The masks are off!

Governor Steve Sisolak ended the mask mandate about a week ago, so how close are we to the end of the coronavirus pandemic?

Plus police blame speeding for a horrific crash that killed nine people in North Las Vegas.

The accident is highlighting an excessive speeding problem in Southern Nevada.

We look at what can be done.

And a new park pays tribute to African American trailblazers from Las Vegas' Historic Westside.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

After more than six months, Governor Steve Sisolak announced an end to Nevada's mask mandate last week.

In January the omicron variant spurred a surge in coronavirus cases, but they have been steadily declining.

What does this mean for the pandemic as a whole, may we be nearing the finish line?

Joining us to discuss the latest coronavirus numbers is Tabitha Mueller, a reporter for the Nevada Independent in charge of tracking the pandemic.

Tabitha, thank you for joining us.

A broad question off the top: How close are we do you think to putting this pandemic behind us?

(Tabitha Mueller) So that's a great question.

I think it's one that we're all thinking about right now, but what I would say is I don't think it's over.

We had the director of the CDC who gave a kind of press briefing yesterday saying it's not over.

We're just entering a new phase, and in this new phase, at least here in Nevada, we're not having to wear masks, right?

So I think it's a phase of personal responsibility.

It's being aware of what are the case numbers, are they high, should I wear a mask today, and kind of using case numbers and hospitalization rates to decide and determine when you should wear a mask.

-All right.

Governor Sisolak did say that his decision was based off of science, citing those declining numbers.

But as you mentioned, the CDC said it's a little bit too soon to stop wearing masks indoors.

What kind of reaction have you heard from local officials about whether this mask mandate should have ended?

-So I think local officials are pretty mum on whether it should or should not have ended.

They're sort of taking the line of, you know, there's no mask mandate so here's what we recommend.

I spoke with Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell yesterday.

She's a Reno-based urgent care physician who serves as a member of the governor's medical advisory team, and she's kind of saying what a lot of people are saying which is watch the case rates, watch hospitalizations, watch the hospital capacity and test positivity and make that decision for yourself.

You know, during the mask mandate when Sisolak was announcing that he was removing it, he urged Nevadans to be kind to one another and respect the decisions of people who still want to wear a mask even though the mandate is gone.

-It seems a little strange to me.

I can't imagine the public going to the website and checking out positivity rates and vaccination rates so much.

But okay, you're saying they're stressing being personally responsible.

How much do you think politics also played a role in the governor's decision?

-I think we can say that politics probably played a role in it, right?

We saw other Democratic-led states that have had rigid masking mandates roll back those mandates or announce that they were going to be phasing them out, and we had California do that, New York.

And once California announced, I think people were sort of looking at Nevada and saying okay, when is this going to be ended.

-Right.

And it was only about a week ago that Nevada was just one of nine states that still had a mask mandate in place.

Why do you think the Silver State was one of the states to hold out so long?

-Well, I think Nevada's mask mandate was tied with CDC guidelines and recommendations, and the CDC guidelines are, you know, based on the transmission rates.

Please wear a mask in these-- you know, so if you have a high transmission, then wear a mask.

If it's low transmission, then you don't have to wear a mask.

So I think because the state was tied so closely to the CDC recommendations and Sisolak had taken a pretty hard stance that we are following CDC guidelines, I think that was one of the reasons that we saw maybe a more delayed removal of that mask mandate.

-So he was following CDC guidelines.

On the vaccination front, about 50% of Nevada's population has been vaccinated.

That's according to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.

Where does that put us in terms of herd immunity, have we reached a good level?

-Unfortunately, it's much lower than what we need to reach herd immunity.

Experts are estimating we need around 80% to 90% of the population to be completely vaccinated.

And we did a poll.

The Nevada Independent conducted a poll on where are we at with vaccinations, and about 1/5 of Nevadans, according to that poll, were not going to get vaccinated.

-So what does that mean then, in terms of will we ever reach herd immunity?

-I mean, I think there's-- you can never say never and no one has a crystal ball as to what exactly is going to happen, but it's going to be something that will take a lot of time and effort, and there's a lot of people that will not get vaccinated and have a refusal to do so for whatever reason.

-Tabitha Mueller of the Nevada Independent, we appreciate your work and thank you for your time.

-Thanks for having me.

-To Nevada roadways now.

A deadly crash late last month is being called the deadliest crash in the state in at least three decades.

Police in North Las Vegas say a driver going more than 100 miles per hour ran a red light and slammed into a minivan killing nine people, including himself.

The horrific crash put the spotlight back on the problem of excessive speeding on local roads.

Joining us now to talk about the issue and propose some solutions are Andrew Bennett, director of the Clark County Office of Traffic Safety and Shashi Nambisan, director of the UNLV Transportation Research Center.

