Downtown offices of mayor, City Council waterlogged

Erin Neff

Friday, July 9, 1999 | 10:39 a.m.

Even as the first reports of the flooding in northwest Las Vegas reached City Hall downtown, the 10th-floor offices of the mayor and City Council members began to take on water.

Mayor Oscar Goodman's weekly press conference was interrupted with news his office had flooded.

"God's punishing me," the mayor joked.

But the water was no laughing matter elsewhere in City Hall, where buckets and trash cans became drip collectors and some floors were darkened due to shorted-out lights.

Looking out of his leaking office windows, Councilman Michael McDonald pointed out the two-story pit dug for the Neonopolis entertainment retail center parking garage.

"It looks like we have another municipal swimming pool," McDonald said, watching water pour into the large hole from the flooded street.

Goodman showed visiting reporters the mess in his office and then postponed plans to phone Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates so he could watch the city's emergency command center in action.

City officials planned to talk to Gates in an effort to entice him to develop a computer campus downtown.

Councilman Larry Brown, who was scheduled to join Goodman in the conference call to the computer mogul, was ironically at a Regional Flood Control District meeting when the problems began late Thursday morning.

He and the other council members spent the afternoon touring flooded parts of their wards and praying for the safety of residents and property.

The severe weather also forced cancellation of Thursday night's Las Vegas Planning Commission meeting. The meeting will instead be held July 29.