By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The local forum initiative called Moapa Valley Solutions, hosted by Moapa Town Board member Blake Stratton, held its most recent event on Wednesday, May 4 in the Old Logandale School. About 20 people from Moapa and Moapa Valley attended the town hall-style meeting.
Featured was three of the candidates in the upcoming election for Assembly District 19. These included Charlie DeLaPaz, Amy Groves and Gerald Swanson. The fourth candidate for the seat, Toby Yurek, was unable to attend the event.
Each candidate was given a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to introduce themselves. Then the rest of the time was open for the public to ask questions. Several important issues were raised and discussed by the candidates.
Amy Groves introduced herself first saying that she has lived in Nevada for about 20 years, having moved here from California at that time. She said that she “escaped” here.
“And I want to do everything in my power to make sure that we do not become like California,” she said.
Groves said that she has been concerned about the emergency powers taken on by the Nevada Governor during the pandemic.
“I want to make sure that we never have a Governor in the future who has the ability to shut us down that way again,” she said. “I will make sure those powers are stripped away from the Governor and make it so they need legislature support before having any type of emergency shutdown powers.”
Groves said that she had signed the no new tax pledge and would stick to that. She also said that she would work to reduce regulation on small businesses in the state.
Logandale resident Charlie DeLaPaz introduced herself as a life-long Nevadan. She said that her grandmother on her mother’s side came to the U.S. from Mexico City in the 1970s, bringing her ten children with her.
“Every one of those children became business owners in Nevada,” DeLaPaz said. “Then they all had about a million kids each and I am one of those children.”
DeLaPaz said that she had co-founded the Power 2 Parent organization, along with a group of other concerned parents in Clark County.
“We work to protect parents, we protect their right to raise their children the way that they feel is best without government infringement,” she said.
In that role, DeLaPaz said that she had spent the past eight years regularly making trips to Carson City as a volunteer citizen lobbyist for these issues.
“I go up there and work with our legislators,” DeLaPaz said. “I’ve made those connections and I have built bridges. I am known up there for my work and tenacity. And I have been very effective in a lot of different legislation. So I am very knowledgeable on the process.”
Gerald Swanson said that he has lived in the Moapa Valley community for 43 years. He served on the Moapa Town Board for several years during the time the Moapa Park was being built. He said that he also has served as a citizen lobbyist in Carson City as a member of the NRA-ILA Nevada Committee.
Swanson noted that he had garnered strong support at the Nevada Republican Party convention held just the week before.
“I had the highest rating of any candidate in the state Republican Party,” he said. “I had a 90 percent approval to get the endorsement of the State Republican Party in this race.”
Swanson claimed that his long history in District 19 makes a good fit for him to fight for its communities at the Legislature.
“Anytime we have elected somebody from somewhere else they come out here and tell us what we need to do here,” Swanson said. “Then they go back home and we never see them again.”
Swanson reflected on the current Assemblywoman Annie Black who resides in Mesquite and who, he said, has represented the communities well. “It was good to have Annie in there,” he said. “She is a local person and she fought for the two valleys and the things that we need. I would do the same.”
During the interaction with attendees, all three candidates expressed strong support for the 2nd amendment rights of Americans to own and bear firearms.
All three were vocally in support of cutting regulation and making things easier for small businesses in the state.
Groves talked about what she felt was the onerous nature of business licensing requirements in Nevada. She said that her business as a real estate broker requires business licenses at the state and county level. Then in every city where she sells homes, another municipal business license is required. The business also must license each one of its agents individually in each of these jurisdictions, she said.
“In any given year, we are looking at over $8,000 in business licensing, just to sell houses,” Groves said.
All three candidates were also focused on fixing the problems with education in the state, and especially in Clark County. They all supported the Education Initiative movement to allow municipalities to break off from CCSD and form smaller independent districts.
DeLaPaz was asked her thoughts about the claims by teachers’ unions that the state needs to devote more funding to education to solve these problems. She responded that every session the teachers unions invigorate their members to lobby for more education funding.
“And you know what, they get funded every single session!” DeLaPaz said. “More money gets doled out to the school district every time. But it never gets down to the teachers. It doesn’t get to the classrooms. And there is no transparency in the budget. It all just stays somewhere in the ivory tower of CCSD.”
Swanson spoke extensively about a public lands act currently making its way through Congress which would designate the 8400 acres just east of the lower Moapa Valley communities as a Special Management Area (SMA). He said that the community needs to stage a major letter-writing campaign to Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto (D) opposing the bill.
“They want to take land that has been in disposal status for the last 40 years and all of a sudden want to make an SMA out of it,” Swanson said. “That would be devastating to our economy and our future. I am imploring everybody in this room tonight to start writing letters to Cortez-Masto or we are going to lose those 8400 acres.”
