Maurice White believes in good government

Carson City Ward 2 Supervisor Maurice White said he grew up with “elbows out,” though he’s developed a different approach on the Board of Supervisors.

“When I started doing this, it was… I would say more or less unintentionally belligerent. I have certainly refined how I say things, my approach to people,” he said.

A retired medium/heavy-duty diesel mechanic, White, 66, said he has transitioned from “loud and rough” to being more cooperative.

“Less belligerent, easier to get along with,” he said.

Anyone who has watched White, or “Mo,” knows he can be the lone vote of opposition on the board, sticking to what he views as principles of good government. Voters have apparently stuck with him, too, sending 24,655 votes his way in November as he ran unopposed for his second term.

“That’s incredibly humbling, to tell you the truth, that I have gained the confidence of this community to the point that I ran unchallenged. I’ve never been given a free pass on anything. I don’t know what to make of that other than it’s humbling,” he said.

What informs White’s principles of good government? He said during a Dec. 17 interview that, previously accessing the Library of Congress, he studied documents of America’s founders: diaries and letters written to contemporaries, spouses, even enemies.

He acknowledged under the U.S. Constitution, state and local governments have different roles than the federal government. Nonetheless, he’s still critical of some local regulations, whether in the city’s development standards or in the specific plan areas (SPAs) in the city’s Master Plan.

“Is it good government to tell somebody that when they build a house, they have to put two trees of a specific size and type and 12 bushes of a certain type in their front yard? Is that good government? I don’t believe it is. Does it make a good neighborhood? Do people want to live in those kinds of neighborhoods that have that? Yeah, absolutely they do. They also want to live in neighborhoods like mine, where I don’t want anybody telling me what to do. And my street reflects that. There’s not a single lawn on my street.”

White lives on Nichols Lane in east Carson City. Asked if he’s a libertarian, he said, “I don’t think I’m definable, to be honest with you… I do get those comments: ‘Wow, you’re like the way consummate conservative.’ Well, no, I’m not a conservative because I also don’t believe in giving tax subsidies to people.”

White said libertarians want unrestrained drug use and open borders. For him, the balance between freedom and regulation should revolve around health and safety issues. He gave the example of Houston where, upon visiting, he found trailer parks near oil refineries and houses next to junkyards.

“I don’t want to live that way either,” he said. “On the governmental side, restrain yourself to health and safety. On the personal side, if I keep my stuff on my side of the fence, and you keep your stuff on your side of the fence, we’ll get along just fine.”

White addressed the failure of two tax proposals for local road funding, which he had joined other supervisors in approving for the November ballot. The first measure was a .25 percent sales tax, and the second was a supplemental government services tax collected at the DMV. They were estimated to raise $7 million annually for local roads that don’t receive federal grants like regional arterials or collectors. The proposals followed a 2016 fuels tax indexing measure that also didn’t garner voter approval.

White said he thought one funding option recently explored by the city, a general improvement district or GID, was a better option, but he wouldn’t support it without community support.

“As far as the GID, almost universally the community rejected a GID,” he said. “Frankly, I thought the GID was best because it absolutely captures everybody, not just the homeowners. It captures the businesses; it captures the other governments. It was customizable to how it would be administered. Customizable on exactly what it would be spent on. So, I thought that was the better idea, but the community doesn’t think so. So, OK, we’re not going to do it. I’m not going to support one unless the community overwhelmingly changes their mind.”

White believed the city’s own estimate of a $21 million annual funding gap — between maintenance needs of the road network and existing revenue — discouraged voters. He likened it to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. He said that figure was for all roads, and local roads only need about two-thirds of that or less.

“When you have these complicated, in my mind, overly convoluted explanations, you can’t convince the community to buy into that. It’s got to be simple and straightforward. And that’s not what the city brought forward,” he said. “Again, with that, even though I put a lot of blame on folks other than the voters, until the community tells me what they want, and how they want it, I can’t advocate for staff spending another dime on trying to figure it out. You told me no three times. So, tell me what you want and how you want it and see if we can get that done.”

Another funding idea is a special improvement district, or SID, that focuses on specific neighborhoods for road improvements if those neighbors agree to shoulder the costs. White said he would support a SID if it were neighbor-driven and not a city-hall initiative, but he warned some neighborhoods won’t have the money to do it.

“So, you end up — even though, yeah, I would support a neighborhood doing that — you’re going to have neighborhoods get left out,” he said.

The conversation turned to larger socioeconomic divisions in the city including perceptions about the west side versus the east side.

“Well for me, when those kinds of attitudes pop up, I do everything I can to put them aside and look to the facts,” he said. “I grew up on the east side. I know what that east-west division is, and while we have such a large influx of folks that are moving here who didn’t even grow up in the east-west division, I guarantee you it’s still here. People that move here pick that up quite quickly.”

White also addressed city efforts and his own efforts to better connect with the city’s large Hispanic population. He said the “Hispanic community” is not monolithic and insisted both non-Hispanic residents and Hispanic residents could better engage with each other. To that effect, he said his door is always open and that he approaches people “as people first.”

“There’s a lot of understanding and a lot of getting together that needs to happen in that regard,” he said.

One of White’s top priorities for the new term is remodeling and/or expanding the city’s juvenile detention facility to mitigate overcrowding and other issues. The project, previously estimated to cost about $12 million, is part of the city’s five-year capital improvement plan. Also part of the plan is a more expensive remodel of the Carson City Courthouse that would create room for a third justice of the peace when the city surpasses a population of 60,000.

White said he’s in favor of establishing night court in the courthouse to save more money for the juvenile detention center. He insisted the problems at the juvenile facility take priority “because it’s a health and safety thing with juveniles.”

Other top priorities for him are figuring out maintenance of Golden Eagle Lane on the southeast side of the city and addressing so-called RS 2477 roads in all areas within Carson.

On Golden Eagle Lane, he explained multiple owners including state, city and private owners have led to continuity issues. He said he would be willing to add the road to the city’s inventory “because it leads to one of our open space properties.”

“At least an MOU that allows the city to go in there and do post-storm maintenance,” he added. “I don’t disagree with the folks that are in angst out there. The city’s dirt runs down a hill across the state street, and they can’t use the street hardly. The state won’t clean it, and the state won’t let us clean it. However that works out, we need to provide consistent road maintenance at least on the public parts of that road.”

On RS 2477 roads, White wants an inventory completed. According to a 2012 article on the State Bar of Nevada’s website, RS 2477 roads stem from the 1866 Mining Act that enabled local and state governments to create right of way on federal lands. With changing laws and landscapes, old roads have led to legal disputes.

“We got to have the inventory done, then we’ll go to work on whatever malfunctions exist, how do they have to be dealt with,” he said. “There’s only one way to know…to do the inventory. At this point, I don’t have any presumption about what needs to be done. I think there are some roads that we really need the answer to.

“This is the kind of thing if you’re not getting in front of it, you’re going to get run over. So, get in front of it.”