reversion policy which facilitates the transfer of ownership from the hangar owner to the CCDOA at the end of the lease without any compensation for improvements made. We had already told Mr. Chrisley that we would not sign any lease with a reversion clause in it and told Mr. Chrisley that the first consultant was unacceptable to us. So Mr. Chrisley hired the consultant we found unacceptable to create that reversion policy, which is also unacceptable to us. So any report from this consultant should be considered as invalid, as created in bad faith. negotiation and I tell you that because said consultant I've learned in the last 30 minutes is hosting an ambush meeting with the Clark County Department of Aviation and their little consultant on the one day our legal representation will not be in town. This is very clearly a way for the people at the Clark County Department of Aviation to say they negotiated with us while putting large corporations in the best possible position to exploit our brief lack of legal representation. It undermines all of your electabilities And quite frankly, it gives the impression to the people of Clark County that your priorities lie not with your constituents, but with your wallets. And if you want to prove me wrong, force the CCDOA to change the date of the meeting to a day where the VGT hangar owner's legal representation will be available. And better yet, if you can, fire Jim Chrisley and Ben Koziski while you're at it.

My name is Ashley Carr, C-A-R-R. I'm also here for the showers for Clark County, defunding them abruptly as of less than 24 hour notice for any unhoused human to take a shower. There are only three places in town for unhoused human beings to take a shower and they must follow protocol and wait to be entrance for the night to take shower. During the day, there's no access to showers. If we want people to be better, how can we have them be better if they can't even access a shower? It is simply water. This is detrimental to their health, and it is a health risk. Like my friend said, we did have a hepatitis A outbreak. It was terrible. We need to do something about it, and we'd like to understand why it was defunded. What is the problem? Is there not enough results?

Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

If you want to wait around, we didn't defund it, right? We did not defund it. That's not how our process works. But I can't have a back and forth dialogue, but I'm happy to explain it to you. But I don't want the message out there that we defunded it, because we did not. We had a contract. and they failed to meet the contract. So I'm happy to stay after and talk to you, but I don't want the message that we defunded it. We never would have done that.

Absolutely. I would definitely like to meet with you. I was there in the beginning when they started in 2017, so I have been here for nine years doing this.

I just like the story to be straight.

Yeah, no, I understand. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hello, my name is Shoshana. I'm a resident. I'm urging the commission once again to end invocations, the praying at these government meetings because this is not a church. But you continue to bring religion into these meetings. So let's talk about how this government body invites the clergy into these chambers who can by law refuse to report physical, mental abuse, the rape and murder of children. It is a Nevada revised statute and it applies here in Clark County. The abuser, the monster, I would call him, just has to confess it, admit it to the clergy, and the clergy has to tell no one, can keep it a secret forever. The Bible, if you would read it, tells you all about the killing of firstborn kids, incest, ripping open a pregnant woman's womb, dashing babies against rocks, boiling and eating children, the mauling of 42 children, the Noah's flood, where all the pregnant women supposedly and their babies were drowned to death. And of course, taking virgins and doing with them what you want, which is rape and so on, is in your Bible. You all seem to support this gruesome rhetoric. So what secrets can the clergy keep about the children that are abused as long as the monster confesses to them that you invite into these chambers? The clergy can hide incest, physical or mental injury, neglect, sexual exploitation, mutilation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse, human trafficking, pornography, burning, cutting children, biting them, disfiguring them, causing internal bleeding, fracturing their bones or skull, losing an organ, and murder, to name a few. That's in the statute of the state that you support these people coming in here. It's unconscionable to me as a mother. The clergy you invite, let's name them. Pastor Adrian Dahl, Reverend Will Rucker, Stacey Hilton, Chaplain Brian Scroggins, Rabbi Jessica Hutchins, Pastor Rosita Lee, Reverend Christiane Mersch, Rabbi Brad Techtiel, Rabbi Levi Harlig, Deacon Tomas Garcia, to name a few. Can you please warn your children about this? Because they're not going to know. They're going to be the victims. Let them know that do not trust anyone in the clergy because they're protected. I urge you to stop bringing prayer, stop bringing religion, and the clergy who by law can keep these gruesome secrets with the child rapists, the child abusers, the child murderers into these chambers. And they don't have to report any of these monsters for their crimes to the police. These are vulnerable people in our community. These are babies. These are toddlers. These are school-aged children that nobody seems to care about evidence because you keep bringing the clergy that protects them into these chambers, praying for your day to be a wonderful day. It's just unconscionable. Again, there are thousands of churches nearby for people to go to. They can worship anything they want, any god they want. There's plenty of gods to worship. But please stop using these public meetings to serve your own purposes. And instead, focus on just doing the job you were elected to do. Like the 70% of cities and counties in Nevada that don't bring religion into their public meetings. I wish you would do the same, and I really wish you would strongly consider that. Remove the invocations.

