In the Las Vegas Sun:
Two years ago, after learning that each of 23 tennis courts at the new Washington Buffalo Park was cracked even before it opened, city staff did not want the city to work again with Asphalt Paving Corp., the courts' general contractor.

The City Council ignored that recommendation, however, and allowed APCO to bid for $19.1 million worth of work on the Centennial Hills Community Center. APCO did not win that contract. But shortly after, APCO filed a $7 million claim against the city over the $29.7 million Washington Buffalo Park job.

During the past year, APCO has bid twice on city projects and both times the City Council awarded the contracts - worth a total of $13.2 million - to the company, unanimously and without question.
...
Mayor Oscar Goodman holds a 4 percent stake in Apex Business Park, which is partly owned by APCO employees.

'm sure readers can do the math.

Joe Mysak writes that the Las Vegas Monorail should be carrying 56,000 passengers every day by now, according to the experts. In June, the train carried an average of 24,000 riders daily.

At this rate, the monorail will default on its bonds in three years, says Fitch Investors Service, which downgraded the securities to CC from CCC on July 10.

Things are deteriorating ``slightly more rapidly'' than the rating company calculated last October, when it lowered the monorail bonds to CCC from BB. The monorail is using up its reserves to help pay debt service.

The non-investment CCC grade means that default is a ``real possibility.'' CC means that default ``appears probable.''

And yet management is still talking about a plan to expand service beyond the Strip, right out to McCarran International Airport, which it says will cost $500 million and surely result in more riders.

"This reminds me of that song in the 1960 musical ``Oliver!,'' entitled ``Who Will Buy?'' I'm not sure who is going to buy another $500 million in bonds to pay for the roughly five-mile addition to the airport, or who might perhaps buy the whole train system itself.

If I had to bet, though, I would bet that the residents of Las Vegas or Clark County or Nevada will," says Mysak

....

There are several solutions.

The casinos could, of course, buck up, and help the monorail to expand to the airport in a bid to increase the number of riders.

The city, or county, or even state could decide that as a matter of good public policy, the monorail needs to be expanded, and that the public should help subsidize those bond payments, when they come due.

....

A columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal on July 12 had another idea: ``It's time for county transportation officials to admit the inevitable -- the little mass transit experiment has gone on long enough.'' Erin Neff suggested that the monorail shut down and use its remaining cash to tear down the tracks.

We know who will be paying for the monorail. For a state without a state income tax, it is still one of the most expensive to live in in the country and, if Nevada residents have to support corrupt politicians and developers, the gaming industry, and pay for disastrous mistakes, it will keep getting worse.

And for us in Clark County--add the monorail. Viva Las Vegas!

"Southern Nevadans will get traffic relief up to two years faster, thanks to the design-build concept," said Gov. Jim Gibbons, announcing the North Corridor project, the $242 million project which will improve about four miles of Interstate 15 north of the busy Spaghetti Bowl interchange near downtown Las Vegas and should be completed by 2010.

"We're speeding up the process," said Susan Martinovich, Nevada Department of Transportation chief. "Traditional highway projects require the design to be finished first, then the bidding, before construction can begin. The design-build system allows actual construction to start while the designing is still taking place."

Plans call for widening I-15 from six lanes to 10 lanes from the Spaghetti Bowl to Lake Mead Boulevard, reconfiguring the Lake Mead Boulevard interchange, and widening the freeway to eight lanes from Lake Mead Boulevard to Craig Road.

Oh boy! Look what they managed to do with the "Spaghetti Bowl," the Henderson "Collision Bowl," and several other crazy loops and whirls with inadequate signs and no coordination of traffic lights when "they" designed it first. I can't wait to see what they build before they design it. Or, maybe building first and then designing it might actually work better. See you soon at the I-15 demolition derby.