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us.

That 100-mile-per-hour rate this driver was going, it's not rare.

The Nevada Department of Public Safety said that last year, more than 5,000 citations were given to people for driving 100 miles per hour or more, most of them coming from Clark County, and it's the second straight year that these numbers have gone up.

What do you believe is behind the rise in the numbers?

(Andrew Bennett) Immediately during the pandemic, we saw that increase in speed.

People took advantage of the open roadways, and we saw there was going to be a shift in human behavior.

We saw horrific crashes at 141 miles an hour, 156 miles an hour, and then again unfortunately we saw that just the other week with over 100 miles an hour.

So we have to reverse that thought process of it's okay.

We've focused so much on DUI in our state and impairment because we have to-- it's the leading cause of death.

Speed has been only a conversation about the last three years, but it's that conversation we have to have today to try to prevent these crashes from happening tomorrow.

-And Mr. Nambisan, do you agree with the pandemic being behind some of the increase in these numbers?

(Shashi Nambisan) Yes, partly, because at the onset of the pandemic because of the shutdown across the state, there were fewer vehicles on the roadway.

So you had wide-open roads with very few vehicles, and over the last decade-plus, we've had cars that are extremely powerful.

So now you have drivers in very powerful cars with very few vehicles on the road, and it's something that I guess some people find irresistible, to push the car to its limit, not necessarily to their limit.

-And isn't it wild that there were fewer cars on the road but more crashes.

What do you relate that to?

-Well, that's going to be again a direct reflection of the shutdown.

Any of us that worked in traffic safety, we would have expected that fatalities went down with less vehicles on the roadways, but we saw that increase in single-vehicle speed, lack of seatbelt usage and impairment crash, which we see with that reckless behavior all too often.

So we really didn't expect to see that, but now that we are continuing to see that behavior continue as our roadways are at capacity, that's a deadly combination.

-And would you say that behavior is related to frustration from the pandemic?

Where does it come from?

-I'm not sure I can address whether it is frustration.

I just attribute it-- it's not just in Nevada.

If you look at the national numbers over the last 2-1/2 years or so, 2 years, the same story is experienced across the country.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been trying to develop analyses, do analyses to understand what leads to it, but human behavior is something that is very hard for us to really discern.

I still feel it is open roads, powerful machines and the driver pushing the machine to its limit.

-The driver that was responsible in that crash in North Las Vegas, Gary Dean Robinson, according to the Review-Journal, he had been cited for speeding at least five times in the prior 15 months and just nine days before had pled guilty to speeding and paid a $150 fine.

That fine, is that part of the problem, how little it is?

What do we do to keep these people off the roads?

-Looking at the system from start to finish is one of the reasons that the County Commission wanted to create the Clark County Office of Traffic Safety.

From start to finish all too often it's a county operation, the courts are not, and it's a regional issue that we have to address regionally.

We have to make sure that everybody's communicating, whether that's the police departments and their technology and the courts and their technology.

We have great laws on our books currently.

We have some of the strongest DUI laws across the country.

We just need to make sure they're being followed to the letter of the law, and with that comes increased communications.

We're leading a sit-down at the Clark County Office of Traffic Safety with every single department that has a traffic bureau in the next few weeks to make sure we can have that conversation, see what they need and make sure the courts are getting the information they need to be able to make those decisions with the full picture.

-If I could build on that real quick.

Andrew hit upon a few key points, start to finish in terms of the crash, but what we have here and to your point about this driver having received multiple citations in a short period of time for violating the posted speed limit is we have so many law enforcement agencies who are responsible for maintaining order on the roadways, okay, enforcement, and we have a judicial system where we have multiple courts, okay?

So you have jurisdictional and functional agencies across different divisions, and what we lack is the interconnectivity between data recorded by one officer or agent of one agency with another.

So we need to try to integrate it so law enforcement officers in other jurisdictions, not North Las Vegas but Clark County for Metro did not have ready access to the information prior.

So this is something that I think we could look at and we should look at in the near term, try to bring about a near-realtime linkage between this various data not only from the enforcement side but from the adjudication side.

What happens once a citation is issued?

How is it adjudicated?

What does the judge or the lawyers who plead for the person who was issued the citation?

-How much information does the judge have access to about the person's prior history?

-Yes, and one quick-- not only that, what did the judge rule in this particular case?

-All right, then.

We talked about all the various agencies, police and DPS, there is a lack of them on the road at the moment because of the pandemic, correct?

-We've definitely seen a reduction in enforcement, and that's why that 5,100 number, the number of citations is also surprising.

That number, you know, was recorded during a record low enforcement period.

During the pandemic we saw number one, you know, decisions being made, you know, trying to reduce contact with the public, and that was a decision that had to be made by those various departments.

