36 years ago this month

Cold? In southern Nevada? Well, yes, and no when compared to northern Nevada.

The frosty snap that hit the West in early December drove the southern Nevada mercury to around 20 a couple of nights before the warming trend took hold mid-month.

Up north the memory lingers on. In Reno Dec. 5 the temperature plunged to its coldest reading since records were started in 1887 -- 12 degrees below zero. Wells went through a week where the highest reading was 20 degrees.

The lowest? Thirty below zero.

30 years ago

Preferred Equities will take over management of the Landmark Hotel Feb. 1 in a multi-million lease-management pact.

The agreement is for one year with a one-year option following. Preferred will concentrate on increasing the occupancy in the hotel through various tours and charter groups that would include sales trips to various Preferred properties in this area.

The agreement does not include the casino operation which will be retained by the owners.

The Landmark is a 31-story, 498-room facility on 23 acres across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The Pahrump Valley Town Advisory Board plans to ask the county commission for $164,462 for the fiscal year beginning July 1 to manage town responsibilities.

Included are the Community Center, fire department, library, swimming pool, summer recreation program and maintenance of the television service system. The request reflects a 41 percent increase over the previous year.

A committee of prominent Nevadans has urged that steps be taken to develop alternate uses for the Nevada Test Site in the event that the country halts all nuclear testing -- a goal of an international treaty effort.

There would be 6,700 jobs lost if the NTS were totally shut down with an annual loss in neighboring counties of about $31 million to that economy. Some alternate plans being proposed include maintaining the Test Site at a high level of readiness in the event testing is reinstated.

20 years ago

A bill has been introduced in the 1989 Nevada Legislature that would create a committee to negotiate with the federal government over accepting a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Nye County would be represented on the eight-member panel that would also include two state senators, two assemblymen, a city representative, a governor's representative and another from either Clark or Lincoln counties.

A proposal by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to house some of Nevada's homeless, mainly out of Las Vegas, on two federal parcels in Tonopah is being met with skepticism on the state and local level.

Nye County Assistant Administrator Geneva Neuhauser said she has no idea where the proposed locations are in Tonopah and added she learned of the federal plan through news accounts.

10 years ago

County commissioners took their first step toward closing Nye Regional Medical Center, refusing to pay $130,000 in obligations the Tonopah hospital will not be able to pay by the end of January.

The vote came at the end of a lengthy discussion regarding the hospital's debt and how much the county would have to pay to keep it open until additional tax revenue becomes available in September.

The cost to the county, at a maximum of $150,000 per month, could be as much as $1.35 million -- money the county does not have.

Two weeks after promising Ed Goedhart all the assistance he could muster, Tim Hafen appeared before the commissioners and made the same pleas on behalf of Ed and Eric Goedhart and the Ponderosa Dairy of Amargosa in its battle against what Hafen considers a bureaucracy run amok.

The situation, in Hafen's mind, warrants a comparison with Nazi Germany.

Hafen, a former member of the Nevada Assembly, is a long-time Pahrump farmer-rancher and property owner. The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening the dairy with a $1 million fine and eight years in jail for allegedly lying to a federal agent.