A 150-foot distance requirement between food trucks and restaurants is the new law of the land in the city of Las Vegas. The distance requirement won the approval of the Las Vegas City in a 5-1 vote Wednesday, with Councilman Bob Beers abstaining because of his involvement in a downtown restaurant. Councilman Steve Ross voted no, saying he didn't think a distance requirement infringes on free enterprise.
Cash investors are once again winning the battle for all those foreclosed homes in Las Vegas and Clark County. County Commissioner Susan Brager said banks keep giving the homes to cash buyers – mostly investors waiting to flip the properties.
Sheriff Doug Gillespie is hoping the Legislature in coming months will authorize an already-voter-approved quarter-cent increase in the sales tax to generate more revenue for the budget-stricken Metro Police Department.
Alley to transform into horror attraction for one night
Monday, Oct. 15, 2012
The scarification of downtown Las Vegas, which already includes haunted attractions in at least two casinos, will take another twist Halloween night with a horror fantasy in downtown’s most photographed alley.
Who knew the Opticom, a device that can change a stoplight from red to green to allow emergency vehicles to get through an intersection more safely, would cause such a stir?
A massive protest slated Saturday in downtown Las Vegas stems, in part, from demands by the Culinary Union for a 15-cent increase to workers' health and pension funds.
Thousands of people also expected downtown for annual Heart Walk
Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012
A massive Culinary Union protest expected Saturday on Fremont Street is on course to run headlong into the Las Vegas Heart Walk fundraiser and Rediscover Downtown, a move by businesses to draw people to the area.
The traffic accident a month ago involving a pickup truck and a MedicWest ambulance trying to sneak through an intersection — the patient being transported died later at a hospital — sealed it for City Councilman Bob Beers.
Downtown is becoming a locals central hub. So enjoy it but don’t get carried away. Downtown Vegas isn’t Sheboygan. An influx of new workers, sparked by Zappos’ and the Downtown Project’s downtown moves, have to remember: Downtown isn’t Henderson or Summerlin.
Smoking in Las Vegas city parks soon may be illegal. A new parks code introduced Wednesday also would prohibit the use of city park water features – not including those connected to a swimming pool – for bathing, showering or washing clothes.
Barely 10 steps beyond the door of Zappos’ Downtown Project office, Krissee Danger walks past a man who asks for a spare cigarette as she pulls one out of her purse. “This is my last one,” she says. Would she have given one if she had more? “No.” A block farther, a homeless man, burnished and brown from sun and dirt, has his blackened brown shorts unbuttoned and open.
Visitors love downtown Las Vegas, believe it or not, says a new survey presented Wedneday to the Las Vegas City Council. The Downtown Las Vegas Alliance, in partnership with the Regional Transportation Commission and the Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency, funded a community survey to determine resident awareness of downtown projects and the perception of those projects.
Clark County commissioners formalized a request for state and/or federal assistance to offset damage expenses related to flooding from a Sept. 10 downpour.
Thousands of annual calls range from the mundane to outrageous
Monday, Oct. 1, 2012
Before Metro Police got around to their usual end-of-life protocols – securing the scene of the dead woman, calling the Clark County coroner – they called Clark County Animal Control about the dog. Erica Draeger, an animal control officer, drove to the Budget Suites on Boulder Highway. Police hadn’t gone in yet because someone said the dead woman had a dog. Draeger entered the room where the elderly woman, dead four or five days, lay decomposing. The odor from decomposition was eye-watering. Draeger wanted to get the dog and leave but the dog was nowhere to be found.
Venue would be in Fremont Street Experience’s Las Vegas Club
Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012
Like the rest of the country, Las Vegas is taking full advantage of the nation’s thirst for the undead, monsters and hacked body parts drenched in fake blood, the bounty that comes with lavish indulgence in the Halloween season. In 2011, estimates put the national take from the Halloween business around $6 billion. Customers buy costumes, makeup and hanging skeletons and monsters like a starving man devours food. Then there are the haunted houses.
