Joe Schoenmann

Reporter/ Las Vegas City Hall

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Recent Stories (view all stories)

MGM Mirage cancels CityCenter condo project: County official says ‘significant’ errors found on 14 floors of CityCenter unit; Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009; The Harmon Hotel & Spa – originally planned as a 49-story building with some 200 condominiums atop 400 hotel rooms, will no longer offer condominiums and instead will open in late 2010 as a 400-room hotel, MGM Mirage said today. The Harmon, one of six towers at MGM Mirage's CityCenter resort complex under construction on the Strip, had been slated to open in November.
A year for history as county turns 100: Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009; An estimated 291,000 people rang in the New Year on the Las Vegas Strip, but very few likely realized 2009 is a Clark County milestone for an entirely different reason.
Two newcomers just might shake up commission: They’re enough to alter balance, observers say; Friday, Jan. 2, 2009; Some onlookers expect a change in the county’s most important and powerful local government — not for the worse, but possibly for the more active.
When owners bark or bite: Lied Animal Shelter’s intensifying struggle with visitors who lose their cool; Friday, Jan. 2, 2009; Outbursts and violence from angry pet owners there have gotten so bad at Lied Animal Shelter that the shelter is planning to remodel its lobby to protect workers from the public. “We’ve had people come over the top of the counter and grab staff,” James Seitz, the animal shelter’s acting director, said. “One day, it took six of us to get a guy out.”
Six Questions for Nancy McLane: Director, Clark County social services; Monday, Dec. 29, 2008; Nancy McLane’s most recent book, her second, was a romance-suspense novel called “Wild Horses,” and the 53-year-old is trying to write a third, but her day job keeps getting in the way.
Lobbyists who break rules face no penalty; official seeks change: Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008; Last summer, the Sun reported lobbyists filed 189 disclosure forms in the first six months of 2008, but failed to file the forms on 171 other occasions.
Angst as rent control expires: People shifted to mobile home park by county now face steep hikes, but owner says he has little choice; Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008; Phillip Bardelli is blind, and several of his neighbors are also disabled, elderly, living on a fixed incomes or all of the above. They were among the 125 people the county moved into the mobile home park in 1998. Now they are losing the protection the county built into their leases and facing rent hikes they can’t afford.
We’re not recycling much, and some think they know why: Proposal for new system elicits finger pointing, new suggestions; Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008; After Wednesday’s story about an effort to increase recycling, some readers called the Sun to say the problem really boils down to laziness on the part of too many Clark County residents.
Waste dump opponents sense victory: Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008; Despite the eleventh hour push by the Bush administration to advance efforts to make Yucca Mountain the dump for all of the nation’s highly radioactive nuclear waste, that plan is on its last legs, Nevada’s anti-Yucca forces said this week.
Official calls for sort reform: Commissioner wants hauler to adopt single-stream program, with no fee hike; Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008; Having just beaten back the push by the county’s trash hauler to add a surcharge to garbage bills, a county commissioner now plans to spur Republic Services to speed up the revamping of its recycling program.