Mayor touts contributions of others in annual speech

This year’s State of the City address by Mayor Joe Hardy had a new title but continued many of the same themes of teamwork as last year, with a lot more emphasis on the recognition of others.

Taking place on Jan. 16 at the Boulder Creek Golf Course, substantial time was given for video presentations from individual council members to tout their work on various regional boards.

Sherri Jorgensen is a retired teacher and spoke about her efforts to keep Clark County from combining Boulder City’s existing two elementary and one junior high school into a single K-8 campus. With, according to state records, fewer than 1,300 students across four public schools, BC schools depend on a large number of non-resident students to keep the doors open. Boulder City is also unusual in that its two elementary schools are split by grade level with one serving grades K-2 and the other grades 3-5.

Cokie Booth is both the oldest member of the city council and the only one with a day gig. She is the owner of a real estate brokerage who also manages multiple rental units in Boulder City. Her remarks were, as are most of her discussions at council meetings, all about supporting local business and especially bringing economic vitality back to the city’s historic downtown district.

Walton is a retired division chief in the Henderson Fire Department who served as interim chief in Boulder City in 2019 and whose son Nigel is currently a captain and union rep in the BCFD. Walton has probably the highest profile outside board assignments of all the council members, serving on both the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and Southern Nevada Water Authority boards. He talked about championing recreation and historical tourism in Boulder City for visitors to Las Vegas as well as steps taken to conserve water such as “turf reduction where it is possible.” (Note that the council last year opted to pay a fine to the city’s own water utility rather than remove non-playable turf at the Municipal Golf Course after loud protestations from neighbors of the course. It will make the course the only one in Southern Nevada to refuse to comply with SNWA water budgets.)

Denise Ashurst is a retired member of the U.S. Air Force and was just sworn in a couple of weeks before the speech and focused her video remarks entirely on veterans’ issues and groups. She is also a former member of the Historic Preservation Commission and ran unsuccessfully for state Assembly in 2022.

For a city that prides itself on being a never-changing outpost on the edge of a metropolitan area that lives on a diet of creative destruction and reinvention every decade or so, last year was one that saw pretty big changes in city staff, which Hardy addressed with a long off-script story.

“You all know how you make a deal and you take one of your napkins and you write on the napkin what the deal is that you’re making,” he began.

“And so I had my city clerks in a room and I said, ‘You know, this is what I want to do’ and I wrote it down. Except they didn’t have a napkin, so I got a paper towel and on the paper towel I wrote what was important to me, what I wanted to do. Three years ago, almost, or two and a half years ago, I wrote down what I wanted to do on the napkin.

That paper towel was framed and on a nearby table.

The mayor continued saying, “As to what I wanted to do, the No. 1 thing that I put on there is I wanted to retain my people. But he left and then my city manager left. So my whole thing was I wanted to retain my people and they left.”

During late 2023 and 2024, a large swath of city department heads either retired or left for jobs elsewhere, including the parks and recreation director, the finance director, the city manager, the fire chief (who was forced out) and the animal control supervisor.

“And then, an interesting thing happened,” Hardy continued. “They were replaced and they were replaced by good people and by some people who were here already. So within the ranks of our city staff we had people rising up, coming up through the ranks in order to be able to stay here in Boulder City and keep us going. It has been a real blessing to have so many people who are willing to not only stay, but to serve.”

The address also included video reports from each of the city’s four public school principals as well as a message from County Commissioner Jim Gibson who reported that, due to the city’s efforts to limit light pollution and get certified as a Dark Skies area, the county will bring its Astronomy in the Park event to Boulder City this year.

In general, rather than using the event just to rattle off a series of previous accomplishment or to tout future plans, the mayor made good on his theme of empowering people by making this year’s state of the city mostly about recognizing the contributions of a wide swath of city employees and others who have contributed to the city through their service.