Clark County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick faces a familiar foe for her District-B seat: Republican Kevin Williams.
A Democrat, Kirkpatrick beat Williams in a landslide in 2016 with 57 percent of the vote.
The district covers Bunkerville, Coyote Springs and Mesquite, along with parts of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.
Kirkpatrick tells State of Nevada about her accomplishments on the Clark County Commission, which she says has handled the COVID-19 pandemic and recession well.
DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS:
How can you reassure voters that their ballots will be counted?
We’ve done a great job on putting additional security measures in place. I can tell folks that if they want to track their ballot, Ballot Trax, it tells you when it’s been received on our end, and then at the end it will tell you when it’s been processed and that won’t happen until after Election Day.
We’ve gone above and beyond, because we have an amazing election department, to ensure that people have choices and that we are secure and safe in all of those choices.
Does the county have a contingency plan if things go wrong?
We went through the primary and the primary gave us some good guidance on things that we needed to do better, smarter. We purchased some equipment. The equipment will help process the ballots.
We always have a plan A, B, C and worst-case scenario, but I feel that our Plan A is working and that we’ll be able to meet the needs of the community when it comes time to counting those mail-in ballots.
How has the county done in response to the people of color who have been hit more severely by the coronavirus pandemic:
I feel that we collaborated with the proper agencies. For instance, in the Hispanic community, we saw early on that the numbers were jumping from 25 to 50 to 71 percent, at one point.
Today, I’m happy to report that there are less than 40 percent and this because we invested in some marketing, some education. We put additional testing into their neighborhoods so that we could ensure that we could help them understand the importance of wearing a mask. The importance of social distancing and the importance of getting tested.
It’s very clear that multi-cultural neighborhoods have been hit the hardest by the coronavirus. We spent millions of dollars to go into those neighborhoods to ensure that they have the proper PPE. That they have the proper education to understand the reasons behind it, and I’m happy to say today they’re doing a phenomenal job.
On people who are still struggling economically:
We have a regional committee that sits as one, and we have a lot of different facets of it.
We used our CARES dollars. We felt that our CARES dollars were sent to us to ensure that we could actually help people and to keep them moving forward.
Regionally, we decided on economic development so that we could help businesses that are struggling to stay open. We could help them offset some of the costs. North Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City – even Las Vegas did some – Clark County did some. We’ve been out helping businesses because those too are folks that relied heavily on that income.
We set aside approximately $50 million for rental assistance. We know that there’s a high amount of folks [who], at no fault of their own, lost their jobs, took a long time to get their unemployment and just got further and further behind. We have been helping.
[In] our first iteration of that we had 47,000 people apply. We had to stop it to ensure that we could provide enough revenue for all of those folks. We got a second iteration from the governor’s office, so we reopened it back up. We’ve been working directly with apartment complexes so we could do it faster.
We’ve been working with our utilities to help pay down some of that debt that folks have. I can tell you I’ve sat at kitchen tables where people are just overwhelmed.
The bills are piling up. There’s no end in sight for them. Clark County takes that very seriously, and we want to alleviate some of the stress, so we can help folks get back on track.
What more can be done about short-term rentals that are used as party houses?
We’re hoping to go to the Legislature so we can get some regulation. Honestly, we’re missing out on tons of revenue that they should be paying. They should be having regular checks from the health district to ensure they’re providing a safe place. They should be paying room tax because they are utilizing that. They should be paying a code enforcement fee.
What we’re finding is many people across the valley, whether you’re in a city jurisdiction or unincorporated Clark County, they’re just paying the fines and making it up on the next rental with no regards to the neighborhoods, and the quality of life that people bought into.
We are working legislatively. There is a very large working group [whose members] are from many different facets that are working together to ensure that we do not have them in our neighborhoods, [or] if a neighborhood chooses to allow them, that they are paying their fair share, because they do bring in extra police, and in many cases, they do utilize many of our resources, and we want them to be a community partner.
Do you have to go to the Legislature to figure out ways to work with other jurisdictions?
No, we don’t, but there are some things that are better put in statute so that they don’t change. So that you know that the [Nevada Revised Statute] is very different for 244, which is counties, versus 268, which is cities. Cities have a charter, where unless it is expressly put in place then you can do it. Where the county, we do not have a charter so everything we do is by statute specifically.
It’s just better if we all go and try and get a balanced approach so that we’re all working in the same direction.
On the draft public lands bill introduced by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto:
We have worked with Sen. Cortez Masto. Some of the language has changed because we have to balance both needs. We have some amazing, beautiful places in our valley. I’m fortunate in my district to represent the [Desert National] Wildlife Refuge, the Tule Springs Monument. We have Gold Butte, which is beautiful, Warm Springs.
But, we also have to plan for our future. Public lands bills can take up to 10 years in some instances. We have to be able to start working on this because, at some point, all the remnant pieces of land will not be able to be developed, but more importantly, there are many items in that bill such as right of ways and [Recreation and Public Purposes] leases, which many of our schools are on, and many of those leases are coming up after 25 years. We don’t want to have pay to utilize our own schools and our own parks that we’ve done.
There are many great components. We’ll continue to work with Senator Masto. She’s a personal friend. She does a great job to ensure that there’s a balance for everybody and we can keep and protect the beauty that we have in our community but also have some constructive growth.
What are some other issues your constituents have brought up to you?
We’re working on social services today. We talked about our truancy. Our [Truancy Diversion] Program, making sure that kids are getting into school.
Education is a big concern for many of my constituents. Distance learning is hard for everybody, including myself with my granddaughter but we are all working to ensure that when the time is right kids can come back safely, but in the meantime, we can give them all the resources that they need.
People are concerned about when they get to go back to work, and we are also working with the state to ensure that we can continue to open up things, as it permits, it to be able to handle different aspects of the virus.
Every day, there are different issues but we continue at the county to work collaboratively across the aisle with our colleagues to ensure that the people of Clark County get what they need in these uncertain times.
Marilyn Kirkpatrick, commissioner, Clark County Commission
