As mayor of Henderson, James B. Gibson faces the challenge of guiding one of the fastest growing communities in the nation. In 1990, the population of Henderson was around 60,000. Today, Nevada’s second largest city has more than 250,000 residents, and by 2010 Henderson’s population is expected to exceed 306,000. More than 50,000 people have moved to Henderson in the last five years – more than the entire population of Palm Springs, Calif.
A Tale of Two Cities?
Henderson faces unique challenges because of the way it has grown. The “old city” based near Water Street and Lake Mead Drive was established to support defense plants during World War II, so it faces challenges common to many established cities: updating its infrastructure, revitalizing the downtown area, and keeping residents and businesses from fleeing to the suburbs. The “new city” includes large master-planned communities such as Green Valley, Seven Hills, Anthem, Lake Las Vegas and MacDonald Highlands, and the city is constantly expanding the boundaries of its developed areas, which creates a need for additional city services.
“We decided a long time ago that we needed to think of Henderson as a single city,” said Gibson. “We see the same kind of challenges in both parts of the city, but the specifics are different. Both need a good road system, schools, water and sewer capacity, electricity and gas services. We’ve had an incredible amount of growth in the older part of the city as well.”
One of the city’s major challenges has been to ensure its infrastructure can support the influx of residents and businesses. This has involved several major roadway projects, including two new freeway interchanges. In addition, the city recently broke ground on a second water treatment facility to cope with growth.
Parks and Open Spaces
Within the last five years, the city of Henderson has built 18 parks, five trails with accompanying open space, two recreation centers and the Pavilion at Liberty Point. All this is in addition to 19 Little League ball fields, seven swimming pools, 16 soccer fields, 15 tennis courts, 19 basketball courts, two skate parks and two dog parks. The city’s new Open Space Plan provides for the future by planning for hundreds of acres of new parks, a system of trails connecting the entire city, preservation of sensitive cultural resources and open spaces that help protect the desert environment.
“We will continue to be aggressive in developing parks, trails and open spaces throughout the city,” stated Gibson. “A percentage of the money from federal land sales through the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act comes back to us in the form of grants to enable us to develop a trail system that provides new recreation opportunities for our residents: walking, jogging, cycling and many other activities.”
Education for Young and Old
Gibson has been instrumental in several different education initiatives. A program called APPLE (All People Promoting Literacy Efforts) has helped Henderson students complete millions of “after-school” reading minutes. Parents, students, educators, community leaders and businesses have partnered in unique ways to help promote literacy.
“We’re so proud of the APPLE partnership,” said Gibson. “We invited the school district to partner with us, and they endorsed the program. We got funding from the business community, so no tax dollars are being spent. There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the business community, because the students we’re teaching will eventually be employees. The program is for children from kindergarten to grade three, and the objective is to have them reading at grade level by third grade. If we want to solve the problems we have as a community, then as a community we need to energize ourselves and invest in our future.”
Gibson was one of the early proponents of adding a state college to the university system, and the end result was the creation of Nevada State College, now located in Henderson. He noted, “I told [the university system] if they wanted to locate it in Henderson, we would find a way to get them the land for nothing. We wrote a specific piece of federal legislation that resulted in a grant of 557 acres, which the city holds in trust for the university system so they can build a campus for the state college.”
The mayor and the city’s Economic Development office also promoted Henderson as a business opportunity for private educational institutions. Their success is evidenced by the fact that the city is now home to 13 private colleges and universities, including Touro University, a medical school.
The Mayor as CEO
As chief executive officer of the city, Gibson has championed fiscal responsibility. Under his leadership, the city has earned the highest bond rating of any city in the state – a rating exceeded only by the State of Nevada and Clark County. Standard & Poor’s Rating Service rates Henderson’s general obligation bond rating at AA, while Moody’s Investors Service has given the city a rating of Aa2.
In addition, the City of Henderson has received numerous awards from the Government Finance Officers Association for outstanding budgeting and financial procedures stemming from the fact that the city’s property tax rate has remained steady for the past 16 years and continues to be one of the lowest rates in Nevada.
Economic Development
Over the past six years, Gibson has helped the city attract more than 100 new non-hospitality, non-retail firms that have created thousands of jobs, resulting in an economic impact in excess of $530 million dollars.
He was instrumental in creating the Southern Nevada Medical Industry Coalition, which promotes strategic alliances between healthcare professionals, medical institutions and organizations, higher education, local and state governments and local chambers of commerce. Gibson is a founding co-chair of the organization, which now includes several hundred individuals united in the goal of improving healthcare in the region.
Redevelopment Issues
During Gibson’s tenure, the city’s Redevelopment Agency has made great strides in redeveloping the downtown Henderson area by establishing new design standards, conducting market studies, and setting developer standards. Grant and loan programs have helped existing businesses and residents upgrade their facilities.
In downtown alone, almost $327 million has been invested in redevelopment, with an estimated tax increment to the city of more than $39 million, generating 247 new jobs in the downtown area. Water Street boasts several new commercial and mixed-use projects, and others are sprouting up nearby.
