Sunday, Dec. 16, 2007 | 1:16 a.m.
Christmas, or something like it, is definitely in the air.
In full red and white garb with a red velvet bag over his shoulder, Santa Claus tromped through the courtyard of Las Vegas City Hall on a recent afternoon.
There was a familiar twinkle behind those wire-rimmed glasses.
"Do I know you?" I asked.
He stopped, looked calmly from behind his full face of real, not fake, white whiskers.
"Do you know Santa?"
"Santa ... Um, yes, of course, I mean, you look like someone I might know, from one of the downtown chapels, maybe?"
"From the North Pole," he said, then tromped on.
Moments later, a city marshal said he went past the entrance to the elevators that lead to City Hall offices.
"You can mail him a letter, you know," he added.
But a sobering reminder of the New Year will hit after Jan. 1, when Las Vegas employees will be hit hard not by hangovers but by new cell phone bills.
The city is going to implement a 150 percent increase in the per-minute cost of city cell phone use for personal phone calls. Current policy sets that cost at 6 cents per minute. But after an audit, the city Audit Oversight Committee agreed with recommendations to increase the per-minute cost to 15 cents, a figure more in line with standards across the country.
For years, the city has had an online system for employees to pay for their personal calls. They log onto the site, check their bills and mark calls that are personal; the city then deducts the cost from their paychecks.
The Tapestry Group, the developer that in November won a controversial vote of the Las Vegas City Council to build affordable housing on federal land - property the company will be able to purchase from the Bureau of Land Management at a 90 percent discount - is selling or has sold two of the six complexes it says it owns, according to its Web site.
Gene Wilczewski, the company's consultant and development coordinator, confirmed that two of the Tapestry Group's projects in Texas are no longer - or soon won't be - part of the Tapestry Group.
Stonehaven Apartments, a 248-unit development in Round Rock, an Austin suburb, was sold to The Gables. That project was built in 1998, but not by Tapestry Group. It also is not affordable housing, according to spokesmen for The Gables.
Parkview Place apartments in Georgetown also is being sold, Wilczewski said. He said an agreement will be in place, however, to ensure that a certain percentage of that complex's 176 units remain affordable housing after the sale.
In winning approval for the local project, The Tapestry Group withstood withering questioning by City Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian about how the company secured the deal without having to compete with other developers.
The group's proposed development, near Tenaya Way and Westcliff Drive in the southwest corner of the Spaghetti Bowl, will be on 15.25 acres that Tapestry can purchase at the 90 percent discount because it will be used for affordable housing. A federal program allows discounts on federal land of 90 percent to 95 percent if developers promise to build affordable housing.
The city entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with The Tapestry Group, Wilczewski said, after he presented City Hall with the plans for its proposed development.
"Not one other developer in the community approached the city to do what we're doing," he said. "But now that we've gotten approval, everyone else is saying they've been mistreated ... Do what we did, find some land like we did and go to the city."
Wilczewski said he's done being defensive about the deal and has decided to go on the offense against the critics.
"I'm just sick and tired of the half-truths and the sensationalism," he said. "This city needs (affordable housing). We did everything we were asked to do."
As for selling the properties in Texas, Wilczewski said it was a "business decision." He added that any rumors that The Tapestry Group was going to "flip" its proposed project in Las Vegas are "crazy."
"You don't know how much money I've got committed to this," he said.
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