Luxury Living with Debrae Little

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NB studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. The

Debrae Little 0:40
Dave, welcome to luxury living with Debre. I'm your host. Debre little, this is a place for expert interior design advice and inspired ideas to elevate your home and lifestyle. Today, I am joined by Chris Giuliani, and I'm so thrilled to have her here today. It's been it's an honor actually, to have you. You have such a long standing relationship in Las Vegas and seeing so much growth and development over the years that you've been here, and you have a unique perspective, because I think you've been on the political side of things, as well as in education. You started out in education. I understand correct and tell us a little bit about yourself. For those who aren't familiar with you and your past and and future,

Chris Giunchigliani 1:29
actually, well, you know, I've been here in August, I think 46 years. I'm from Chicago originally, but I was born in Italy. I'm the oldest of six kids. My dad, my two, what? Two of my brothers and I went to my father's graduation at circle as an architect. I remember him working nights and going to night school. My mom worked, supported the family while I did that, along with his draftsman as a waitress for 28 years. Not unlike many families that you work hard, we were middle class, but we had fun. We you know what? We were a family. We grew up in a wonderfully diverse neighborhood. I think diversity is very integral into our communities these days, and it shouldn't be something seen as a bad word. I moved out here on I came out on vacation with a couple of roommates, moved out to two weeks later, found an apartment, got a job, got enrolled at UNLV in the master's program, and the rest is here, I taught special ed Middle School for 30 years here in Clark County. I was the former president of the teachers union. I was a state assembly woman for 16 years, and I was a county commissioner of 12, and I just kind of retired from that. I was termed out and but I've always been a community activist. I think wherever you go into a community, no matter how small or how big, you can help make a difference with people if you take time to listen to them and make friends, know your neighbors. I'm probably the only I get teased on my block, because I'm kind of the neighborhood watch captain and watch people's houses when they're out of town for but I think that's part of what a neighborhood is, and that's what I learned by growing up in Chicago. I think

Debrae Little 2:57
you were actually a neighborhood, part of a neighborhood. Yes, I was, and I think that concept seems to be fairly fleeting these days, so, but I'm glad you have actually connected with those that you live near and helped them in the process of just everyday living. They

Chris Giunchigliani 3:11
make me feel good, and I'm there to help. I have the time. Yeah, so what?

Debrae Little 3:15
How did you transition from education? I know you mentioned a little bit of that, and what was the motivation from going from education to public service and on to leadership?

Chris Giunchigliani 3:26
I, as a public employee always saw myself as a public servant, even as a teacher. And in 1990 my assembly woman, Eileen Brookman, that my husband had worked her campaigns like before I ever even knew him, had to retire from serving. Her son was very ill and had to have a heart transplant. So she called me up and said, I want you to run in my seat. And I said, Well, I hadn't thought about that side of it. I'd done lobbying for the teachers union and things along those lines. But I said, Well, she said, You're the one who's walked my doors for me, so you already know the district. So I said, Okay, so I talked it over with my husband, who had just left teaching and had started the assembly caucus, and he ran campaigns for the for the assembly side. And we talked it over, and he said, Yeah, you're president of the Union right now. That that's may or may not work. You know, we have to look at the makeup of this of the district, and how you fit into it. But he said, Yeah, I think you couldn't. You out of a good shot. And so we ran. I won by 123 votes. Wow, don't tell me one every vote does not count, because it does. But it was a wonderful experience for me. From a perspective on the other side, I always saw myself as my students advocates as well as their teachers. And so then my husband was was a teacher as well. We talked about, and I said, you know, maybe because I was having problems in my head of not wanting to become power hungry, or any of that kind of garbage and and he's like, You know what? Here's the thing, if you were an advocate for your children, then you just become an advocate for the people that live in your district. If it's senior citizens that need something, then you advocate for them. If it's parents that need assistance, then you advocate for them. So. Don't look at it as he reframed it in my mind, as more a public servant rather than an elected official, because official to me separates me from people, and I don't want to be separated from them. And so I learned from a completely different perspective, because I had I had a primary, I had a fellow Democrat who I knew very well, and I knew the family, and he lived down the street, and he attacked me for not taking my husband's last name and your woman, you should stay in the kitchen. And they did flyers at that and that was 1990 and that wasn't but I did win the primary, and then I went on to win the general election, but it taught me that every vote counts, that if you don't bother to talk to people, then you don't if you don't ask, you don't get and I had, because I was a school teacher, my girlfriends all helped me do my walk routes, and so we color coded everything. I made every side of every street. I did the orange route on evens, then I do the orange route on odds. So I personally had been to every single door in my district, not once, not twice, but that first time, because it was small, I walked my district eight times, wow, and that I still won that closely, because it was a divided I was pro choice. There was a heavy Mormon influence still within that area. You had to just deal with where people were coming from, but because I had taken the time in the neighborhood when a former US senator who lived around the corner from me, who was an LDS bishop, he took my yard sign and put it in the yard right across from the church, and he was getting calls from people going, how could you He said, Because I know her as a person, and I'm not going to just pick one single issue to make my mind up. And that taught me a lot about politics as well. So it is all local, but my disappointment these days are the lack of commitment from Democrats or Republicans or non partisans, who don't go out and ask they don't hold town halls, they don't have community meetings. They don't educate people. And I always saw campaigning as educating not just about me, but about issues,