But then we're also looking at staffing issues with making sure that we have enough resources to talk about traffic and enforce traffic.

-Well, to fill in the gap, perhaps speed cameras or red light cameras would help out, but they are currently banned in the state of Nevada.

For each of you, do you agree that these type of cameras should be used, and are they effective?

We'll start with you, Mr. Bennett.

-One of the things that both the doctor and I have in common is we both sit on the Nevada Advisory Committee on Traffic Safety.

It's a statutorily recognized committee for traffic safety.

I have the opportunity to chair it.

We are currently and actively discussing that technology and making sure that we have a path forward.

We're one of the few states that it's statutorily prohibited at a state level, and I believe that conversation should happen at the local level.

Communities should decide for themselves whether this technology has the possibility of saving lives.

I personally believe that cameras have that opportunity and that should be made at the local level, and that's the legislation that we hope to see.

-Yes, and I'm going to call them safety cameras because the intent is to enhance safety on the roadway.

-Well, there's a difference between the speed cameras and red light cameras.

-There are a number of cameras that are deployed; however, they are not used from an enforcement or from a citation perspective but to improve traffic operations and traffic safety and in cases of crash to provide emergency response to coordinate all that.

So we do have cameras that are deployed across the road network here.

But if the concern is, as Andrew correctly pointed out, what we are working towards is coming up with local solutions as to what might be technologies, how might we leverage technologies to benefit society such as improving safety is first and foremost, but providing operational efficiency is the other thing.

Each of us wants to get from our origin to our destination as safely as possible and as quickly as possible, right?

-Yes.

And the opposition to these cameras, from what you understand, would be maybe an invasion of personal rights.

What other arguments have you heard?

-So as someone who worked four years ago on the legislation to try to move this forward three sessions ago now, you know, we heard a variety of different arguments and at the end of the day, we have to talk about prioritizing safety.

One of the main concerns was it would have to be a civil violation, which at the time Nevada law did not allow for civil traffic violations.

Most of our traffic violations starting 1.1.23 will be civil, so that argument has been eliminated and we'll have a process by next New Year's.

And when we talk about privacy and concerns, our ultimate concern should be, as the doctor said, making sure that we get from point A to point B safely and again, that should be a local conversation.

-Will you explain to me a little bit more about what happens in 2023.

-Absolutely.

So there's about 440 reasons to stop a car in the state of Nevada currently for traffic violations.

The bulk majority of those-- or all of them right now are criminal from broken taillight to speed to school zone.

Those are criminal violations in the state of Nevada.

On 1.1.23, the vast majority of those, except for extremely reckless ones, reckless driving, aggressive DUI, those obviously will remain criminal, but the bulk majority of our traffic code, including running red lights, will become a civil violation.

So that argument that it can't be a violation because it's going to be civil because a camera has to-- you have the right to face your accuser, that's why it needs to be civil-- so with a camera, it will be a civil violation and we'll have a civil process at that time.

-Smarter road design, that is one of your many areas of expertise.

Where would you start, and explain also how a smarter road can increase safety and prevent accidents.

Where would you start in Southern Nevada to improve these roads?

-I'd say let's look at leveraging technologies on the one hand, and the other hand is designing and operating roadways to accommodate all road users.

Not just motorized road users whether they be pedestrians, bicyclists, and now we have a lot of micro-mobility devices such as e-scooters and so on.

So we have to look at it holistically in terms of how do we accommodate the needs of all.

Now, on the one hand we want to enable people to move as quickly as possible, okay?

That's what we call the higher functional classes of roads such as a freeway.

Then on the other hand, we want to provide people access as easily as possible to the transport network.

The transport network goes beyond the roads, okay?

It includes transit for example and others.

So on the access side, we want to have driveways or curb cuts as frequently as possible, but that means you have a lot of vehicles turning in and turning out of the roadway.

And when you mix that with higher speeds, that's not a very good recipe.

So we need to have a tradeoff between what might be on the one hand the high-speed, high-volume roads versus the lower-speed, lower-volume roads and things in between.

There are many states and cities across the nation and across the world who have come up with a mix of strategies to come up with such design and operations.

How do you accommodate pedestrians and bicycles?

Not as an afterthought, but right from the planning and design as well.

-And I would argue that most people in Southern Nevada are driving.

It's not a city set up for pedestrians.

-I would argue otherwise.

Every one of us is a pedestrian even before you start driving, right?

Whether you walk from your residence to your car, you are a pedestrian.

Once you park your car, whether you're going to a store, to a theater, whatever it is, you are walking.

So there is a pedestrian element in every one of our trips and what we are missing to see is we don't notice the pedestrians.

I challenge people to walk and see the environment around them, bike and observe the environment around them, and you will notice that there's far more pedestrian and bicycle activity than you would envision when you're in a motor vehicle.

-Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time.

