Las Vegas City Manager Scott Adams announced last week that he’ll be retiring at the end of the year after three years in the job.
Adams, who began work for the city in 2004 and held several top administrative positions, leaves a city reeling because of the pandemic and a poor economy. In May, the city cut more than $100 million in spending before passing a $572 million budget.
Despite those grim numbers, Adams told KNPR's State of Nevada that he is leaving the city with a balanced budget.
"That's one of the things I felt pretty good about leaving now is I got the city through a balanced budget this past 60 days and I feel like I can leave the city at least in stable condition right now," he said.
Adams admits no one knows if another problem will hit the area.
The city manager said the financial crisis the city of Las Vegas and other municipals are facing is acute.
"I don't think the public truly understands just how dire the financial crisis is with local and state government right now," he said, "It's like nothing I've ever seen anywhere in my life."
Adams believes that in the short term tough choices will have to be made but in the long term, when a vaccine and treatments for the coronavirus are created, things will be better.
"We're going to get to a point of stability and I think this will hopefully be a distant nightmare, in terms of a memory, and things will get back to something more normal," he said.
Adams also hopes some of the changes made during the pandemic that have made the city government more efficient will stick around long after the virus is under control.
"There is some good that will come out of this," he said, "We've learned to do some things very, very efficiently that are real benefits to our citizens and taxpayers."
He hopes those changes will also help his successor be able to pick up where he left off without having to do some of the heavy lifting that needed to be done over the past few months.
While he feels like the city's finances are under control currently, Adams admits there could be more big decisions ahead. He thinks the economic recovery of the region will be more like a W.
"Where we go down, we come out for a while, we got back down slightly again and then we finally come out because I think this spike, whether we shutdown or not formally by mandates by the governor, I think will cause people to pull their horns in a little bit and that will create some economic impacts," he said.
In a message to city employees, Adams said he was particularly proud of the redevelopment of downtown on his watch. He told KNPR's State of Nevada that he got into the redevelopment business to create community change and that has been his goal in every city he worked in.
"You do things that catalyze the private sector to make significant community change," he said.
When he moved to Southern Nevada in 2004, he said that development was white-hot around the Las Vegas Valley, but it was a doughnut. There was development going on around the city center but not IN the city center.
"I looked at it and said, 'Wow! This cannot be that hard to direct development forces to pick up and discover downtown,' and that happened," he said.
He said fast forward 15 years and downtown Las Vegas is doing well. Although, Adams said the area is still behind in housing development.
Adams credits several people for the changes downtown, including Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and his Downtown Project, which brought the online retailers headquarters to the old city hall and an infusion of cash to small businesses and startups.
He is also happy to see the new projects going on downtown like Circa, which is being built by the owners of the D Las Vegas. He also hailed CIM Group for its efforts at the Downtown Grand.
"It is the most big-city looking hotel I've seen downtown in quite a while," he said, "I feel it every time I look at that building I feel like downtown is ready to arrive."
Adams said there are now enough players and institutional investment in the downtown area that the city itself doesn't have to push as much to get developers to come downtown.
As an example, he pointed to the new ZLife Hotel going up on Main Street, in the heart of the Arts District. He said that project got started without any real help from the city.
In fact, he noted the entire Arts District is really an example of an area that grew organically without help from city government, except in the form of infrastructure.
"It gives a good feeling because I believe that we've really primed the pump to the point where it is now happening organically and it doesn't take as much push as it took 15 years ago," he said.
However, he notes the coronavirus pandemic could put a damper on that organic growth.
"It is going to take some pushing coming out of this recession," he said, "One of the things I want to focus on over the next three to four months before I leave is really fine-tune an economic recovery plan for downtown and the city based on COVID-19 recovery."
His hope is to hand the new city manager well thought out road map for that recovery.
Scott Adams, city manager, Las Vegas