Debrae Little 6:46
right, right? It is, it is, and there's, there's a lot of issues to be had. I mean, to be honest with you, I mean, you've had the experience of seeing Las Vegas grow. You saw the political climate change over time. You've seen just a little bit of everything going on. So having said that, what are the changes in the Las Vegas landscape that truly, has truly stood out for you, especially when it comes to communities, or, for that matter, schools and housing and libraries and parks. I mean, there's a little bit of everything. But I'm sure you've seen changes, and you've probably been a part of when certain monies, perhaps were appropriated for these things, or for housing development or for the elderly, or for public schools and things like that.

Chris Giunchigliani 7:30
Being with the county, because we have social services, we're able to drill down into neighborhoods what I've seen over the years, because the growth was not properly planned, and part of that is because you have competition from municipal governments the county and everybody's fighting for more property tax. That's really the bottom line. So if you grow out, you grow at least they can collect more property tax. I don't think that's a good source in my in my mind. And so what I have seen us lose not so much on the east side, and I have the east side. I live on the east side. I've represented the east side, and there's still neighborhoods you go into so many gated communities. Now I don't gated community is an oxymoron, in my opinion. And so Vegas switched from doing more subdivision based without having to be gated into more gated and HOAs, which cost people extra money, it gave them a false sense of security to some extent, and it segregated people, and they didn't know. They don't. If they come into their garage, they get out in their garage, they go into their house, and you never see each other. And now that's not everywhere. There are people that do draw people together, but I think the Construction wise, we did a disservice. I think both the politicians that did planning and zoning, as well as the developers that come in and did that come in and did cookie cutter. You would know this being, you know, in design, my dad was an architect, so I learned a lot of stuff. My husband and I built three houses together just to learn about how to do design and come up with it. Vegas is not Southern California, yet, most of the housing here, you'll see is more designed as if we were in Southern Cal, which is a very different climate. We do not rotate our houses and acclimate them the right way for heating. We don't even give them awnings. If that's the case, if you're going to do some shades component. And so to me, that's part of design. So I was real hands on in my district. I'm like, No, you're not putting that there. And if you're not giving me a second sidewalk, don't even come. And if you don't have a backyard that the kids can actually play in, don't bring me that product. And so right now, I think the developers that are here, and many of them are ones that been since I was on the commission, they it's all about density, and it's not about the quality, not only the quality of the housing, but how do you ensure that a family has a place for the dog or cat to run, and the kids don't have to put the basketball thing in the Front Street, but they only have one sidewalk to walk on and I mean, it's, it's nonsensical. There's walls everywhere. I hate walls. I grew up in, I grew up in Chicago, we didn't have walls. People didn't build. It wasn't a fencing. People out mindset. And I think over the years, that give again, gave people false insecurity. But it also said that you could see the grocery store from your. House, but you had to get in a car to get to it. If you not everybody has a vehicle or have two vehicles for the family that need it. So looking at your bus lines, looking at where your locations at grocery stores are. If, as we debate the issue of affordable housing, we need to look at what you need to support that affordable housing. How do people get there? Where do they shop? Where's the child care, where's the where's the dry cleaning? All those factors that help support a community, but they also build small mom and pops, though, it's a perfect place to be able to diversify and support a community by saying, hey, we need a barber shop over here. We need a hairdresser, we need a this, we need a that, and you don't need a corporate to bring that that skill set. So if we did a better job of having that kind of a communication before we approved as electeds at that time, before we approved certain planning guidelines, it would, I think the valley would be more softened towards being more neighborhood based and more community based, rather than isolated, right?