This is an issue we will continue to be following.

It is Black History Month, and this year Las Vegas' Historic Westside is celebrating a new attraction.

Located near Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards, Historic Westside Legacy Park honors community leaders from that historically Black neighborhood.

The one-acre park opened in December, and this month a second class of honorees was announced.

We spoke with several honorees who say they still want more for the Historic Westside.

The honorees at Historic Westside Legacy Park have held far too many titles to list in this story, and the same goes for their number of accomplishments.

Brenda Williams, for example, author of Westside School: Our School, Our Community, Our Time, was the first African American to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Nevada and the first to work in banking in the state.

(Brenda Williams) Somebody had to break the ice, it just happened to be me, and it just happened to be somebody who wanted the best possible for the community.

Williams, whose late husband Monroe Williams was one of the first Black firefighters in Las Vegas, went on to work for Richard Bryan during his time as Nevada governor and U.S.

Senator.

I found out what it was to be able to use somebody else's power to help us get where we needed to go as a community.

Similarly Ida Gaines, a civil rights activist, worked for a U.S. senator from Nevada, the late longtime Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

(Ida Gaines) I helped people who had been denied employment in places where I interceded for them, people to get into schools or higher education.

Ruby Duncan fought for welfare reform, finding herself in need of government assistance after falling while working in a kitchen at the Sahara.

Duncan is pictured on a display leading to Legacy Park.

In this photo from 1971, she and dozens of welfare activists, including actress Jane Fonda, marched down Las Vegas Boulevard and into Caesars Palace to protest welfare cuts.

The soon-to-be 90-year-old even helped bring food stamps to Nevada.

(Ruby Duncan) We didn't know it was lobbying.

We just thought we would tell the politicians the story, that we needed help.

We have to feed our children.

Roosevelt Toston reported on Ruby Duncan, appearing nightly on local television as Las Vegas' first Black news anchor and later took a job with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Charged with attracting African American tourists to Las Vegas, he helped make changes to LVCVA advertisements.

(Roosevelt Toston) It was always the same, you know, it was African Americans loading luggage into cars and greeting people at the airport, Skycaps and all of that and waiting on some of the tourists in the hotel.

So it was never us sitting around the pool, enjoying the things that Las Vegas has to offer us, playing the slots, so I would always point out to my boss that we need to change this video.

Toston and fellow 2022 honorees will eventually have their own plaques at Legacy Park.

The $3.2 million park is a joint project between the City of Las Vegas and the Clark County Commission.

Commissioner William McCurdy's father, William McCurdy Sr., is a 2022 honoree.

(William McCurdy II) Oftentimes progress is made in the political arena.

My father was and is someone who has consistently been on the front lines of serving the people.

(William McCurdy Sr.) I have been doing campaigns for over 30 years and represented Congressman Horsford and Governor Sisolak, and I just thank God that I get an opportunity to see something that has my name.

-I know that young people will walk through this park, and they will see these people and learn about the contributions they have made, and many will be inspired.

While several honorees appreciate the park and recognize its importance, some believe local leaders should prioritize improving the Westside's economy.

City Councilman Cedric Crear represents Ward 5 in Las Vegas, which includes the Historic Westside.

What is the state of the Historic Westside?

(Cedric Crear) I think we're in growth mode.

I think we're in revitalization mode.

I think we are into maintaining the heritage of the Historic Westside and moving the community forward.

We have something called the Hundred Plan in Action.

It's a strategic initiative that went out to the community over the course of a couple years, and it's addressing many of the challenges this community is faced with.

Unemployment is high in our ward, so we got to get people ready, trained and prepared to go to work.

Revitalization of the Historic Westside, bringing in businesses, bringing in industry.

Revitalization of people's homes.

Of immediate concern to some park honorees... We still need a grocery store, okay, and we need a grocery store that has the same amenities that other areas have.

-Still a lot of economic development needs to be done, but things are happening that give you hope.

It was hope for better jobs that compelled thousands of African Americans to move to Las Vegas in the 1950s and '60s.

Segregation forced them to live on the Westside, but they made the small area their own.

Jackson Street in its heyday was the Westside's version of the Las Vegas Strip, and while there are many aspects of that time period Westsiders would like to forget, there is hope that a vibrant Westside won't be just a memory.

Once upon a time, Jackson Street was workable, and it was what we used to call "Black People Avenue," Jackson Street.

-When I close my eyes, I want to see another Jackson Street.

I want to see another, you know, D Street with the amenities, quality housing, everything that will benefit the quality of life of Afro Americans in Historic West Las Vegas.

-Several clips in that story came from the Vegas PBS documentary African Americans: The Las Vegas Experience, which you can see at vegaspbs.org.

You will also find any of the resources we discussed on this show at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and remember to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

Thank you for joining us.

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