THE TOWN CRIER

Report From Town Hall – November 2009

(November 10^th, 2009)

The Laughlin Town Advisory Board held its regular monthly meeting today. After a no doubt much appreciated absence from the pages of The Laughlin Herald, the Occupation Board will now have to once again have a voice speaking that their puppet master, Democratic County Commissioner and Harry Reid Commissar Steve Sisolak can’t muzzle. This was a more sedate meeting as they go, but nonetheless, there were plenty of issues residents of Gulag Laughlin should be aware of.

H1N1 Virus Update 

Patricia Hyde, Senior Environmental Health Specialist with the Laughlin Office of the Southern Nevada Health District spoke on a few topics including the H1N1 vaccinations. She confirmed that at this time, health care providers are still waiting for supplies of the vaccine for the general population that does not qualify as high risk. I spoke briefly to the Board and related to them a conversation with an epidemiologist who suggests that persons over the age of 18 obtain inoculations for pneumonia, which are readily available, since pneumonia is the major proximate cause of death in fatal cases of the H1N1 virus. Our local health office will look into the availability of these vaccines as quickly as possible.

Trash Collection

Bob Coyle, Vice President of Government Affairs for Republic Services, the company that collects our trash, spoke to the Board, at the invitation of Board member and Community Development Committee Chair Janet Medina. They are offering Laughlin the opportunity to upgrade our trash collection to a more automated system that uses giant robotic arms to lift trash cans and empty them into the trash trucks. There appeared to no opposition to this idea at all and the Board voted to formally request that Laughlin make the transition. While collection would drop to once a week, Republic Services will provide the new larger specially designed trash cans that fit the robotic arms at no cost to residents. These cans hold more, have lids that don’t blow off and are considerably easier for older residents to move because they have both a handle that can be pushed and built in wheels. For those who want to recycle, they will also be given a single can and will no longer have to sort recyclables. Households that generate more trash than others (like your editors) will be provided with more cans as needed. The cans come in three sizes and the largest is only 34 inches in width and will fit through any gate. This is really a win-win solution for Laughlin. 

Community Reports

Blah, Blah, Blah.

[I’m sorry, was that insensitive? I guess it’s a good thing I don’t care.]

Please Run Over My Head With A Steamroller

I’ll be merciful this time and not mention any names or agencies, but what will it take to get some people to spend a few minutes in front of a mirror practicing public speaking? Or actually preparing their remarks? Or asking someone else to watch them on TV to tell them how much they make people want to inject Novocain into their brains? Learn to speak, please, I’m begging. Next time I’ll be less kind.

Next We’ll Get Steam Radiators Like The Big City!

James Vincent, Board Chair and Chair of the Parks and Recreation Committee reported on the approaching completion of a community bulletin board. Very limited in scope and requiring that you actually hitch up your horse and buggy and ride over to Aldapes to view it, this new Town Advisory Board continues to ignore an offer it had to develop a 21^st Century online Master Community Calendar that would be enormously more useful. I wrote about this last November; the full story may be read online here at The Laughlin Herald at http://www.laughlinherald.com/my_weblog/2008/11/the-blind-leading-the-blind.html

Continuing Committee Chaos

We’re still having Board committees fail to complete their work, because they can’t maintain quorums. Both the Public Works/Public Safety Committee (which for some unfathomable reason is still merged) as well as the Social Services Committee ran into this problem in the last month. It needs to stop and I will reintroduce an amendment to the Town Bylaws to correct this at the next Board meeting. The committees are the Boards primary means of serving the public and this continuing problem simply isn’t acceptable. This isn’t the first or even the second time I’ve brought this up: http://www.laughlinherald.com/my_weblog/2008/05/committees-in-crisis-part-2.html

Incorporation

Laughlin Incorporation Committee members Ed Cooper and Terry Ursini made a presentation refuting many of the grossly inaccurate statements made by the badly named “Fact Finders”. Echoing many of the same criticisms I made in my July article, under the heading “Extraordinary Liar Award” they held up the “report” the Fact Finders put out and shone a very bright light through its many holes. Two points over which I am still in disagreement with the Incorporation Committee persist however. They’re still suggesting that we could reduce our per capita police staffing. With the dark clouds of doom already forming over the Vista Creek Apartments as they near completion, we need to lay claim to every police officer we can get into this town. And they’re still comparing the cost of the Town Manager’s office to that of various City Managers offices without explaining if they accounted for certain possible incompatibilities in the statistics they’re using. I brought this up in July and they still haven’t responded.

We welcome the public’s feedback. Please send your Letters To The Editor to editor@laughlinherald.com