Debrae Little 10:55
It sounds like the urban planning portion just went out the door and was substituted by the need to receive more tax. Yeah, taxing, you know, taxing, yeah, the homeowners money,

Chris Giunchigliani 11:07
yeah. The Uli. They used to do programs. I attended them here at UNLV, and they would bring in people from a community and talk about trees coverage. I'm weird. I read the whole tree list. And palm trees are not indigenous to here. They were brought in from California. That's where our fruit rats came in. They actually don't believe me. I do my homework when I get into stuff like this, and, and, and it's so the city did get them to stop putting in palm trees. We had to try to do a disapproval on the list of what, what is accepted plant material, and that's developed, usually by the UNLV School of Architecture, and that they worked out the Plant List in the county and the local governments adopt that. I couldn't get palm trees completely off the list. They're like at the bottom of the base. But unfortunately, some of the local governments still wanted, well, we want this, you know, Charleston with its new redo, we put palm trees number one. Doesn't bring shade, it brings more pigeons, it brings more other stuff, and nobody trims them when they're needed to be so if we're going to do something because of our urban heat scape, we are the number one city in the United States with the hottest heatscape, even compared to Phoenix. Then you need to have canopies of trees that are native to here, or can support this kind of watering and heat component winds in the different times of the year, the winds have gotten worse, but you need stronger trees for that part of it, and that's what we should be talking about with developers. Instead of giving me a little sketch with, oh, I'm going to put they don't even know what names they're supposed to be able to use. You don't need to rock everything. You have to soften it. Because we just all we do is we add to the heat sink that comes into

Debrae Little 12:33
town, right? So there isn't much thought given. Now here you've raised an interesting point. Is there, there doesn't seem to be a lot of thought given to the masses for housing, as opposed to those that are like gated communities and that kind of thing. And it seems like that that's where the disconnect is. If you're behind your gates, your golden gates, then you can pretty much do whatever you want, because you pay the HOA or you decide on that community, but once you leave that gated community, the world around you, which is is different, but that's okay, but that's okay, but you still have to go out into that world to go to the grocery store, or what are they, or the gas station, or their EV, you know, whatever station, but it seems like there's just seems To be a disconnect. So what would you moving ahead, giving how you've pretty much assessed the way things are now? What would make it different? What, what things what as an individual that I might do? Or how would you influence an elected, you know, official, or, you know, what is, is it community gardens in your neighbor and throughout the neighborhood, is that going to help? Is it, you know,

