LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Las Vegas voters will choose a new mayor to lead the city — Las Vegas councilwoman Victoria Seaman and former U.S. representative Shelley Berkley.
On Wednesday, Seaman told FOX5 what the city could take to mitigate the summer’s brutal heat.
Berkley responds and shares her vision of Las Vegas’s future.
BERKLEY: I understand this and a number of people throughout the campaign have spoken to me about it, but there’s a trade-off. Yes, there are a few degrees here and a few degrees here, but the reality is, we’re living in the middle of a desert. If I could figure out how to lower the temperature, I think I’d be running for God as opposed to running for mayor of Las Vegas. But if you introduce more trees, if you introduce more cover and more foliage, which does lower the temperature a bit, you’re also using our most precious resource, that’s water.
BERKLEY: Also, knowing we’re looking for affordable housing, if you mandate that developers have to put more trees in and that also is going to raise the cost of housing, which we’re trying to lower the cost of housing.
HUCK: Over the summer, we saw, seems like we saw a lot of crime in the Arts District. And you know that’s going to be a part of your area. Yes, it is, if you win, and it’s important that people feel safe going down there. What do you think the answer is to make sure that the downtown areas, the arts district, don’t have these kinds of problems?
BERKLEY: I believe the next decade is going to be explosive for all of Southern Nevada, including the city of Las Vegas.
BERKLEY: But you need to feel safe, and that is something very important. Look the city and the county fund Metro. If Metro needs more officers and more equipment in order to keep us doing what we ask them to do, which is to keep us safe, then they need to request it, and we need to work with Metro to ensure that they have the manpower and the equipment they need to keep us safe.
BERKLEY: In addition to that, we have a huge homeless problem, and that is very concerning. In a tourist destination city, people feel uncomfortable and unsafe walking around downtown if they’re going to be accosted by anybody, including the homeless. So we need to my goal is to get people off the streets and self-sustaining so that they can care for themselves, and they’re not living on our sidewalks.
HUCK: And the order out corridor the City Council recently voted to expand it, which your opponent is a member of is that something you support?
BERKLEY: I do support that they expanded it, I think, quite appropriately. We want people to feel welcome and safe and enjoy everything Las Vegas has to offer.
BERKLEY: A girlfriend of mine took her grandchildren to downtown Las Vegas quite recently, she called me up. She said she’s never going back down there again. She said they were accosted by people, and, you know, they wouldn’t let them pass unless they took a picture with them and charged them $5 that’s got to go.
HUCK: This summer, we also saw some very high-profile cases of animal abuse where dogs were locked in bins and left to die. As a mayor, what could, what could you do about that?
BERKLEY: We have a shelter that people just come and drop off their pets, or they leave their pets in the desert, which I cannot, for the life of me, understand how you could do that. Or they leave them on the side of the street. People pick them up, or animal control picks them up. Where do they go? They take them to the Animal Foundation. So it is not a shock that it is overpopulated, seriously overpopulated, that we don’t have enough personnel at the Animal Foundation to care for all the animals. And it’s quite a crisis situation. I don’t think it has anything to do with neglect or on the part of the Animal Foundation or abuse of these animals. I think if you’re working at the Animal Foundation, you have a deep commitment to animals and to their care and protection. But it’s overwhelming. Now, next year, in 2025 the contract for the Animal Foundation is coming up for review, and there will be, I think they’re accepting applications now, for new management now, when I get into office, I will do a deep dive into this. There’s nothing I want to do more than protect these animals, but we need to make sure we do it efficiently, and properly, and that we actually solve the problem and not exacerbate it by making a knee-jerk reaction to it.
HUCK: What would you say to someone who is still undecided at this point on why Shelley Berkeley should be the next mayor of Las Vegas? Oh,
BERKLEY: That’s a wonderful question. Look, I have devoted my life, as you know, to public service. I am the granddaughter of immigrants to this country that escaped the holocaust by being able to come to America. So if it wasn’t for the United States, I wouldn’t be sitting on your couch talking to you right now. I would have never been born because my grandparents would have been exterminated. I grew up hearing these stories, and for me, public service is my way of giving back to this remarkable country.
FOX5 also interviewed the two of them before the primary on other issues like homelessness and affordable housing.
You can find those interviews here:
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