While the investigations into two deadly plane crashes continue at the North Las Vegas Airport, residents near another airport are worried one day they will be in the same situation.

Henderson Executive Airport is near large communities where there's fear a plane crash may be in their future. They say this is dangerous and one day may be deadly.

“It's just an accident waiting to happen as long as those planes are flying over our homes,” said Seven Hills resident and President of Capistrano Homeowners Association Ron Meek.

Meek and his neighbors, Laird and Jeanne Konker, look up and don't like what they see.

“They've gotten so low, I've even waved,” said Jeanne.

All three love the friendly skies. Ron is a pilot who's even done some wing walking. Laird was an aeronautical engineer before he flew for the FBI and Jeanne works as a flight attendant. But they say the sky above Seven Hills hasn't been too friendly lately.

“They're just so low. I feel like I can reach up there and touch the plane,” said Jeanne.

“It's just like what happened basically at North Las Vegas. If you don't have enough altitude, you can't get to a safe place to put an airplane down with a catastrophic failure,” said Laird.

“If they don't get those airplanes off the top of our homes, it's not a matter of if, it's just when,” said Ron.

Meek says planes from Henderson regularly violate altitude rules, flying well below the required 1,000 feet above residential areas, “They ask them over at the airport, as a courtesy, to fly to St. Rose Parkway before heading east or west. What you're seeing is those planes take off and when they get to the end of the runway, they're still approximately a mile from St. Rose Parkway, and they start making their turn, and that is directly over the top of our homes.”

In July a private plane trying to land in Henderson made an emergency landing on Maryland Parkway. While no one was injured, they fear the next incident could be different, as long as these planes are getting too close for comfort.

“You can actually see their faces and it's a real concern for me for the safety and welfare of our community,” said Jeanne.

Clark County officials say the Henderson Airport had some 80,000 operations last year. That's far less than North Las Vegas, but it's also the fastest growing airport here.

It's not an FAA requirement that the planes avoid that neighborhood. Federal regulations will have to change for that to be done.

Email your comments to Reporter Aaron Drawhorn

There’s a new neighbor in the Water Street District, and she’s the only person in the south part of the valley offering unique country goods.

 ”I’m the only craft store in Henderson and in southern Las Vegas and besides the shows, people have to drive out to Boulder City to get homemade goods at a reasonable price that are unique,” store owner Elena Lozano-Futter said.

Terry’s Timber Crafts is broken into sale spaces for individual crafters, plus others can join Lozano-Futter at the new craft fair market every other Saturday near Lake Mead Pkwy. and Boulder Highway.

“The Quilted Bear closed down a while back, Koomer’s closed down, because all those crafters came to me. Even on Water St….three craft stores closed down on Water St. and those crafters have joined me too…so I don’t know what crafters did before, but as you can see the store is pretty full,” Lozano-Futter said.

The store also sells antiques and includes a little flower shop run by Lozano-Futter’s three daughters. 

Clark County Graffiti Abatement painted the walls on either side of Hacienda a few weeks ago to cover graffiti.  They thought everyone would be happy with the improvement.

“Here we’re out here trying to clean up the neighborhood and here a citizen is unhappy with the job we’ve done,” Chief of Code Enforcement Joseph Boteilho said.

Even though the Clark County has few complaints when it comes to graffiti cover-up efforts, one resident is “mad as hell” and has been fighting since the moment he came home and found that his walls had been painted. 

Joe Holmes lives on a corner lot, and the walls he battled the water district to paint in 2005 had no graffiti, but the county said they had the authority to paint it without notifying him first because of a permission slip signed in 1995.

“If (they were) concerned about the paint being the same on both sides of the street why did they not paint the portion of the wall in front of the water district, which is also on this side of the street? 

His explanation to me was that they did not have the authority to paint the wall belonging to the water district and I asked him what authority did he have to paint my section of the wall without my permission?” said Holmes.

To the untrained eye the difference is small.  The color difference is drastic enough to Holmes though, and Clark County has offered to repaint his walls with a color that almost matches the former color.  Holmes isn’t happy though.  He wants the same type of paint, in the same exact color. 

After talking more with Clark County Graffiti Abatement, Holmes is willing to look at a sample again.  Until he approves a new color, his walls will remain mismatched.