Chris Giunchigliani 13:45
want to talk to each other. They're going to do a community garden. And I do garden, and I work with greener planet to put in. When I left about 157 gardens in the schools, I wanted to always do a program with the apartments in my district, especially those off of Twain, is have let the have the property manager, we would pay for it, put in the garden for the kids and the adults. Have the kids be taught it, like it or or whatever, and they walk across the street. But then you could that interacts kids. It gives them something active to do. There's always going to be an adult with another set of eyes. And then, because of the diversity of the apartments that are here. You could produce a multicultural cookbook, you know? You could have your grandma come down and say, Oh, I do this with the collard greens. And I'd be doing, okay, this is what I do with chard and kale, right? If that's how you build a community, in my opinion. And it's a it's a simple, cheap way to do it, but I could not get the apartment complexes to let me come in and do that, which is kind of sad. So what would I do? I would want more collaboration. We should not be competing as local governments against each other. It would be great, because you have an overlapping for example, I was a county commissioner, but I live in the city, so I also have a city council person. Why aren't we collaborating on if you get a project that comes in, even though I don't have a say so on it? Because. It's in the city, for example, right? But it affects my constituents as well. Why would we not sit down and talk about, Hey, where's the safe route to school? What school is even nearby? What's it? Can the church still have access for parking on Sundays and Wednesdays or whatever? There are services, you know? You look at it as how you shape growth to build a neighborhood, not a subdivision, right? And the more you get into my and everything's brought to them as subdivision. It's not a criticism, it's just an observation, because all of us are everyday people. Everybody that's served with did had another real job, and so we assume that they're experts in planning and zoning. I left the county commission. I was pretty good, but I am not an expert in planning and zoning, for example. So why would we not have more education and conversation about, how do you decide what design makes better sense, what color scheme? Because you can tell them what colors I'm like. No, you're not not doing purple here. This is the desert. Look at look at your tones. Of what should come into play. But many electives don't even know what to ask because they've not been taught some of that. So to me, there's a missing gap for elected officials in government to even be taught about, how do you govern within a municipal government? It's very different than governing at the state level or at the county level. How do you what kind of questions should you ask of a developer? I walked all the properties that would come in to me, and I'm like, no that that wall needs to be over here, or I want it gone and the sidewalk, you have to take the time. And they get paid well enough, so it shouldn't be a matter of the time, but they do have to take the time. But too many of them become dependent on their planning commissioners, and their planning commissioners. Unfortunately, many times are appointees of the elected official, but many times they're developers themselves, and so there's not necessarily the mindset of really looking at how a community should be grown so but again, you should sit with your planning commissioner as well as fellow electives and have conversations about what projects are coming in, rather than being blindsided by somebody. It just might help you be a little bit more attuned to, like, Where does the traffic go? Should you have a right hand turn here? Oh, no. You better not do that, because you're going to dump everybody into a neighborhood. Then they're going to get calls from them because there's speeding down their their small street. You if you don't ever go out and look at this and walk the projects, then you won't have an idea of what, yeah,

Debrae Little 17:17
you want to have an idea the impact is actually going to have other people at large, exactly, yeah, and it's as simple as parking if you're going to have something, then you know that is going to cause traffic jams or their inability for people to actually walk safely or do anything like that in their neighborhood, or crosswalks, or any of those things. And I think it does take a lot of planning a lot

Chris Giunchigliani 17:39
of times after the fact. Yeah, well, you have to wait till something happens.

Debrae Little 17:43
Is there an opportunity for design professional to educate the folks on the planning

Chris Giunchigliani 17:48
committee? Oh, my gosh, absolutely. It's like I said, I used to come down and I would judge the architect thing that Merrick used to do with the students, because I was just interested in stuff like that. But the young adults would say, you know, hey, I'm going into design. There's an absolute place for everybody to play, from design professionals, architecture, land, landscape architects. I mean, we should, we should have forums on a regular basis where you can say, hey, this is the idea of the week is going to be you're going to be asked, What colors do you want to have that apartment complex painted? Hear from the design standards. Here's where your heat is. You don't want to do black, you know. You don't want to just things that come in that more desert scaped because of where you live, locally, and it helps to reduce you don't want to do white either. You know, there's just different things that. But I don't think they think about it. And the developer, with no disrespect, many of them are good, but they only want density. They don't really not care. And, okay, we're going to do purple and white or teal and whatever, right? Okay, so, yes, there is absolutely a place, and that would be to start with your local governments and say, Hey, why don't we have a forum where we all come together, even all the zoning directors in Clark County and all the cities meet regularly, monthly. You should go, I mean, you should be invited into those meetings, start with those people, because what they're the staffers that kind of affect what goes on that even before it bubbles up to us as a as a public official.

Debrae Little 19:10
So they need to, they need a dose of education. I mean, as a designer, I can see how that, and I'm just really surprised by what you're saying, because I just assumed all of these things were taking place, and there were meetings, and there were designers there, and cookie

Chris Giunchigliani 19:23
cutter house that doesn't have a bathroom, at least, for my guests to go to before they have to go through my bedroom to get to it. Okay? There's just stuff in design, right? Basic, Basic,

Debrae Little 19:33
yeah, they are basic elements that need to be addressed and looked at. I just this is really insightful to me. I had no idea, and

Chris Giunchigliani 19:42
with your backgrounds too, you know you could I wish these communities were better designed for first time owners, mid term owners and those that age in place, because there's different needs that come in. So how do you make that facility accommodate as people age in place, right? I mean, there's just different things from a design. View, where's the steps? Where's the handholds? Where's the you know, put pools on on your doors. There's just different things that could be done that people take for granted, but make a difference in your quality of life as you age in place,

