Dancer "Naomi" takes the platform Thursday night at the Palomino Club in North Las Vegas. City residents are being asked in an advisory question whether they favor adult-oriented businesses in their community. Photo by Craig L. Moran. Bartender Mark Stagnaro mixes drinks Thursday evening while working at the Palomino Club on Las Vegas Boulevard North.

It's hard to tell from "Roxanne," a buxom young lady squatting on a North Las Vegas stage while wearing only a pair of day-glo stripper heels, a garter belt and a sexy half-smile, but the city hopes to be known one day as the prude of the Las Vegas Valley.

For all the North Las Vegas City Council cares, Roxanne -- who is striking some pretty un-prudish poses for 8:30 on a weeknight -- can pack up her pasties and seek employment in a sin city to the south.

"I'd like to see the couple (of adult businesses) we have changed to different kinds of businesses or housing," North Las Vegas City Councilwoman Shari Buck, a lifelong resident of the city, said. "We have more than enough."

By North Las Vegas standards, "more than enough" adult businesses means precisely three: the 37-year-old Palomino Club at 1848 Las Vegas Blvd. North; Lacy's, which is in the same building; and the nearby Satin Saddle. Roxanne works the pole at the Palomino.

Council members say they've heard from enough of their constituents to know that most of them share the council's distaste for entertainment venues of the erotic ilk. But in November they're going to ask voters for their opinion on the matter, anyway.

Three of the six questions that the city has placed on November's general election ballot ask for North Las Vegas voters' opinions on adult-oriented businesses: cabarets (strip clubs), adult motion picture theaters and arcades, and adult bookstores.

The advisory questions ask voters whether they're in favor of allowing those types of businesses in the city.

Two other advisory questions concern the location of pawnshops and payday loan businesses, of which there are plenty, in the city.

The final ballot question asks the city's residents to decide whether to switch to single-district representation in North Las Vegas, where voters in each ward elect their council representatives and only the mayor is elected by a citywide vote. The Legislature mandated that the city place the latter question on the ballot.

The other five queries are advisory only, but their answers have the potential to shape the direction of development in what is now the second-fastest-growing large city in the United States. They could be used to support making it more difficult to set up new adult-oriented, payday loan and pawn businesses in North Las Vegas.

Although there currently are no adult movie theaters, bookstores or arcades there, city codes do allow for them.

North Las Vegans previously have been asked questions similar to the sexually oriented three, Buck said.

"That's been done a couple times in the past probably 20 years," she said. "It just lets us know that residents still feel the same way we do about those kinds of establishments, that they're not anything we promote in our community. We wanted to re-establish our community standard."

Councilman William Robinson said: "We revisit the adult issue every 10 years or so. Voters always say, 'No, we don't want that junk in our neighborhood.'"

North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon said it sometimes is difficult to establish a community standard in a city so close to Las Vegas.

"It's very hard to define obscene by a community standard when you live in Sin City," Montandon said. "We have a pretty good idea that the community will overwhelmingly say our standard is better than that. We don't want sexually oriented businesses."

The advisory questions would have no effect on the adult businesses already in the city -- current zoning allows them to operate until 2019 -- and would give the council direction only when considering future applications.

Adam Gentile, new owner of all three of North Las Vegas' adult clubs, hopes to change the city's mind by the time it plans to revisit zoning issues.

"I don't intend to go anywhere," Gentile, a former strip club bouncer and the son of prominent Las Vegas lawyer Dominic Gentile, said. "I don't think we should have them (strip clubs) on every corner like in Las Vegas, but if done properly, they can provide a reason to come to North Las Vegas."

Gentile, who took over the three adult businesses in March, said the Palomino is a local landmark, known for being the only valley strip club that both sells alcohol and features totally nude dancers. Other clubs that serve alcohol are allowed to have only topless dancers.

The club's license was "grandfathered" to allow it to continue as a nude bar with alcoholic beverages.

Robinson said he didn't want to welcome to North Las Vegas the corruption that's been linked to strip clubs in other areas of the valley.

"We don't want to open ourselves up for that," he said, referring to a recent federal investigation into corruption at Las Vegas-based strip clubs operated by Michael Galardi. Four former Clark County commissioners were charged in the case.

But the Palomino has its own notorious history, having been part of two murder cases. Luis Hidalgo Jr., the club's former owner who was represented by Dominic Gentile, was accused of being a co-conspirator in the slaying of Timothy Hay Hadland in May of last year. His trial is pending. And in 2000, Jack Perry, son of the club's owner at the time, shot and killed an employee he thought was trying to buy the club. Perry pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years to life in prison.

Gentile said he plans to run the Palomino in a safe, clean manner and make it an asset to the community. He has cleaned up and remodeled the club. He said he also plans to reopen the Satin Saddle soon as a new club called Cheerleaders.