North Las Vegas mayor taps experts to guide city’s rebound

In its heyday, North Las Vegas was among the country's fastest-growing cities and flush with cash.

Then the once-booming city nearly went bust.

Mayor Shari Buck, who has long promised an economic recovery, now has put together a committee to help the city get back to the boom times.

"I am bringing together industry leaders who really know what's going on to help us achieve our goals," she said Thursday. "We just don't have the connections that they have."

The Mayor's Economic Advisory Committee, which meets for the first time at 4 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, will focus on spurring economic development and creating jobs in the cash-strapped city.

It includes 14 local business and economic experts such as John Restrepo, principal of RCG Economics, and David Scherer, a senior vice president with commercial real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis in Las Vegas.

"We're surrounded by so many people that have great knowledge, and we're not taking advantage of it," Buck said.

It will be a long way back for North Las Vegas. Officials had to trim more than $60 million from the city's general fund in recent years because of plummeting tax and other revenues during the economic downturn.

Nearly 1,000 city jobs were cut or frozen. State officials last year were alarmed at the city's failure to balance its fiscal 2012 budget, leading to worries about a potential state takeover of the municipality.

The city finally balanced the budget thanks to a combination of cuts, layoffs and union contract concessions. But it faces a $15 million budget shortfall for fiscal 2013, which begins July 1.

"There's a perception, right or wrong, in large portions of the business community that the city's handling of its finances has been an issue," Restrepo said.

He added that the city isn't perceived as being as business friendly as other local municipalities.

"They have a lot of potential and a lot of good assets," he said, including available land and solid infrastructure.

But "they can't sit around and wait for business to come any longer."

Restrepo believes he and other committee members can help city officials learn "what's going on in the trenches and how to stay competitive" in the business world. "We will be a sounding board of what they should and shouldn't be doing," he said.

The city is focusing its economic development efforts on two areas, the mayor said: around the $600 million veterans hospital opening later this year on North Pecos Road near Interstate 215, and around the Las Vegas Speedway.