City Council faces contentious items

Erin Neff

Monday, Jan. 31, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

Even as warring ambulance companies resuscitate their feud, the Las Vegas City Council will have equally contentious items before it Wednesday.

Councilman Lawrence Weekly will make his discontent about the board's handling of work-card appeals a top priority in a discussion designed to change the procedure for handling such cases.

But he might not have much support on the board. Mayor Oscar Goodman has already said the work-card appeals need to take place before the council -- and in public.

Weekly argues the negative information about an applicant's past criminal history makes for embarrassing situations in which he won't take part.

The council also will have a slight difference of opinion on a Goodman-sponsored initiative to make transportation of high-level nuclear waste inside the city's limits a crime.

Goodman's proposal runs contrary to interstate traffic regulations and federal law, but the mayor scoffed at the district attorney's opinion saying so.

"I think it's the right thing to do," he said.

The proposal, which will become ordinance if approved Wednesday, is in direct response to the Department of Energy's proposal to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Councilman Michael McDonald has already voted against the proposal in a committee meeting, claiming he doesn't think it's legal.

Goodman appears to have the votes for the ordinance, and he could win on a different issue Wednesday as the City Centre Development Corp. appears poised to accept his recommendation for its board.

City Centre board President Jodi Goodheart told City Manager Virginia Valentine last week that she will consider adding an eighth director's position to the board to accommodate Goodman's request that his former law partner, Marty Keach, be appointed.

The city had initially asked City Centre to amend its articles of incorporation to make the seventh seat on the board open to someone who is not an architect. Under the current articles of incorporation, an architect must hold that seat.

Tom Schoenman, president of JMA Architecture, resigned from the board late last year, citing potential conflicts of interest.

If Goodheart's proposed addition of an eighth seat is approved by City Centre, both an architect and Keach could be appointed to the board.