Thank you. Thank you. Welcome.

My name is Curtis Alexander, and I've had the pleasure of serving on the Mount Charleston Park Town Board in the past for 27 years, so I understand what you guys are doing. And I'm going to repeat, I prepared a big, wonderful presentation, but you pretty much have heard the points on the North Las Vegas hangars. And I've had mine since 2015. And of course you know we've all invested money in the buildings and the current lease says, they don't renew the lease, we can relocate the building. Now what they're talking about is seizing the buildings. And I guess my biggest question is what is the motivation? It's a revenue source, we all pay our rent, we pay the taxes, and now all of a sudden we're gonna become, instead of land leasers, if you wanna stay in your own building, you have to become a leaser of the building too. And I guess my big question for the commissioners is why? So I don't know, you know, it's like this isn't a voting item, discussion item. It's just a public presentation. And I guess I would ask that maybe we could get this on next meeting. If you could do that, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Katherine Tataron, address Las Vegas 89149. Speaking today about hangar leases for North Las Vegas Airport. My son and I are members of the EAA. I'm just a mom. I'm not a hangar owner, but my 14-year-old son loves aviation and we support the veterans. They're about one-third, they're about, they are about, sorry. EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. The small club has been at North Las Vegas Airport for many years. Some of the members have built their own airplanes. Others have bought experimental airplanes. Many would like to build or buy an airplane but aren't ready yet. Some of the members have certified airplanes like Cessnas or Pipers, but would also like to build their own airplane one day. My son would like to become a pilot. The EAA has a program called Young Eagles. The Young Eagles program provides free airplane rides for kids. These free rides allow kids to experience flying and taking controls of the airplane for a few minutes. It is inspiring and builds curiosity and interest in aviation. Soon the club is about to provide some free classes for members to teach them more about aviation basics. These experiences are great help to our children. They build interest in a positive activity. I hope my son will become a pilot after experiencing the flights and classes provided by the EAA. It will take a lot more experience than that. But these early experiences are important. And these experiences are only available because the members of the group mostly have airplane hangers to keep their planes in. Keeping airplane hangars for small airplane owners is important to many of us. Most airplane pilots start at a small airport like this, getting a ride in an airplane and becoming determined to become a pilot one day. I hope my son can become an airplane pilot and that his dreams come true too. The EAA provides a welcoming community for anyone interested in aviation, keeping in mind that aviation is an important goal for many of us. Even those of us who don't have the airplane or a hanger are affected if small airplane hanger owners aren't allowed to keep ownership of their hangers. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

