‘City Council is where my heart is:’ Assemblywoman vying to replace Crear

Decades of public service prepared Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong to serve in the Las Vegas City Council, she said in a recent interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“City Council is where my heart is,” she said. “It’s near my folks, it’s near to people that I love to work with.”

Summers-Armstrong and her Nevada Legislature colleague Cameron C.H. Miller are vying to replace Councilman Cedric Crear, who represents Ward 5, which encompasses the Historic Westside.

Crear forfeited a re-election campaign to run for mayor, but lost out in June’s primary. The seats of the mayor and Crear are the only ones up for grabs in the Nov. 5 general election.

Summers-Armstrong is a native of Oakland, California. She moved to Las Vegas in 1990 and worked as a legal secretary at various law firms before serving under the first Black District Court judge in Nevada’s history.

After Judge Addeliar D. Guy III retired, she began a quarter-century career with the Regional Transportation Commission’s planning and engineering departments.

It’s at the RTC where she discovered the impact of local government, and she learned budgeting and how to address transportation and public works issues, she said.

After a failed run for City Hall, she was talked into seeking an Assembly seat, where she served the last two terms.

She’s had stints on the city’s community development recommending board and the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority.

The issues

Summers-Armstrong said she would be a strong advocate for the predominantly Black Historic Westside and supports Crear’s 100th Plan, a redevelopment strategy that she said she would help implement under her own terms.

“What will be important in the future is whether or not the person who’s in this seat moving forward will be just as aggressive to find the things that matter to them and to move them forward,” she said. “We cannot have a gap. We cannot stop.”

She said her efforts would include recruiting residents, jobs and essential businesses others may “take for granted,” such as grocery stores.

The Las Vegas Valley as a whole has a critical shortage of affordable housing, estimated to be between 80,000 and 90,000 units.

“I think we have to look at affordable housing not just as a singular issue,” she said about a need to address the eviction process.

Summers-Armstrong said she would push housing developers to set aside affordable housing units.

Tackling homelessness has to be done through a regional plan through collaboration with other local governments, she said.

“Homelessness in this valley is not the sole responsibility of the city of Las Vegas, but that is what has happened,” she said about most services being concentrated around downtown near the Historic Westside.

Her holistic strategy is three-pronged: housing, mental health care and social services, including job training, she said.

The city operates its own fire and public safety departments, but it also provides a substantial percentage of the Metropolitan Police Department’s budget.

Summers-Armstrong touted Sheriff Kevin McMahill’s community policing policies.

“We need to see an expansion and a continuation of that kind of work in the community so we are partnering with one another and not imposing,” she said.

Summers-Armstrong wants to grow the economy in Ward 5, and for its residents to have schooling and career opportunities.

“To live here and work nearby, how attractive can that be,” she said. “It might seem like a pipe dream, but I don’t think it is.”

Regarding the legal battle between the city and the would-be developer of the defunct Badlands golf course, Summers-Armstrong said she would be a proponent of “a good settlement as quickly as possible.”

She said she wants to preserve the “viability” of the city.

“I’m hopeful that soon a settlement will be reached and we can find out how to pay it and move on,” she said. “But if it doesn’t happen before i get into office, my goal would be to work with my peers, my colleagues, to try and get there as quickly as possible so that we can move forward and not put our city at risk.”

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.