Needles casts an envious eye elsewhere

The desert town, feeling slighted for years, considers joining booming Nevada or Arizona. But there are doubts on both sides of the Colorado River.

By David Kelly, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

NEEDLES, CALIF. -- Depending on their mood and whom you talk to, people in this parched railroad town clinging to the eastern edge of California call it the poor stepchild, the redheaded stepchild, the ugly stepchild of San Bernardino County.

They grouse about not getting their roads paved, about being 220 miles from the county seat, about being a dumping ground for parolees and sex offenders -- all the while gazing enviously across the Colorado River at boomtowns in Arizona and Nevada.

"The building codes are stricter here, the taxes are higher," said Patricia Scott, a nurse. "I cross into Arizona and it's growing by leaps and bounds. We are the only community in the tri-state area that hasn't grown, and it's probably because we are in California."

Kohl's, Target and Sam's Club stand like beacons on the not-so-distant shore. Gas is almost a dollar a gallon cheaper across the river. Casinos beckon. Cities mushroom. And Needles slowly fades away.

"Have you been downtown?" asked City Councilman Richard Pletcher. "It's like little Hiroshima. It's HiroNeedles."

Resentment has been mounting for years, but the county's decision to reduce the Colorado River Medical Center, the town's once proud hospital, to a small urgent-care facility has sparked open rebellion. Needles is now considering leaving California to join Nevada or Arizona or to create its own independent county.

"This is not a publicity stunt. We are serious about secession," said former Mayor and Councilman Roy Mills. "Look at Nevada, they are booming. Look at Arizona, they are booming. We want to level the playing field. I was initially skeptical about splitting off, but the more I learn about it, the more doable it seems."

In many ways, people here have already left; they just haven't moved. They often dine, shop and work across the river. Their schools' sports teams compete against teams in Nevada and Arizona, not California. And for fun they usually head to Las Vegas, Lake Havasu or Laughlin, not west to Barstow.

"I think leaving California may be our last chance," Pletcher said. "Are we supposed to just dwindle down to a puff of smoke?"

A city commission is investigating the options. Not that leaving would be easy. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress would have to approve.

"It will be tremendously challenging, but people don't feel their voices are being heard," said City Manager William Way. "At one time, Needles was the place to be. Now it's struggling to find itself, find its place in the sun, so to speak."

Founded in 1893 with the arrival of the railroad and named after the pointy mountains south of town, Needles calls itself "The Best Kept Secret on the Colorado River." But the sun-blasted city is struggling.

A handful of businesses dot old Route 66 as it meanders through the dusty downtown past decades-old burger joints, weathered Craftsman homes and the gritty railroad depot. Shade is scarce, and the temperature can hit 125 degrees.

Yet this tightly knit community rallies when threatened.

In 1965, it prevented the rerouting of I-40 through Searchlight, Nev., a move officials believed saved Needles from winding up a ghost town. And in the late 1990s, it helped fight off attempts to put a nuclear waste dump in Ward Valley, 22 miles to the west.

The 25-bed hospital is the latest battleground. It has treated patients for 56 years and remains one of the few services residents don't need to cross a bridge to use.

Needles took over the hospital itself. To cut costs, staffers are working without benefits or overtime. Yard sales are being held to raise money.

"The county of San Bernardino has never liked us. We have always been their ugly stepchild," said Pam Andrade, a respiratory therapist. "They led us to believe they would turn this place around. They are like a lying spouse in a relationship that keeps lying and lying, and eventually you can't believe anything they say."

Brad Mitzelfelt, a San Bernardino County supervisor who represents Needles, disputes that. The town is home to 11 county offices and benefits from numerous county services, including a library, an airport, a regional park and law enforcement, he said.

"Needles may be better served in another state, but that's because California has a disadvantageous business climate that hurts them when they try to compete against Nevada or Arizona," he said.

Tom Bright owned two NAPA Auto Parts stores -- one in Bullhead City, Ariz., one in Needles. He said he paid 10 times more in workers' compensation insurance in California than in Arizona. A gas can at his Needles shop cost $19.99. In Arizona, it was $5.99. He sold chemicals and paint in Arizona that he couldn't sell in California because of environmental regulations.

"The labor laws, the overtime laws, the environmental laws are all stricter in California," he said. "If you were to fly over Needles, then over Lake Havasu, Bullhead, Laughlin, you would see that Needles hasn't grown at all. I'd be happy if it left."

Bright already has. He recently moved to Arizona.

But quitting the state is an uphill battle for the city.

With the exception of West Virginia's leaving Virginia during the Civil War, American secession movements generally have failed.