David Barber, 9303 Gilcrease Avenue. I'm just an affected resident here in Salt Lake, or Salt Lake, yeah, in Las Vegas. I have an airplane that's presently in Ohio that I want to bring down here and fly. It's a Korean vintage Warbird. And I need a place to put it. So right now, I got a list of hangers that are for sale out there. Guess what? I'm not going to buy it. Not one of them. Because I don't know if I'm going to own it when all this gets hashed out. This should not be happening. I'm not a member of this hanger group, but I'm on their list. And they call me or they text me and let me know what's going on. So I come down here. I've been here several times. You all probably recognize me very well. This shouldn't be happening. And I'd like to point out, and we pointed out before, this all happened in Albuquerque, New Mexico. and there was an outcome that was favorable to everybody. That's what you should be doing. There should be some negotiations going on here. Your legislature, your legal counsel here talked about the short-term residency for occupancy by going to other communities and finding out what they're doing and bringing it back and using it here. Simply go to Albuquerque. Mr. Chrisley, I've seen him in these meetings. I've attended out there at the airport. He's not working for us at all. He's not wanting to get along, okay? I was just reading your sign here. Together for better. Service, integrity, respect, accountability, excellence in leadership. Right now, service is in question. For me, anyway, okay? Accountability. Is Mr. Chrisley being accountable to any of you for what he's doing out there? It doesn't make sense. Use some leadership. That's what it is. You're the elected officials here. You have control of this guy. He's gone wild. He's a rogue, okay? That's the way I see it as an individual when I attend the meetings, okay? And I've heard him say it. He doesn't want to communicate. So anyway, that's all I've got. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is William Rohde, R-O-H-D-E. I live on Prairie Meadow Street in District C, as in Charlie. I'm also going to talk about the hangars here. I actually am not going to rehash the train wreck. You've heard a pretty good explanation of it here. I would like to add a little thing to what Catherine said. The EAA is a nonprofit organization. It's national. We have a chapter at North Las Vegas. We generate a whole bunch of really, really good publicity for the airport general goodwill we fly the kids we fly adults on occasions we have classes we have workshops we help students uh... pilots from experience all the way to students and pre students like her son all that is done by volunteers and as president of the chapter i can tell you right now When the hangers start disappearing, that goodwill is going to evaporate because we're going to have to close down the chapter. Nobody gets paid there. Everything is done by volunteers. If we don't have the volunteers, we have no chapter. Enough of that. I have some positive ideas for us, though. Okay, we've talked about this consultant coming in. Apparently, nobody wants to make a decision. They wanted to hide behind the consultant. So here's an idea. As a gesture of good faith, let's fire the consultant. Make Mr. Chisley talk to us. Chrisley, talk to us. We're very reasonable. We know there's going to be compromises. We could guide him to a reasonable situation. The real benefit of that would be that when they come to us with a negotiated agreement, right now we would not trust it. I have to say that, most of us. If he did fire the consultant as a measure of good faith, yeah, we might believe it. We'll just go along with what he's negotiated. But A, of course, he's not negotiating. He's neglecting us. He's ignoring us. Whatever. It's a crazy idea, but the money was wasted months ago when they first decided to hire somebody. I've done some consulting work. What they're going to say to you is what you want to hear. They're going to say, 30 years of verbal assurances mean nothing. These people all signed contracts. You got them. Go for it. I think that's what the consultant is going to say. I like the sign too, honesty, integrity, respect. I'm not seeing a lot of that here. And here's one more thing I'll just throw out real briefly. All of this bad blood is really unnecessary. If we have had some kind of civilian oversight of the DOA, an advisory panel of the users of the airport, hangar owners, tenants, businesses, flight schools, if we could have met with them in the beginning before they proposed this nonsense, we could have told them it's a really, really bad idea. And maybe we don't have a control, just a discussion, fine. If they decided to go through with it, we would have been the ones to tell them to their face, hey, you are kicking a hornet's nest here. You're really not going to like the results. Thank you for listening.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Jess Myers, 89149, Chairman McCurdy and the Council. I know this is an old saying, but it's really true. The mind can only absorb what your fanny can stand, and you folks have had it all day. Here's the problem. North Las Vegas is a small airplane airport. Years ago, there was an accident, and Mr. Patrick was very concerned because I was at the meeting. And what you've been sold is bringing in large airline-type jets. Small jets are fine, but when you have large jets, even large jets, if you look at your news, they have troubles once in a while. This airport was not meant, it's a neighborhood airport. It's now surrounded by homes, almost for 15 miles in diameter. So this airport needs to be protected. It needs to be kept small. The hangar should have a lease. It should go on as a profitable enterprise for the county and the city, and it does. And right now, it's going to be up to you folks to monitor your airport commissioner, the gentleman that everybody's having trouble with. And if you can't talk to him, then somebody should. There's nothing wrong with calling a meeting with you, him, us, and let's hammer this thing out. You don't need to bring in a consultant from back east. This is the west, and you folks are in control. I thank you very much for your time.

Thank you so much. Seeing no one else joining us for public comment, we'll recess until tomorrow at 9 a.m. Thank you.