Debrae Little 20:13
right? Well, but aging is not an option. I'll be honest with you, I don't, I don't think there's that much foresight into things like that. Well, the question I have is you kind of have actually painted a picture of what Las Vegas would probably need in terms of the housing market and being able to accommodate all the folks that live here and the different lifestyles and everything. Where do you see Las Vegas in general, going, I think at one time, it was not thought of the place to live, you know? It was just the play. Yeah, it was the play. It was the entertainment. Now it's becoming a sports capital, and we're going to have every professional team here now, but for those that are coming here and looking for actually to live what? What would you suggest, or what do you see? I mean is that we talked about a lot about the things that aren't necessarily being done and can be looked at. But where do you think things headed? Are we? Are we gearing ourselves more toward an older population, retirees, still coming here? Are we looking at? Maybe we're gearing more toward the entertainment crowd, since the stairwells are coming

Chris Giunchigliani 21:24
here, and that's all bunch of garbage that's given out to people. They don't move here. I'm sorry. They might hold a second home, but this is not their home. Where do I see it? Number one, we don't have the water, and it's time that we have reality check. You can't just continue to promote sprawl in order. Just because you want it doesn't mean you should be doing it. Number one Lake Mead is at an all time low. I actually got to walk under it when they engineered it to add the third straw, which was amazing to see before they refilled the whole lake. It was pretty cool, because I like the engineering aspect of it. Why not? But there is no water, and people don't realize that the local governments they're being told, you have enough in a portfolio, but we have, all throughout the state of Nevada, they've over appropriated the water in each of the aquifers. And so what that means years ago, 30 years ago, the water district wanted to import water from the middle of the rural states, and I was the only politician, I think, at that time, that opposed that. I'm on a border during nonprofit boards. And we sued, and we finally won. It took us 30 years, but they can't. They're they can't do a pipeline to import water from the rural community because it hurt them. And just for us to feed our sprawl is not really the most appropriate way to do it. We do have quite a bit of BLM land in town, in Henderson City, North Las Vegas, Boulder, wherever they all know where it's at. You can go do an appropriation of that BL BLM land, and because you reserve it. So the school district reserves a lot of the BLM property for schools and potential locations for building. We should be doing more infill, and not just talking about so okay, you only get 20 units, but 20 units is 20 more, and if they're affordable, whatever that might be, then at least you've got something coming in a neighborhood's not got a blighted piece of property that's just sitting there, that's being trashed or homeless encampments are on it. So you have to look at the quality of life that comes in, right? So why not? It's not only a win win. It's just not a multitude. You don't have to build 1000 units right there. You could come in with small parcels that actually complete and compliment a community without getting them up in arms saying, Oh, I don't not my backyard kind of thing. If you do it thoughtfully, and I think that would be so key, then the waters there were not reappropriating. Another pet peeve of mine has been a lot of these big box stores that closed my Albertsons closed 25 years ago now, I think on a quarter of Maryland and Sahara. And why not repurpose those into small apartments for the homeless, to bring them back in, to transition them into society, to relearn how to live in an apartment, because that we assume somebody's been on the street for a year they don't remember. How do you do your laundry? How do you figure out paying your budget, your bills? You can then co locate mental health services or social services right on site, and then, because they've already got water and electricity run to them, just turned out. So there's

Debrae Little 24:06
things to utilize the property Exactly.

Chris Giunchigliani 24:08
And you can put small mom and pops on the downstairs if you want to, and then have housing up above. There's different ways, but you have to have the will. Not everything has to be a big project, in my opinion, and we've gotten used to doing that, but you don't get an affordable house out of any of those those? No, no, you haven't. I mean, I'm sorry, what's our medium now, 485, that's not an

Debrae Little 24:27
affordable No, that's not. So we're trying to search for some level of equity. I mean, you know or not, equity is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say an equal balance for those, and that seems to be what's, what's missing in the environment?