Wendover, Utah, tried to join West Wendover, Nev., in 2002, a move derailed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

In the late 1980s, San Bernardino County voters rejected an attempt to create a county running from the Cajon Pass to Needles. And a group of Northern California and southern Oregon counties declared the independent state of Jefferson in 1941. The movement lives on today with its own flag, radio station and "interim capital" at Yreka.

"There is more and more talk about secession, not just here but all over the country," said Brian Peterson, a Jefferson spokesman. "The government is out of touch with our individual lives. I would tell Needles to stick with it, keep your head and have a goal in mind. Is secession what you really want, or do you want to feel empowered?"

That raises another question: If Needles were to secede, would anyone want it?

Councilman Mills thinks so.

"Nevada would get 15 miles of shoreline where they could put up a casino or other developments," he said. "This is not a lopsided situation."

Others aren't so sure.

"In terms of whether they are better off, they need to look at more than just the business climate and weigh the services they get now," said Virginia Valentine, manager and chief executive for Clark County, Nev., which would absorb Needles if it joined that state.

"It's true we have no state income taxes, but the idea that we have more money for services . . . well, I don't know if that's the case."

Mayor Jeff Williams thinks the whole thing is a bad idea.

"The county has bent over backward to help us," he said. "I think this is saber-rattling. But I want to look at it objectively. What will we lose? What will we gain? Is it even possible? I don't want to bash the county and then have this effort fail. Then we really will be the redheaded stepchild."

In town, talk of secession is often met with a raised eyebrow or wry grin. Yet it taps into a sense of alienation just under the surface.

"I think it's extremely ridiculous in this day and age that the county supervisors can't come out and see what we need," said Sandi DeLeon, part owner of the Country Garden Cottage shop downtown. "They think this is Egypt out here. They may get lost and wander around the desert for 40 years."

Leina Kaylor said loving Needles takes time.

"When you first drive through, it is hot and ugly -- and it isn't until you stop and meet the people that you realize what a nice place it is," she said.

Barely a mile from downtown, along the river, Needles feels very different. It's as much as 10 degrees cooler beside the broad ribbon of blue. The homes are well-tended, the views stunning. This is the "coastline" some believe is Needles' best selling point to a new state.

Jack Murray, 82, likes it too. He likes to sit in his front room and watch the ducks float by. He likes gazing at the desert. And he loves Needles -- Needles, Calif.

"It's so calming and peaceful here," said the retired locomotive engineer. "I think having a hospital is vital, but I don't think leaving California is a real good idea. I think it's utter nonsense in all reality. I'm happy right where I'm at."

Needles in a haystack

Lost in California shuffle, town's City Council considers secession





By SCOTT WYLAND
Las Vegas Review-Journal







NEEDLES, Calif. - Doomsayers predict a chunk of California will break off into the ocean after a cataclysmic earthquake.

But long before that happens, the Golden State might lose a splinter on its east side because of a political storm.

Some city leaders in Needles, a small border town cradled by three states, want to secede from California and merge with Nevada. Given the geography, Clark County probably would inherit the town and its 5,000 residents.

Those screaming for secession say they are fed up with San Bernardino County being so tight with funding. Needles' size and remote location at California's eastern edge have marginalized it politically, they contend.

Resentment boiled over when the county came through with considerably less aid for a struggling city-run hospital than the City Council had expected.

Council members went beyond idle grousing. They voted last week to form a nine-person panel to study the pros and cons of seceding.

"I think it's doable," Councilman Roy Mills said. "It's something Needles needs to pursue."

Mayor Jeff Williams, however, thinks switching to Nevada is an unrealistic course, fraught with hurdles.

Both state legislatures must approve, as well as a majority of voters from both counties, Williams said. Plus, Congress must sign off on it because the state line would be redrawn.

Williams worries that any attempt to annex Needles into Nevada will be a futile exercise that will alienate San Bernardino County and make Needles residents look foolish.

"It's like our council threw a fit like a child," Williams said. "They are thinking with their emotions and not their minds."

He questioned whether Clark County would adopt a city that would go this far to embarrass its home county because it didn't get its way.

'stepchild syndrome'

On the other side of the state line, Clark County Manager Virginia Valentine said information was too sparse now to seriously discuss annexing Needles.

The revenue the county would gain by taking Needles would have to justify the added costs, Valentine said. "It would have to be in the interest of Clark County residents."

Needles should study all the ramifications closely before making such a drastic move, she said. City officials might discover drawbacks, such as the Nevada Legislature possibly wielding more power over cities than California lawmakers do.