Hurricane Katrina displaced many families from the New Orleans area, some of which ended up here in the valley. One family turned their loss into an opportunity, opening an authentic Creole restaurant.

Sisters Jayme Francis and Rochelle Perez fled New Orleans in 2005 and ended up in here in the Las Vegas valley. But after the first few years they realized there was one important thing they were missing.

“And once we got out here, we couldn't find anything that New Orleans has and everyone would say 'if you go here it is the same' — but it wasn't. So I said, 'Mom, maybe we can try something here.' It is different, you don't see a lot of it and we'll just see how it goes from there,” said Perez.

So rather than sit back and complain — they took action. The sisters have now opened this restaurant in the southeast valley called The New Orleans Connection. The menu has all of their hometown favorites.

“Our biggest seller is the crawfish etouffee. It a smothered crawfish dish — crawfish tails — and it is served over rice and everyone is made for it. We can barely keep up with it — it is just insane,” said Francis.

Po' Boys and gumbo are also top sellers. But while they are in happier times now, the family's story is heartbreaking. Their grandfather died just days before Katrina hit. Their mother's home was destroyed.

The family spent time in Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama before finally coming to Las Vegas. Some local residents are glad they did.

“The food here is excellent. This place opened up here not too long ago, and I came down here, tried it out and I have been coming back as a regular ever since,” said customer Gary Snyder.

The sisters say one of the secrets is in the ingredients — which they bring in directly from Louisiana.

Both sisters say they have been back to New Orleans since Katrina, and both say even three years later it is still not the same city they remember.

Email your comments to Reporter Mark Sayre.

During a recent round of cuts to the state budget, lawmakers asked the public for suggestions about where to trim. The I-Team has obtained those ideas and finds the most popular suggestion is a four day work week for state employees.

Above cutting services for illegal immigrants and raising taxes, the four day work week is the most frequent suggestion.

One lawmaker said who wouldn't want a shorter work week; another asked how many state employees participated in the survey. Kidding aside, several Southern Nevada cities already save money this way. We took a look at how they do it.

Before John Q Public walks in to Henderson City Hall or makes his way to a city office, he or she encounters Lizet Elias.

“I'm the first stop here.”

A long-time city employee who says with a straight a face she likes mostly everything about her job.

“The four day work week is just, I just love the four day work week,” she said.

Lizet, like the majority of Henderson employees, works four days a week – 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, with a half hour unpaid lunch. That means the city pays her for a 38-hour instead of a 40-hour work week.

Shave two hours off the time sheets of some 2,000 city workers and the savings adds up to nearly $5.7 million a year.

“Honestly I don't see a downside,” said Assistant City Manager Bristol Ellington. “If you ask 10 people are they getting the best bang for their buck, they probably wouldn't know that we worked a four day work week. They would know that we are open five days a week, and we are providing all the services for them.”

Staggered schedules allows Henderson to provide essential city services like business licensing, passports and building inspections five days a week.

North Las Vegas too staggers some shifts to meet the needs of its customers. But unlike Henderson, it pays for a four day, 40-hour work week. North Las Vegas derives its cost savings by closing city offices on Fridays, thereby cutting its utility bills by more than a $100,000 a year.

“It works well for the city, it works well for the employees and we believe it works for the community as long as we continue to strike a good balance,” said North Las Vegas City Manager Gregory Rose.

Back in Henderson, the clock ticks 5 p.m. and Lizet and her colleagues are still at their desks.

“Even though it's a long day, we do work 10 hours, it's totally worth it,” said Lizet. For her, a shorter week means a longer weekend with her family.

For the city, it means millions in savings at little expense to the taxpayer.

Utah just went to a four day work week and expects to save $3 million a year by closing state buildings on Fridays.

Here in Nevada, a five day work week is actually written into state law. So, it would take legislative action to make a change. But several lawmakers the I-Team spoke with said in these tough times, it's certainly worth taking a look at.

If you'd like to see the list of suggestions so far, click here. If you want to make a suggestion of your own for cutting the budget, click here.

Primetime speeches at the Democratic Convention Wednesday night will feature former President Bill Clinton and Vice Presidential pick, Delaware Senator Joe Biden.

In previous convention years, the opposing party kept a low profile, but Republicans have not been staying out of the spotlight this year.

SLIDESHOW: Mitt Romney Rallies in Henderson

LasVegasOne's Jeff Gillan sat down with a top McCain surrogate, who came to battleground Nevada today. That would be Mitt Romney, who has been part of a so-called Republican truth squad.