Chris Giunchigliani 24:42
Sure. I mean, I grew up in an apartment. Our biggest dream was to have our own home, you know, and we achieved that. But maybe you don't need a 4000 square foot one. How are you going to heat it? You know? Maybe, maybe there I did the original green building law when I served in Carson City, so, but I could only get it for commercial properties like the home builder. Opposed anything. But now many of them do design to the green standards, at least, and that's fine, if I got them to think about it, then I'm happy with that part of it. But in green building, you're looking at passive uses. Maybe we shouldn't have five ton AC units on every house nowadays. Maybe we should do them all by splits. Then you can control your heating in each room, and if you're not using that room, you turn that room, you turn that off a day. What does that do? That saves you money, so ways to be economically more sufficient make a difference as well. It's like I would be working with I used to represent the older part of Vegas, and it's like I tried to get the landlords. I said, Let's do a switch out of your old window machines. They're actually not inefficient, but maybe put in the more efficient ones, and we have a buyback for that. And you get, you get an incentive to be able to change those out rooftops. We don't even require rooftop solar in all schools. Still, they posed it every time we went to Carson City, it's like, why stop do we don't talk public policy. That's public policy, and we never have a forum to have those kind of conversations. And so maybe that's another place that those of you that are within that industry can get your electeds to say, let's put a form on and let's talk about what so that they are aware of. How do you talk to somebody about putting solar on your house? Many of them are leases. Maybe they don't realize sometimes it's part of their mortgage now, and if you go to sell your house, you got to pay that poor I mean, consumer economic affairs is all tied into how you design a home as well, or an apartment or a condo or townhouses. Not everything has to be single family. You could look at the mixed use component that comes into

Debrae Little 26:30
play. I think there's a lot of opportunities for that. I've seen some of that development here in Las Vegas. You know, in the downtown area, we're starting to see some of that, but not to the extent that we need and not to be able to take care of our large population that are here that can't afford housing. And then for those that are going to come, because it's lots of different people come here. Not everyone comes here is the mega Buck millionaire who moves here exactly wants to play, but you have people coming for other opportunities. Maybe they're working on the strip, maybe whatever the case may be, and they need housing exactly, and so it's just trying to to be more

Chris Giunchigliani 27:07
find that balance. Because we had, when I first moved here, we had the largest number of churches in the United States. We had per capita. We had the we had certain numbers that were there. I don't know what they are now, but we do have a lot of senior citizens that still move here. We have the biggest influx again, from Orange County, California and LA County to hear that we had 45 years ago when I first moved to town. The single largest movement from county to county was from Orange County, California to Las Vegas, Nevada, 40 years ago, and it is now. And so what are their expectations? What's that age group? Now, across the street from me, they're a young couple, but they sold their house in San Diego for more than what and they paid too much, in my opinion, for the house, but it still was less than what they had. So then they were able to recoup that. So that's for a young family, but not everybody can afford to maintain a home, so maybe apartment first is the best way to do it. You learn how to do your budgeting. You have to figure out where your utility costs come in. Some cover them, some roll them up. Some don't you know those are they're bringing economics back into the schools. So which is good, but those are the type of economics. It shouldn't just be banking. It should be, well, it

Debrae Little 28:15
seems like there's basic strategies just for living every day and how to live your best life in your home. What's affordable, what's going to you want to maintain a lifestyle, more than likely, and you want to create a sense of community. So I think you do have to reevaluate things and look at them, but I'm glad to see that they are bringing that back into the school system. Since I know you're on, you have an interest in the education side, but I wanted to say, you know, your insight has just been such a gift. I really appreciate your coming today and participating on luxury living with de Bray, and it's just actually rounded out my understanding of the city and how politics work and the different forms and how I should be actually be more engaged. And that is actually, maybe that is luxury living. I

Chris Giunchigliani 29:02
think that can be luxury living, because if you educate people, always start with education, in my opinion, then they begin to have questions. I didn't come on. I had to do my own homework because I was interested in it. That's not everybody, and I'm not to judge everybody. But if you bring a forum together and you say, hey, are some things maybe to think about, then you trigger their mind and they might ask a question that they hadn't thought about asking before. So thanks for doing this show. I think it gets people refocusing what's needed and what's working and what isn't

Debrae Little 29:30
working right, right and the opportunities that exist. I mean, we're not just saying it's all it's all bad. No, it's not. It's a great town still be here, right? These are the things that we can do to fix them. So once again, thank you for being a guest of luxury living with Debre you.

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