Discussion between court administrators and Clark County commissioners regarding court marshals — formerly known as bailiffs — served as reminder Tuesday of a union issue simmering for months and now part of federal lawsuit.
The deaths of four people at a Spring Mountain Road bus stop still were fresh on the minds of county commissioners this week, leading to the postponement of one insurance decision and possibly more expense related to the famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.
Dissenting commissioner bemoans special consideration at entryway for attorneys
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012
A county commissioner harangued a justice system official for the virtual class warfare he sees emerging between attorneys and rank-and-file visitors to the Regional Justice Center.
Clark County lawyers and Strip casino operators may have inadvertently been given a remedy to an issue that has vexed them for years: What to do about handbillers, many of whom hand out girlie/adult pamphlets, to tourists on the Strip.
Attorneys paying annual fee, jurors would use express entrance under proposal
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012
Monday morning at the Regional Justice Center is the usual bustle of chaos as hundreds of people — citizens reporting for jury duty, attorneys, witnesses, plaintiffs and defendants — shuffle in a long line waiting to go through metal scanners upon entering the building.
The bus stop by the Crown & Anchor pub on Spring Mountain Road sits on the sidewalk, leaving a few feet of concrete between the bench and the road. Blood, glass and metal speckled the concrete Thursday morning, the scattered remains of the impact between a car estimated to have been speeding at 100 mph and several people waiting for the bus.
Police suspect Las Vegan Gary Lee Hosey Jr. was drunk and speeding when his vehicle went airborne and hit a Las Vegas bus stop, killing four people and injuring eight. The incident occurred about 6:25 a.m. on Spring Mountain Road east of Decatur Boulevard.
Clark County is finding more competition in, perhaps, the unlikeliest of endeavors for a governmental agency — shooting ranges. How might all those shooting ranges hurt or help the Clark County Shooting Complex?
The Colorado River Commission of Nevada on Tuesday added its weight behind the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s last-resort option to siphon groundwater from counties north of the Las Vegas Valley.
Slowly but surely, the Clark County Commission is moving toward changes that will alter the way newsracks – including those holding leaflets advertising “Girls, Girls, Girls” – are displayed on the Las Vegas Strip.
Pro Gun Club attorney threatens lawsuit if commission won't reverse decision
Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012
Shooting range owners who painted a sign into the side of a hill facing Boulder City are asking Clark County commissioners to reconsider and allow the signage to stand.
Only 150 feet separated Las Vegas City Council members Wednesday afternoon, but the distance was enough to kill a proposal to create a distance requirement for mobile food trucks from stationary restaurants. After three votes failed — one to change nothing in the city code, one to create a distance of 150 feet, and another to create a distance of 300 feet — the matter was tabled and will likely return to the council at a future meeting.
These aren’t the best of times for organized labor. All around, public employee unions are coming under fire as groups of privileged workers who earn good wages and benefits while most in the private sector ...
Political campaign signs left behind after candidates win or lose races are eyesores that seem to litter just about every vacant lot or open fence area in just about every section of metropolitan Las Vegas.
Former Deputy Constable Ray Jacoby is suing Las Vegas Township Constable John Bonaventura and Clark County, claiming his free speech and due-process rights were violated when he was suspended without a hearing for on-duty profanity, then fired after he filed a complaint.
A pair of powerful Las Vegas businessmen Wednesday morning lost their bid to keep a large sign for his shooting range painted on a hillside facing Boulder City. That isn’t stopping Pete Eliades and Sig Rogich, whose Pro Gun Club sign is at the center of the controversy.
For now, Las Vegas Township Constable John Bonaventura will have to pay his own legal bills without help from Clark County. Commissioners denied Bonaventura’s request for a $2,000 reimbursement to pay a bill from a Los Angeles-based insurance agency.
First, he allegedly shot a tree that stubbornly refused to be cut down on the night of July 3; then, one of his bulls escaped its North Las Vegas enclosure Saturday and he faces more misdemeanor charges, this time for “livestock at large.”