Helping Developers Do Their Jobs
Gibson has also been the spearhead behind the creation of an award-winning enterprise designed to streamline and organize the development and growth process. The City of Henderson Development Services Center (DSC) was created as a public-private partnership to improve the inspection and review process for all projects being submitted through the City of Henderson.
“We’ve achieved a lot towards streamlining the approval process for plans and applications, but it took several years to get there,” noted Gibson. “We had to commit significant general-fund dollars to clear up the backlog of projects, and we then worked out a process to bring required assets from various departments into the DSC.”
Between June 2005 and June 2006, the DSC performed almost 20,000 plan reviews, with a 99 percent on-time rate. During the same period, it performed 266,285 inspections, with a 98.8 percent on-time rate. The site design, residential, commercial, inspection and miscellaneous categories for review have a 98.7 percent on-time-or-early average.
The DSC has been honored by the Nevada Tax Payers Association as a Cashman Good Government Award Finalist and was recently recognized nationally with a Crown Community Award by American City and County magazine.
“We really scored a home run with the DSC,” said Gibson. “Time is money for developers, and the time it takes to process paperwork projects itself into the final cost of the product. If you’re building something to sell, and we’re able to process things in a way that doesn’t overload you with holding costs or carrying costs, you’ll be able to sell at a competitive rate. There’s so much planning involved in a project, and developers need to know they can depend on what we say, so they can make plans.”
The Future of Henderson
The City of Henderson, which was a pioneer in establishing master-planned communities in Nevada, is now investigating new forms of commercial and residential products. In addition to mixed-use projects, which may combine office, retail and residential elements, an innovative type of residential community is being proposed. “We’re looking at a new kind of neighborhood today,” said Gibson. “You’ll see moms and dads walking their kids to school, and a lot of activity taking place around neighborhood schools, which has been a signature element of the Henderson master-planned community for many years. Concepts such as ‘new urbanism’ require alley-loaded garages and front porches. The city will be required to provide more amenities, because you can’t put swimming pools or sport courts in most of these back yards, so there will parks in each of the villages.”
He continued, “The Bureau of Land Management is scheduled to hold an auction before the end of the year that will extend the boundaries of Henderson all the way to Las Vegas Boulevard. This will create space for new developments. If we create neighborhoods that work – and we believe we can do that – the result will be a new model for Southern Nevada that’s never been done before. The future is exciting, because we’re not certain exactly what we’ll learn in this experiment called ‘new urbanism.’”
The Man Behind the Desk
Henderson Mayor James B. Gibson is no newcomer to Nevada. He was born in Las Vegas, and has been a resident of Henderson for 48 years. He is actually a fifth-generation Nevadan: his mother’s family owned ranches and farms in Lincoln County, and his father’s family were miners in White Pine County. The Gibson clan moved South to Clark County after Hoover Dam was built.
Gibson’s family upbringing included a heritage of service to the community. His father, the late James I. Gibson, spent more than 30 years as a Democratic leader in the Nevada State Legislature and his maternal grandfather served as superintendent of the Clark County School District in the mid-1900s.
Gibson has been a practicing attorney for 29 years. While maintaining his law practice in Henderson, he was asked to serve as the chairman of the legislative committee for the local Chamber of Commerce, a position he held for a remarkable 11 consecutive legislative sessions, spanning more than 20 years. “When we started doing this in the 1970s, we were concerned that many members of the business community didn’t have a voice in Carson City,” he said. “A small group of us read every bill, and if we thought it would affect somebody in the city, we’d make sure they got a copy of it. If they had concerns about something in the bill, we would bring up them up to the legislators.”
In 1997, Henderson community leaders urged Gibson to run for mayor, and he won in the primary with 51.8 percent of the vote. He was unopposed for re-election in 2001 and won a third term in 2005 with 80.43 percent of the vote.
This might sound like Gibson has had an easy career with few challenges, but in addition to being responsible for fulfilling the needs of more than 250,000 people in Henderson, he has also faced serious business crises.
Long-time Nevadans will remember the 1988 blast at the PEPCON rocket fuel plant in Henderson. American Pacific Corporation, the company that owned the plant, was founded by the mayor’s family, and his father and uncle had spent their lives building it. In order to help his family, Gibson put his legal practice on hold to become legal counsel to American Pacific and deal with the lawsuits that resulted from the catastrophe.
In 2004, Gibson was again asked to help a struggling organization. Bob Broadbent, a lifelong friend who had championed the idea of bringing a monorail system to Las Vegas, passed away during the final stages of the project’s development. Gibson was asked to apply his management skills to the project to make sure it was properly established, and served as CEO of Transit System Management, guiding the project through difficult times and initial setbacks.
Gibson and his wife have six children and several grandchildren. Unlike many men his age who look forward to retirement, Gibson has set himself a new challenge. He is currently running for governor of Nevada on the Democratic ticket. If he is elected, the Henderson city council will most likely appoint someone to fill the position of mayor until the next regularly scheduled election.