As an alternative to breaking from the state, the city is looking at how Needles might form its own county within California.

However, Williams and Mills both say that option would have a different set of snags, and fewer advantages. Because a California county must have at least 10,000 residents, Needles would have to merge with either Barstow or Blythe, Williams said.

And a county that small would be overshadowed by relative giants like San Bernardino, Mills said. "My personal preference would be to join Nevada."

Needles would benefit from Nevada's wellspring of gaming revenue, and the town could add slot machines and perhaps a casino or two, Mills said.

Nevada could tap into the stream of travelers who drive through Needles, he said, noting that the nearby state-border station tallies 4 million cars yearly.

Nevada also would be more likely to upgrade a stretch of Interstate 40 that runs through Needles, a project that is decades overdue, Mills said.

If Needles joins Nevada, it would be 115 miles from the Clark County seat in Las Vegas, he said, compared with 215 miles to the current seat of San Bernardino County.

"We're so far removed out here, we don't even feel part of it," Mills said. "The red-headed stepchild syndrome."

pros and cons

Needles is Mayberry with a rugged, desert edge and 125-degree summer heat.

It derives its name from spirelike rock formations. The town sprang from the railroad built across the Colorado River in the late 1800s. A chunk of Route 66 stretches through the town, the architecture of which denotes a hodge-podge of eras: turn-of-the-20th-century buildings, tract houses and 1960s eateries.

At the local Burger Hut, two Bullhead City, Ariz., construction workers munched on fast food and tossed out opinions about Needles joining Nevada.

It wouldn't hurt if California, one the country's largest states, got a bit smaller and Nevada got a little bigger, said Louie Vasquez, 51.

Needles could bring in gambling and save folks a drive to Laughlin, Vasquez said. "I'm not a gambler, but I'm sure that people would like to see it."

Everyone could use another casino, said James Medina, 24, as long as generic gaming dens didn't nudge out the distinct local restaurants.

"I enjoy places like this," he said, motioning to Burger Hut.

Down the road at the county-run library, Becky Court, a patron, talked of how she receives money from the state and must be a California resident to qualify.

If Needles joined Nevada, she'd have to move 90 miles to the nearest California city, Court said. "I love it here and don't want to move."

Tena McGee-Scott, a library employee, said secession was the silliest idea she'd ever heard. Yes, Needles could set up casinos if it joined Nevada, and, yes, the city could use the money, she said. But she questioned whether that was really good for Needles.

"I've been here 20 years," she said. "If I want to be in Nevada, I'll move to Nevada."

hospital funding

The local hospital is the catalyst for the rift between Needles and the county's board of supervisors.

When Life Point, the company that ran the city's 25-bed hospital, announced it would pull out of California, the county offered to take over.

But falling home values and a tightening state budget took a bite out of revenues, forcing the county to scale back on the long-term aid it could offer the hospital, said Brad Mitzelfelt, a county supervisor whose district includes Needles.

Mitzelfelt said he tried to sell his fellow supervisors on keeping the hospital at its current level of care for awhile, but to no avail.

They instead proposed eliminating the emergency room and overnight care, reducing the hospital to a large outpatient clinic, he said.

That plan was unacceptable to most City Council members, Williams said. They decided to keep it a full-service hospital, using a $1.3 million lease buyout from Life Point to cover costs until money from billing flowed in.

The city is now running the hospital on "a wing and a prayer" with no business plan, Williams said, calling that a high-risk gamble.

long odds

If history is any measure, the odds of Needles seceding are slimmer than winning a million-dollar jackpot.

Local governments' attempts to break from home states have rarely been fruitful since the 19th century.

Needles isn't the first city in a neighboring state to seek to join Nevada. In 2002, the U.S. House gave the go-ahead for Wendover, Utah, to merge with West Wendover, in Nevada, but Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., blocked the bill before it could reach the Senate.

Mitzelfelt argued that over the years San Bernardino County has funded many projects in Needles and created local jobs by putting a courthouse and other government centers there.

But he understands the city's frustration over the hospital, and wishes them the best in what will be a tough quest.

"Bordering cities should have the option of going to another state," Mitzelfelt said. "It shouldn't be an insurmountable challenge."

State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, said he backs Needles' effort to join a more business-friendly state. The city has lost bids for big retailers that went to nearby Nevada and Arizona, both of which have lower taxes and fewer regulations than California, Ashburn said.

Ashburn said he will push for California and Nevada to do a joint study on how feasible it is for Needles to secede. Ultimately, it comes down to what's in the best interest of the citizens, he said.

"It's the kind of creative thinking that needs to take place. State lines are arbitrary, and things change."