An employee at a southeastern valley Dairy Queen today shot a sword-wielding robber, police said. The man, who was shot twice, was pronounced dead at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.
Collins cited, says he's glad no one was seriously injured
Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012
A day after North Las Vegas police tranquilized one of his bulls that had escaped its enclosure, Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins said he’s glad no one was seriously hurt.
Allegations of sexual and religious discrimination in the Las Vegas Township Constable’s Office, coupled with retaliation complaints, may make their way front and center during Tuesday’s meeting of the Clark County Commission because of one important, touchy issue.
A constable’s deputy who filed a retaliation and religious discrimination complaint Monday against the Las Vegas Township Constable was fired Thursday morning. Deputy Ray Jacoby's termination only bolsters his contention that Constable John Bonaventura was retaliating when Jacoby was informed last week he was under investigation for violating policy, said Ben Scroggins, a former federal public defender who is representing Jacoby.
Stretches of Las Vegas streets totalling some 883 acres were designated today as a new redevelopment area with hopes that the kind of economic renaissance happening in downtown’s redevelopment area will be duplicated.
One day after a Sun story detailed a sex discrimination complaint against Las Vegas Township Constable John Bonaventura, a deputy mentioned in the story found himself under investigation for an incident in May.
Using drug discount cards, people with insurance can get discounts on drugs their policies won’t cover, including so-called “social” prescriptions for medications such as Viagra and birth control pills.
Three firefighters unions, worried that budget-strapped municipalities want private ambulance companies instead of firefighters to answer less-critical medical calls, are mounting an Internet campaign suggesting the private ambulances are slow to respond.
The Las Vegas Township Constable has come under heavy fire for a variety of accusations since January. Criticism first came after the Sun found a video on Constable John Bonaventura’s website that purportedly was being worked on as a reality TV pilot. Last week, the Sun reported that a former deputy constable, Kristy Henderson, filed a sexual discrimination complaint against Bonaventura. Despite all that, it appears something right might be coming out of that office, too.
A tie vote over removing a massive hillside sign resulted in a two-week holdover but gave a symbolic victory to a small Clark County community and provided evidence that a new county commissioner won’t back down even when facing powerful local forces. At the end of more than an hour of testimony and debate Wednesday morning over the “Pro Gun Club” sign, which is on a hillside on county land facing Boulder City, six county commissioners twice voted to a tie, 3-3.
Reacting to the escape of two adult chimpanzees in July, which resulted in police shooting and killing one, county commissioners suggested policy changes to tighten controls on exotic pet owners in unincorporated Clark County. The proposed changes include getting a justification letter from animal owners with an explanation as to why, as one county attorney put it, “someone need lions and tigers and bears in their backyard.”
Handbillers on the Strip, most of whom distribute “girls-to-your-room”-type cards to pedestrians, will now be legally responsible for picking up your trash – if that trash is one of their handbills and it is within 25 feet of the handbiller.
Commercial property owners in the Las Vegas Valley Water District were granted $44 million in relief Tuesday through a promised credit for all businesses hooked up to fire-emergency water lines.
A discrimination complaint alleges Las Vegas Township Constable John Bonaventura regularly harassed female employees shortly after taking office in January 2011.
It’s difficult for anyone to stay awake during government meetings. But the unwritten promise by those who run for office is that if they get elected, they will pay attention. After the Las Vegas City Council's Recommending Committee last week altered a proposal dealing with the distance between food trucks and restaurants, several people from the audience spoke bitterly about what some felt was rude treatment by committee members.
Despite promising county officials not to do a reality TV show based on his office — after the Sun last year discovered embarrassing reality TV-like footage of his staff on YouTube — Las Vegas Constable John Bonaventura appears to be doing just the opposite.
Four years after enacting a “party-house” ordinance meant to gain some control over homes in residential areas turned over to noisy, short-term renters, the Las Vegas City Council appears close to stiffening the law.