Traditionally, one party stays quiet during the other's convention. Not this year. Republicans have been in Denver making their case against Barack Obama. Mitt Romney spent part of this week throwing jabs at Obama from the very site of the convention.

But it could also be an audition. Romney, by some accounts, is on John McCain's short list to be VP.

Gillan pressed Romney on whether or not he's joining the ticket, but he wouldn't bite, “You know, I just don't have anything for you on the VP front — I'm not campaigning for that. What I'm doing is campaigning for John McCain, want to make sure that he's elected and that Barack Obama is able to go back to the Senate and get the experience that I think he needs.”

Gillan and Romney talked further about the economy, energy and Hillary Clinton.

Recently Democrats have been trying to paint McCain as out of touch. Democrats say if he chooses multimillionaire Mitt Romney, it would be, “The richest Republican ticket ever.”

Romney says his wealth aside, he has the economic expertise to help McCain put the economy back on track and put middle class Americans back to work.

Besides Romney, the two other names are being mentioned for McCain's VP — Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and former Democrat turned Independent Joe Lieberman.

The McCain camp says the announcement will be made Friday at a rally in Dayton, Ohio.

A neighborhood meeting was held last night to address issues and concerns raised by the public related to the addition of frontage roads to the Lake Mead Parkway corridor.

Some access to local streets, especially between Burkholder Blvd. and Mohawk Ave. will be affected.

Nevada Department of Transportation Public Information Officer Bob McKenzie didn’t have a start date for construction off-hand, but said that several residents who attended the meeting didn’t have any objections.

“They’re going to widen (Lake Mead Parkway) to six lanes.  There will be some lane restrictions once construction starts, but traffic won’t really change,” McKenzie explained.

If you have questions or concerns about the project, you can email them to NDOT before Sept. 12.

Henderson police say a 30-year-old gunman who was shot by police in the bedroom of a home over the weekend killed himself with a rifle blast to the head.

But a spokeswoman for the Clark County coroner said Monday that a cause and manner of death of the man, identified as James Heitkotter, had not been released.

Henderson police say three officers answering a domestic disturbance call at 2:20 a.m. Sunday at a house near College Avenue and East Horison Drive confronted Heitkotter sitting on a bed in an upstairs bedroom pointing a rifle at his head.

Police say he allegedly failed to put the gun down and shot himself in the head at the same time two officers fired their handguns.

Police say one of the officers' shots missed, and the other wounded Heitkotter in the shoulder.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Every Third Thursday in Henderson, Suzanne Reese leads a pack of kids down Water Street, starting at the Gibson Library, to teach them about art.

 ”I like it because we got to draw stuff and get candy and do all kinds of stuff…this is my first time coming here,” said Breanna Reed, a first time participant of the ArtsWalk.

The kids get to make their own art at stops set up throughout the Water Street District, plus they learn about every medium, from sewing to music, to painting.

Rachel Sanford, Kasondra Bouthillier and Cayla Rexrode go on the ArtsWalk almost every month, and have learned a lot about painting in particular.

“There’s different kinds of painting like oil and watercolor…pastels,” Bouthillier said.

Next month the creative bunch won’t have to walk quite as much because a new artswalk van will be ready to use thanks to the Plaza Gallery.

The Clark County Heritage Museum’s new exhibit, ‘How Time Flies: 60 Years of McCarran International Airport’ is now open and features a collection of photos, artifacts and media outlining the history of the airport.

Mark Hall-Patton is the museums administrator for Clark County Parks and Recreation.  He’s also a historian and has spent a lot of time researching the history of the airport and its impact on Southern Nevada.

“Aviation is a big part of who we are, and when you think about the history of las vegas, transportation is always the bottom line issues. That and water. Those are the two major things that bring people here,” Hall Patton said.

The artifacts in the exhibit are set up to reflect the timeline of the airport’s evolution from an airfield in the middle of nowhere, to the central hub of transportation it has become today.

The anniversary of the airport’s opening is Dec. 19, but the exhibit is only open through November. The museum is located at the south end of Boulder Highway where it turns into Old Nevada Road, and it also features a nature trail, ghost town, and Heritage Street - a collection of houses that tell the story of settlement in the Las Vegas Valley.