Ward 1 candidate Jared Hardy shares his views on the city
Both of the teachers up for a North Las Vegas City Council seat next month are election rookies.
Jared Hardy — a former laborer, construction manager, Realtor and now teacher at Legacy High School — would argue that he has the most political experience, most of it picked up around the dinner table.
“My brother was in politics; my dad was in politics; it was always a topic of discussion growing up,” said Hardy, the 38-year-old son of former City Councilman Warren Brent Hardy. “I always wanted to be president growing up, so (politics) has been a lifelong thing.”
Hardy, one of only two municipal candidates to survive last month’s primary, faces Rancho High School history teacher Isaac Barron in a nonpartisan general election set for June 4. Early voting is to begin May 15.
The candidates up for term-limited City Councilman Robert Eliason’s Ward 1 seat share a lot in common.
Both are Rancho High School graduates and lifelong North Las Vegas residents. Both balked at the prospect of throwing out union contracts suspended in the wake of a city-announced “fiscal emergency” late last summer, and neither feels the city — one of the hardest recession-hit municipalities in the country — can afford to add to more than 1,000 city positions left unfilled since 2009.
Hardy and Barron tend to split over the future of the budget, one Barron and others hope still has some fat left to trim.
Hardy, who faces a $25,000 campaign fundraising deficit heading into early voting, sees a budget already stripped to the bone.
“We’ve cut pretty good; we’re a pretty lean city,” he said. “I don’t have any desire to do further cuts — at this point we just need growth.”
A former member of the city’s community development block grant committee, Hardy would like to see the city go beyond round-table discussions meant to encourage that new growth.
He’d like to see the city rebranded from the ground up.
“I think there’s really no more valuable asset than the city itself and the land we still haven’t developed,” Hardy said. “But right now, that asset is undersold, and it’s our job to sell it.”
Hardy dovetailed with his opponent on a recent proposal that would allow the city to seize underwater mortgages through the city’s power of eminent domain.
Neither has warmed to the proposal from San Francisco-based Mortgage Resolution Partners, though Hardy agrees that the idea merits some thought.
“The solutions are tough either way,” he said. “I never like to hear or see people lose their houses, but personally, I’ve always found government intervention doesn’t necessarily solve a problem. In fact, sometimes it makes the problem worse.”
Hardy proposed some big ward-specific ideas, including possible developments on city land surrounding the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
He also likes the idea of boosting his own Legacy High School’s focus on medical curriculum after the federal government’s recent installment of a $600 million Veterans Administration hospital on North Pecos Road.
“I really want to create a new culture around this city,” Hardy said. “You’ve got to start with the basics; you’ve got to have a service-oriented culture down at City Hall.
“I don’t think we need to do anything, like, take a cleaver to the city business code. But with a little change in perspective, I think we can start to do a whole lot better.”
Hardy, backed by the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, garnered 20 percent fewer primary votes than Barron and has raised only about half the campaign funds of his general election opponent.
That doesn’t worry former state Sen. Warren Hardy, who said little brother Jared is “exactly what the North Las Vegas City Council needs.”
“He got the brains, and I got the looks,” Hardy said. “He’s always been one of the most thoughtful, intelligent people I know.
“He’s a problem solver. I think that’s what they could use up there right now.”
Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@viewnews.com or 702-477-3839.
